Goals Set and Goals Disrupted

Goals set and goals disrupted. Key components of my trip to Portland. Disrupted goals have to do with our encounter with The Foreign Order of Underground Liberty (FOUL), which I’ll post more about next week. Setting goals is what this post is about.

(Note: You may want to add, “over beer” to the end of any sentence in the following paragraphs to give the post that Portland vacation feel).

It’s one of the things friends do, and we built up to it over walks into Multnomah Village to eat breakfasts and dinners. One of the conversations brought up the question of where we planned on being, and doing, within one year. We agreed that any goals set needed to be measurable. During the daily walk, and then at my friends' house/cabin retreat, we continued the discussion.

Upon returning home, I kept coming across things having to do with goal setting. So, I dashed off the last post on the subject of discipline. Which prompted a phone call from Portland, “What are you gonna do about it?”

Iron sharpens iron, the bible says, and that process by its nature involves heat. Now the heat is on. I promised I’d wrestle with laying out some measurable goals. Said I’d post them, with the initial post done before vacation. So here are some of the goals (measurable) that I’ve come up with.

I’ve decided that each of these will need to be chronicled on a calendar (the old fashioned paper type) so that I can make check-marks, or other notations showing goal completed for that day or week. The cycling I’ll note on Excel. Following is a rough draft which I’ll have to refine over the next month.

Goals for September through November.

1) Buy a house plant. Goal date-mid September. This will also entail buying some type of stand that fits.
2) Cycling. This is the easy one. 3 rides per week (or time on Trainer). By end of November, have done at least one 60 mile ride. (Side note: I plan on buying a bike by end of the year; but it’s a loose goal).
3) Memorize Romans 6: 1-14 by end of September.
4) Calendaring. This is probably the most important goal here. I will take one chunk of time every week to lay out the week. I need to clearly delineate days that I do freelance work and days that I play. Set aside days for Sabbath rest.
5) Bible reading/Quiet time. 3 times per week. No minimum time frame for each day, the commitment is to do it, whether it takes 3 minutes or 30 minutes. I should be done with Isaiah by end of September, then moving into Jeremiah. Will continue the delightful balance between reading some scripture and reading some soul-stirring short piece of writing, such as Annie Dillard, Robert Service, Frederic Buechner.
6) Write a will. Have this done by end of November. For those of you reading this; along with the will I’ll have desires for my funeral on my desktop. Please follow accordingly (if I go before you). I’ll do that along with the will.

That’s the short list. I’m off to Yellowstone; so I may come back with more to add.