"Because you gotta have goals..."

I was thinking as I was riding my bike this morning, and a few things congealed in my mind. (You should probably understand that I am very, very slow to come to conclusions. I have to walk around an idea for a few weeks before I can determine my opinion on it solidly, so for me to say that something has congealed in my mind implies quite a bit of effort on my part. At my core, I HATE change.) I am at the cusp of a major shift in my life and I am embracing it with all the strength I have. Something has shifted and I don't want the same things I wanted so desperately so few years ago. My focus has shifted from house, white picket fence, rose garden, dog and working the next 45 years or so, to... traveling light, let's call it. I don't want to escape, and I don't want a vacation. I want to eliminate all the crap from which I could want to escape, and my life to be a vacation. I've realized that there are things like dishes, groceries, clogged sinks and broken furnaces that are unavoidable facts of life. And yes, those things don't usually intersect with a vacation, but isn't that the wonderful part about a vacation? More than being in a beautiful place and sleeping in late and doing whatever you want all day it's the fantasy that you could live without those unavoidable inconveniences that makes vacationing so wonderful. (And delusional, I might add.) So what do I want? Well a lot of things.

Before I'm 27 (about 9 months from now) I want:

• a job I don't hate
• the house sold
• to be living somewhere new (California, New Hampshire, Korea, etc. I'm not too picky about this one.)
• to be able to run 5 miles at a stretch
• to be able to bike 25 miles a day
• to rely on my bike more than my car
• to be able to repair my own bike as necessary

Before I'm 30 I want:

• to be completely out of debt (no house, no student loans, NOTHING)
• a Vespa (I'm serious about this no car business.)
• a dog
• to run a marathon (I've always wanted to do it.)
• to be brewing all grain beer and know what I'm doing
• to only be drinking homebrew, or maybe wine
• to be growing my own hops and maybe grapes? (The grapes depend on my green thumb. It is as yet largely untested.)

Before I'm 35 I want:

• to retire (Maybe I'll have to push this back to 40, but we'll see.)
• to be a black belt in some nasty variety of martial arts (Such as Jiu-Jitsu or something else with an emphasis on function, not form.)
• to hike the AT in a season (my dog and I)

As you can see, at 35 I get fuzzy. I don't really know where I'll be or where my interests will turn. But that is the direction I'm moving my life. I've been working towards this for about two years now, but it's a slow progression. Most of the progress until now has been mental. Like I said, I'm slow to move and difficult to persuade. But I'm on the move now.