My Goals

A lot of people on ADN and Twitter have been talking about goals recently, linking to articles such as this one. The consensus seems to be that you need to write down your goals, so I’m going to try to do that. If you only follow my blog for the tech stuff, you may want to skip this one!

Here are a few of my medium term goals.

1: Learn to drive

I currently take the bus into work. This often adds stress to my day. (Will I miss it? Will it be so full it drives past? Will I have a half hour wait in the cold?) If I could drive, I could probably leave the house nearly an hour later in the mornings.

This is probably the most concrete goal I have. I’m going to start having lessons as soon as I finish transferring my mortgage over to a new company (which will hopefully happen this month, and will free up some money!).

After I’ve learnt, I plan to buy a car. That’ll require a lot more consideration of the finances, to make sure I can afford the running costs, insurance etc — it’ll be a lot more than my £40/month bus pass!

2: Finish my PhD thesis

I spent four years trying to do a PhD in Psychology (2006-2010). For various reasons, I didn’t finish it during that time. Since then, I’ve been trying to work on the thesis every so often, alongside my full time job. Officially I’ve withdrawn from the course for medical reasons, but apparently if I turn up with a finished thesis they might let me submit it (no guarantees).

My supervisor is still willing to read over the odd chapter if I send them to him. However, he has to do so in his spare time, so it takes him a very long time to get back to me with comments. A friend of mine has offered to read over some stuff and help me out, so the next step is to take him up on that offer.

3: Get my house sorted ready for new housemates in September

I rent out rooms of my house. I’ve signed up four people to live with me next academic year. In order to fit four people in, I’m going to be dividing one room of my house into two by putting up a partition wall. This needs to be done in August, after previous tenants leave, but I want to get the job agreed with a builder as soon as possible for my peace of mind.

I’ve contacted a builder that I was recommended, but they haven’t replied yet. I sent them a nagging email yesterday. If they don’t reply soon, I’ll need to phone them. (I hate initiating phone contact, it always takes me a while to make myself do that.)

4: Make sure I regularly meet with friends

This is sort of an ongoing one, but worth mentioning. I’m absolutely terrified about being lonely, and just never coming into contact with people I can talk to. Since I find it fairly hard to make friends anyway (partly because I suffer from prosopagnosia), I have an intense fear I’ll get to a point where I won’t regularly see anyone who I’d class as a close friend.

It’s probably an irrational fear. If ever I am in such a situation, I’ll probably throw myself into some new activity (joining a theatre company, or a board gamers group, or something) and with luck I’ll meet like-minded people. But it’s still something that’s worth putting on my list of goals, because it’s something I feel strongly about when planning my life.

Where it all leads

The thing I want out of life is to be able to actually relax in my free time, without thinking “I should be doing X”. Getting sorted financially is one step along the way. Getting my thesis finished is another. I’m sick of feeling that my life would be better if I put more time and effort into various things.

I have other goals too, but these four were the first ones I thought of, and therefore are probably the most important to me at the moment.