30 Goals at age 16
Posted by Lise on 12 Jun 2008 at 08:50 pm | Tagged as: goals
At age 16 I was on exchange in France. Ironically, I was perfectly miserable and waiting for my life to begin. In addition to scrawling Alanis Morrissette lyrics on every scrap of paper I could find, I at one point made a list of 30 life goals for myself.
Without further ado, my goals at age 16:
- Hike the Appalachian Trail
- Learn how to sail and crew around the world
- Visit Morocco
- Learn Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, Irish Gaelic, Japanese, Hindi, Chinese, and Portuguese.
- Learn the ancient languages Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Persian, etc.
- Become a woods guide.
- Visit Alaska
- Learn how to ride and own horses
- Learn to fence
- Learn to play the piano and violin
- Visit India and study in an ashram
- Have a collection of medieval weapons
- Finish and publish A Dangerous Age (the novel I was writing at the time)
- Write songs for a band
- Play flute in an orchestra
- Work for TSR and/or White Wolf (heh, I’m showing my age there)
- Meet Anne Rice (wtf?????)
- Write and/or direct a film
- Act in a film
- Learn how to windsurf (better than J.C.) (J.C. == Boy With Whom I Was Obsessed At the Time)
- Learn to ski
- Meet Terry Goodkind
- (There is no goal number 23. I would venture it should be “learn to count”)
- Join the Peace Corps
- Start an Interact/Rotaract club in Plattsburgh
- Live in Montreal
- Get accepted to the University of Pennsylvania
- Be in a Highlander movie (or episode of the TV series) (Alas, I think this one must go terminally unfulfilled)
- Return to France and teach English
- Join the organization that organises all those work-study programs (name forgotten) and spend some more time abroad
- Get my black belt in taekwondo (this, in part with no. 9, 19, 12, and 8, should, I hope, lead to no. 28)
I’m not sure what to think, staring at this list. They can be fit into a few different categories. For one, there are the goals that obviously can no longer be accomplished, like getting accepted to UPenn (I’ve already got my undergrad degree from Vassar, and the tone seemed to imply undergraduate), being in a Highlander episode (sad, that), or working for TSR (I suppose Hasbro/WotC might count).
Then there are the completely silly goals. Nowadays, for example, my goal is to avoid meeting Anne Rice, pursuant to the revelation that she is batshit crazy. She might find I’m interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. Meeting Terry Goodkind doesn’t seem so awesome now - for one, I just got rid of my collection of his books; secondly, I can go to a convention somewhere and meet just about any author I want these days. Dude, Tim Powers drew an upside-down dog on my copy of Expiration Date at WorldCon in LA a few years ago. From that point of view my life is complete. On a similar note, goals like starting a Rotaract club in my hometown are completely meaningless to me these days.
Then there are the goals I have to be realistic about never accomplishing. I’m really, really terrible at music, for example, so I’m not sure why I ever had goals that had to do with it. Especially playing a flute in an orchestra. My parents and teachers let me struggle along playing the flute for five years or more, and never once did someone say to me, “Hey, uh, your lips are kind of the wrong shape for this.” Also, I have no sense of tone. Or rhythm. Small problems. In a similar vein, I have a lot of woodsy goals on here, but after spending a summer working in the Adirondacks, I discovered I really don’t like the out of doors that much. I wouldn’t completely rule out “Hike the Appalachian Trail,” but I know now the process would make me absolutely miserable.
There are still goals here that mean something to me. I still love languages, and I still would love to be dropped down in a country for three months, not have to worry about money, and learn to speak a new language. I’d take off the Gaelic and maybe add Russian, or Finnish, though. I’d still like to learn how to fence, or to ride horseback. Visiting Alaska is still on my list, and it’s imminently doable. Matt and I couldn’t figure out why Morocco was on the list, but hey, I’ll take it.
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Isn’t it fun to go back and see who you wanted to be when you were younger? I love this stuff!
Sydney, I have to admit, your post about your childhood “autobiography” is one of the things that inspired me to dig this up!
I think this has been helpful because it’s identified goals I still want to pursue after all these years. Did you find the same benefit from rediscovering your love of acting?
[...] 30 Goals at age 16 @ Frugal In The Fruitlands [...]
Awesome list! I especially like the first and last items - those have shown up on my list over the years, too.
LOL, I wanted to meet Anne Rice, too, though less so nowadays for usre. And I loooooved the Highlander movies, for all their problems.
I love your list. Actually, it sounds like we’ve had a lot of similar goals/interests in addition to trying to be frugal such as music, languages, horses, and nature (though I’ll settle for now with eating weeds I collect on walks around the neighborhood). Tried windsurfing and skiing even, though they weren’t really my thing. But think I would love to learn martial arts, including fencing.
My big goal: cruise the Mediterranean and see Italy and Greece, especially. I was a classics major believe it or not — among other things.
[...] 30 Goals at Age 16. I was surprised how popular this one was. I guess everybody likes lists! [...]