REVISITING GOALS

MORE that sixteen years ago, I saw myself as a rudderless ship carried away by the waves in a turbulent sea.

I felt so alone in my rented room in Roxas District (Quezon City). I had been in bed for the whole day, sick with fever, and had been worrying that my money wouldn’t last me a week, and bothered by a call of help from my younger sister who was in dire need of a big amount to pay a school requirement. My low salary as a proofreader of a publishing house couldn’t give me or my family any satisfaction.

I couldn’t sleep. I felt I was caught in an arid area, the middle of where I was and where I wanted to be.  

Something inside me demanded a change, yearning to have a more positive and present life. I needed to live my life differently. I knew a lot of things about the life I was living would have to change. So what do I want to do? What would I do beyond working, eating, dreaming? Someday, my time on earth will end. Before I die, what I really want to accomplish? What would I do beyond working, eating, dreaming?

As if in a cue, I rose from bed, got hold of my pen, tore up a page of my notebook, and wrote the word in big letters: GOALS. There were so many other things, big and small, that I really wanted to do. So I must begin working towards achieving them instead of just vaguely thinking, “Someday...” or “I wish…”   

I started writing what could be a map or a plot for my route ahead. I’d expected that this would bring me to the direction of where I want to be. It would be my guide, my personal instructions of hanging on. 

So I wrote this list in 1995.

Immediate Goals:

1.      To finish my masteral degree by age 26.

2.      To see Nove (my sister) finished her college education by March 2000.

3.      To get married between 1997 and 1998.

4.      To be a college instructor before the age of 28.

5.      To own a house before the age of 30.

6.      To see my parents happy in their retirement years by giving them capital for business before I turned 30.

7.      To be able to write an Iluko novel before the age of 26.

8.      To be able to write stories and poems for English magazines before the age of 26.

9.      To write a book (any topic of general interest) before I reach 35.

Lifetime Goals:

1.      To buy back the TV set that we sold to Abat (our neighbor).

2.      To maintain my correspondence with my present pen friends.

3.      To own a camera and be a professional photo essayist.

4.      To travel around Europe.

5.      To be an elected government official.

So what I constructed was some sort of motivational “to-do” list for myself, and each item has real, personal significance. See I made this long before bucket list or Internet blog sites that make a list of things to do before you die have become a fad. After I wrote my own list, it stayed on my personal files, inserted particularly in my short-lived diary. It had practically reminded me that I was in control of my life. It had become my life's turning point, a single moment of self-realization.

But then, I got busy, tied up with more immediate concerns, and my goals become less and less relevant to my life. I got married, started a family, and had been transferred to different jobs.

My list was buried deeper into my files, and I was only able to read it once or twice in the past. And the last time that I retrieved it was when I was sorting out my personal things after that life-changing experience that I had last year.

Fast forward to present, did I achieve these goals or any of them? Has my life improved or better than 16 years ago?

Now I started crossing off the items that I have achieved so far. Here’s the update of my list: I got married in 1996, or a year earlier than my plan. I was enrolled in PUP Graduate School but I dropped out after two semesters to focus on establishing my own family. For lack of post-grad degree I was never qualified as a college instructor.  

My sister graduated from college in 1999, and after some years of working in different companies, she decided to enroll in another course, this time an Accounting degree. She graduated last year and passed the CPA board.  

I bought a house on a loan when I was 34. And, yes, I had my first Ilocano novel published in Bannawag magazine and had some of my poems appeared in English magazines and literary websites. I haven’t got a book of general interest published under my name, but I have self-published an anthology of my short stories published in Bannawag before I turned 30. I failed to give my parents their capital for a possible business, but right now, with the help of my siblings, they are very happy in their life as senior citizens. 

For the list of my lifetime goals, I only realized just now that it was incomplete or did not actually tell so much about the things I really wanted to achieve in my lifetime. Anyway, from those that I had listed here, only one is no longer possible to achieve. This was my aim (my obsession, actually) to buy back the TV set which was given to a neighbor as security for my father’s loan. About the time I have the money to buy it, the TV was already unusable.

I have three pen friends when I wrote the list. With e-mails, SMS, Facebook and other social networking sites, correspondence is always a possibility. One of my pen friends, now a teacher living in Las Piñas, is my Facebook friend and still sending me messages regularly to my cell phone. The other one, whom I regularly see when she stayed in Manila for a time, is now married and staying with her family in Ilocos. And my dream to travel Europe, to be a photo essayist (or journalist) and be an elected official can still be a possibility (though, I no longer see myself entering politics).

Should I make another list? With my age, I can only think of my intentions, not just wishes. No matter what, this is MY life now. I could only think of what I achieved and try to live it positively. Failures are in the past tense, so they better remain as such, and they can only be a good source of wisdom and even inspiration.