Setting Up New Goals

So many potential goals

Random Observation/Comment #218: Rejection is a terrible thing, but it’s definitely part of life.  Any excuses I give for my role in the situation will never be enough to ease my mind.  I’m not sure if it’s the disappointment in myself for not being able to think quicker or act sooner (or later), or if it’s just self-pity and self-loathing, but it definitely sucks.  At the end of the day, it’s what you can learn from these situations, so over time I will rise from the lull and rebound.  Rejection builds character.

I wrote about a year ago about goals, aspirations, dreams, and fantasies.  I think it was about time to update this entry with my achievements in the past year.

Since last December, I’ve: finished my Master’s thesis, started a company, went on a small roadtrip to Ohio with close friends, studied abroad in Germany for 6 months, traveled all over Europe (at least 15 major cities), sledged on the Swiss Alps, cooked almost every day in Germany, collected about a hundred more beer caps, started a collection of beer labels, tried every flavor of Rittersport, uploaded about 150 albums to facebook, listened to the full Harry Potter series audiobooks, climbed 3 mountains in Germany, fell in love again, wrote about 100 entries, (almost) wrote a book, got to second round interviews to all the companies I applied to, wrote my first chapter to a comic, wrote a study guide for learning languages (key vocabulary words that are used in everyday conversations for Mandarin, German, Japanese, and Spanish), basically reorganized my life, read a book for leisure, bought my first manual camera, and started at least 5 other side projects.  I’ve been keeping busy…

To quote my previous entry:

“Many of the goals are very short term and involve completing tasks at hand to make myself feel productive for the day.  Long term goals exist as well, but they are much more reasonable and can probably be achieved in the next few years.  The aspirations are for my long term career outlooks and accomplishments that occur in the next decade or so.  My dreams are what I deem as possible, but will require a lifetime of hardship or a whole lot of luck to come true.   My fantasies are things that will probably never happen, but their existence makes me happy and keeps me wishing.”

Goals:

1. Stop procrastinating
2. Narrow down primetime TV shows because they take up too much time in my life (House, The Office, Heroes, Dexter, Colbert Report, 24, Californiacation, 30 Rock).  Better yet: try not to add more to this list.
3. Learn to write more in Chinese
4. Learn to speak fluently in Japanese, Mandarin, German, and Spanish by 25.
5. Get better at cooking
6. Review more restaurants
7. Try more wine
8. Finish the comic book
9. Finish the manga
10. Finish writing book – maybe publish it or just share with close friends
11. Go sky diving
12. Write more poems
13. Add more to my bottle cap and labels collection of beers
14. Finish my side projects list (top secret for now)
15. Take more photographs and improve with manual settings
16. Travel to Japan and Hong Kong before I start working
17. See Natasha again
18. Continue to collect memorable quotes from amazing nights

Aspirations:

1. Get married (hopefully after the love thing)
2. Find a career with flexible hours, low stress, and high pay (maybe this should be a fantasy or at least a dream)
3. Live in NYC
4. Publish a book (autobiography, memoirs, novel, etc)
5. See the Northern Lights
6. Make money from photography
7. Write about drinking expensive wines
8. Get an MBA
9. Save someone’s life – change it for the better forever
10. Own a dog and play in the little dog park with them – yay!
11. Conquer my fears
12. Go restaurant reviewing with my brother – he drives the nice car and I pay for the meals

Dreams:

1. Visit all 7 continents
2. See all 7 wonders of the world (all of them listed on Wikipedia which makes them like 50 based on different organizations)
3. Travel to at least 50 countries (currently at 15)
4. Make my first million by the time I’m 27
5. Eat at almost 80% of all restaurants in The City
6. Early retirement
7. Make a living traveling and writing
8. Learn to fly a plane
9. Own a house that I’ve designed (I would build it, but I’m afraid it would fall down while I sleep)
10. Become as influential as a professor – possibly become a professor
11. Change the world with something
12. Get on the Colbert Report
13. Travel to space – weightlessness would be cool too

Fantasies: (All new sorts of ridiculousness: see last year’s entry for other funny ones)

1. Time travel
2. Obtain Jedi powers – most notably mind tricks
3. Be a part of a heist without any consequence.  I don’t mind getting caught as long as I can say “I want full immunity signed by the President.”
4. Help build Skynet, but go back in time to try and protect a younger version of myself from the governator
5. Chainsaw a zombie in half
6. Sleep with the only hot girl that remains after the zombie apocalypse
7. Carve a turkey with a light saber
8. Extend claws and have regeneration. I would also have ridiculous chops.
9. Swing from a chandelier while having an epic sword fight
10. Curve a bullet around Angelina Jolie
11. Play ping pong against Christopher Walking
12. Lift an entire aircraft carrier from a door while saving a girl
13. Fly around the world so fast that I turn back time
14. Play an Australian guy pretending to be a black guy pretending to be a soldier in the Vietnam war
15. Make a play about a secret relationship that foreshadows the movie
16. Chant “We Are Spartans” after defeating thousands of Persians on the side of a mountain
17. Have a split personality disorder that makes me invent Brad Pitt as my alter ego. Not Tyler Durden; just Brad Pitt
18. Run across the US and back for no reason except “I just felt like running”
19. Attend Hogwarts for 4 years while fighting the dark lord and then become an outcast for an entire movie to defeat death eaters (which will be so much better than the last one)
20. When I get mad (or excited), I turn green and huge
21. Search for a treasure in an ancient temple filled with awesome traps.  Unchartered meets Tomb Raider
22. Go to Vegas and count cards to win lots of money
23. Be able to speak like Mickey in Snatch.  WTF does he say? I hate Pikers.
24. Continuously be chased by the government because I’m a trained assassin trying to figure out my past
25. Sweet Key Lime.

As always, health and continual strives towards learning is what matters most.

~See Lemons Aim, Exhale slowly, and Squeeze

Goals, Aspirations, Dreams, and Fantasies

 

 

Chichen Itza. One down, a lot more to go.

Random Observation/Comment #111: Ambition and curiosity drives me.  I’m not exactly an adrenaline junkie looking for the next extreme sport to almost die from, nor am I a millionaire thrill seeker spending all of his money experiencing crazy things; I am just a man with goals, aspirations, dreams, and fantasies.  Many of the goals are very short term and involve completing tasks at hand to make myself feel productive for the day.  Long term goals exist as well, but they are much more reasonable and can probably be achieved in the next few years.  The aspirations are for my long term career outlooks and accomplishments that occur in the next decade or so.  My dreams are what I deem as possible, but will require a lifetime of hardship or a whole lot of luck to come true.   My fantasies are things that will probably never happen, but their existence makes me happy and keeps me wishing.

 

During the web2.0 era a few years ago, a site was created called 43things.com.  It was a site to share your goals while reading about others.  I consider this site the exact opposite of grouphug.us, which is one of my favorites for confessions, but requires somewhat of a “twisted release through the pain of others” to read.  Anyway, I hope my list inspires others to live life the same.

Goals:

1. Finish Master’s
2. Stop procrastinating
3. Take care of parents
4. Narrow down primetime TV shows because they take up too much time in my life (House, The Office, Heroes, Dexter, Colbert Report, 24, Californiacation, 30 Rock)
5. Learn to write more in Chinese
6. Learn to speak more fluently in Japanese, Mandarin, German, and Spanish
7. Get better at cooking
8. Review more restaurants
9. Finish the comic book
10. Finish the manga
11. Go sky diving
12. Write more poems
13. Finish my bottle cap collection of beers
14. Read more books
15. Write the backpacking itinerary
16. Document my backpacking through Europe
17. Dominate Travbuddy like XDrive (www.travbuddy.com)
18. Ski the alps
19. Don’t die while skiing the alps

 

Aspirations:

1. Fall in love again
2. Get married (hopefully after the love thing)
3. Find a career with flexible hours, low stress, and high pay (maybe this should be a fantasy or at least a dream)
4. Live in NYC
5. Publish a book (autobiography, memoirs, novel, etc)
6. See the Northern Lights
7. Make money from photography
8. Write about drinking expensive wines
9. Get an MBA
10. Start a company
11. Go on a road-trip with my close friends
12. Save someone’s life – change it for the better forever
13. Own a dog and play in the little dog park with them – yay!
14. Conquer my fears

 

Dreams:

1. Visit all 7 continents
2. See all 7 wonders of the world (all of them listed on Wikipedia which makes them like 50 based on different organizations)
3. Travel to at least 50 countries
4. Make my first million by the time I’m 27
5. Eat at almost 80% of all restaurants in The City
6. Early retirement
7. Make a living traveling and writing
8. Learn to fly a plane
9. Write a series of motivational posters

 

Fantasies:

1. Travel to space
2. Have an orgy in space (obviously) – girl majority, please.
3. Time travel to change that one moment in my life…
4. Get bitten by a spider and swing through the city fighting crime.  I would, of course, struggle with internal conflicts and the balance of a love life with a superhero secret, but this is the price I am willing to pay to shoot web out of my wrists.  “With great power comes great responsibility.”
5. I am Tony Stark.
6. I am Hiro Nakamura (without the whole saving the world business)
7. Actually see the flying spaghetti monster create the universe in a drunken mess
8. Halle Berry from Swordfish + Jessica Alba from Sin City + Me
9. Super strength, super speed, x-ray vision, flying, and a cape
10. I have all of Dirk Diggler’s assets
11. Jumping out of a plane at high altitude to catch up with a parachute, and put it on just in time to save my life
12. I am an International Man of Mystery or The Secret Asian Man (I guess this is more of a fact than a fantasy)
13. Build everything in Back to the Future – I’ve wanted that hover-board for soooo long
14. Shove the blue pill up Morpheus’s ass and hope I don’t turn into an Agent – bad luck.
15. Lucid dream forever (I could be now, and just thinking about that being true makes me happy)
16. Be remembered forever for doing something really awesome or really outrageous.  Like invent the hover-board or first man to have a threesome with Jessica Alba and Halle Berry in space.
17. World happiness (however this works out, cool beans).
18. Do one-handed, one-finger pushups in a capsule with 100G forces for years straight as training to fight an ugly, short blue guy.  When I get angry, my hair sticks up and turns blond while a glowing aura surrounds me.  The dialogue lasts forever.
19. Kick Yoda’s ass in a light saber fight.
20. I am a bounty hunter who has really bad luck with collecting money, so I must resort to eating bell peppers and beef or shitake mushrooms all the time.
21. I wear a red trench coat with blonde spiked hair and really cool round sunglasses.  I love donuts and … this was an awesome series.  Love and Peace!
22. I can pinch your neck and kill you in an instant.  Stop making fun of my pointy ears and flawless logic.
23. I am Jack Bauer.  So badass.
24. When I do a pushup, I am not lifting myself up, but pushing the Earth down.  When I was born, roundhouse kick deaths increased 13,000 percent.  There would be no chin behind my beard, only another fist.  I can divide by zero.  I can count to infinity – twice.

 

Most importantly: Stay healthy (or else none of these really matter) and never stop learning (or else none of these really matter). 

By the way, making up this list was immensely fun and really relieved a lot of stress.

~See Lemons Start the Adventure