What Are Goals, Anyway?

Expect No Correct Answers Herein:

Good question.  Something to do?  That's the answer in one case, at least.  I have to go back in time (if it exists) to try to answer the question in my case.  My answer is still the one stated above.  Something to do.  The first eighteen months after quitting the drink were miserable in most ways.  The positive was that there were no hangovers or unexplained absences.  The down side of all this was that I wasn't drunk.  I still wanted to be drunk every single day.  Didn't want to drink socially, no.  I wanted to be drunk.  Still do.

I say this with a caveat:  I want to not drink just a little bit more than I want to drink.  I suppose that's been the case since the summer of 2009.  Or I'd be drunk right now.  Or dead.  I was drinking enough that the dead thing was looking as likely as the drunk thing.

Not all goals are created equal.  We all know this.  If I set a goal to shave a cat and set it on fire, it's pretty easy to concoct a moral, practical, and legal argument that far superior goals are out there for the taking.

The Burden of Time:  System vs. Goal

What can Dustin Hoffman teach us about setting goals?  Not much, it turns out.  Life isn't like Hollywood.  Or at least, it didn't used to be.  I don't know where the whole digitization of every single person's entire fucking life is headed (hint:  Uh, actually...yeah, maybe I do, or at least have a perception of that "do".) but the entire fabric of American society is built upon escape these days.  Terrorists:  Keep 'em out!  We've escaped 'em!  Crime:  Build more jails!  We've escaped 'em!  It's a little hard to live in a place where the response to roads and bridges crumbling is to defund highway maintenance to help subsidize the effective theft from the people of public schooling.

But there are oh, so many escapes!  Social media?  Why, it's the most perfect escape ever!  Used to be a fun place to jump around, get caught up with old friends and see how people are doing, generally speaking.  I am so close to the point of wanting absolutely nothing to do with that process, but have become more than a little convinced that virtually nothing is real, anyway.

I think there is very likely one "real" setup.  Everything branches off this setup.  I don't know where the real setup is located.  I don't think it is here.  We're living in an odd-ass time, friends, and I figure the odds of me living at exactly this time in exactly this way are either 100% or zero.  Which do you think it might be?  This is a binary distribution, so I have passed over the realm of probability and into statistic above.  No one knows what the hell that is anymore, so again, a waste of time.

If time exists.  I have now.  Well, I have my perception of now.  I can cling to that, in times (ha!) like this where the essence of all meaning has broken down more than a little bit.  Been noticing for a while that tomorrow never comes.  Will anything be different tomorrow?  Yeah, everything will be different, as much as everything will be exactly the same.  We'll have our little pleasantries and interactions, our faiths will be tested and revealed, and at day's end there will have been some marginal and/or massive change in each of our own lives.

Goals:  The National Parks

What does it say of a man when his primary goals are nearly completely accidental?  The past couple large ones were by much better construction than the first two.  I don't even recall at all what I was thinking when these were concocted, or if there was even a preconceived notion at all.  All I knew was that that initial fog had passed, whatever the hell that was.  It's all weather.  I think there was just some day when I said to someone, or perhaps only to myself, "I think I'm going to see all the National Parks."

Petrified Forest Marathon View of the Painted Desert

I know this for goddamn sure, whenever I uttered that phrase in mind or voice, there wasn't a clear understanding of what the hell was going to have to happen for it to occur.  What a scattershot mess.  I wouldn't trade what I've seen to this point for any other experience so far in life.  It's been going away the most rewarding concoction of mind, and it certainly wasn't an original thought.

There must have been more than a little credit for inspiration to Ken Burns.  Back when I had television, I loved his documentary work.  I'm sure I still do, but haven't had exposure to anything the man has done since it first aired on PBS.  I don't remember him mentioning there were 58 (now 59, because, time.) but I would bet a large sum of money it was mentioned once, if not often.  Wait, I don't have any money to bet.  Sorry!

God damn.  That's a big goal.  All I really knew at the time of this decision, I can say with near certainty, is that I didn't appreciate what the hell a stunt like this would actually require.  It would have been insane to state some sort of goal like this without knowing the ins and outs of the whole process.  My answer to doing the necessary research was to set a time limit for the entire operation.

I often say I am uncertain I've made one good decision in my life, but with the passage of a little time, my conclusion is that this was an essential decision to make.  The limit was set for the end of the decade, I'd declared at the beginning of the current one.  I don't count 2010, because that was way back in the dark age, along with the tail end of 2009.  That whole mess must now be considered a necessary extension of the actual time spent drinking, because it was a mirror image in those moments.

So, by my definition, I have until the conclusion of the year 2020 to finish this deal.  SOB would I love to finish by 2019.  I want to settle down a little.  Wow.  I just wrote that sentence.

To this date, I lack eight parks in Alaska, two in Hawaii, two in California, Maine, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands.  Is that right?  It has to be right.  I think.  Fifteen more.  That sounds right.  Four years seems a whole lot more doable than three.   I was doing a little mental math, way back in the day, apparently.

Goals:  Road Racing Fifty States

Once the running was emphasized, I had a dumbshitted and briefer goal of running a marathon in every state.  Within five years of stating such rubbish, it was obvious my body wouldn't go through such a stunt without substantial bad medical operations.  Fuck that nonsense.  A permanently modified goal was set to run a road race in every state.  Notice how I didn't set a limit on the road race?  I like what I did there.  To this point, I've counted only the half-marathons (or equivalent distance therein) for my mileposts.

Jackson Hole Marathon, Mile 2

At March, 2017, I've run road races in sixteen states?  This sounds absurd now, but I guess this is right.  It's absurd on a number of levels.  The one that jumps out first at me is that there are fifty states in the Union.  This is the type of thing that would make me a secessionist, but too many of those goddamn races are peppered across the south and west.  It would fuck up my whole campaign.  I've given myself as long as I fucking live to knock this one out, because this sort of nonsense eats up a fuckton of time.  The prep work is horrific, and the time commitments to ramming in three races a year or so are numbing.  So I can and do take my time on this one.  I've got fairly decent health, because I'm running all over Douglas County all the goddamn time.

This thing is an extension of a goal set in childhood to see all fifty states.  Still working on that one, but I think it is down to three:  Rhode Island, Alaska, and Hawaii.  Good thing they aren't spread out or anything.

Goals:  Major League Ballparks

Baseball's always been my first love.  It's just been that way.  The timing was right.  If I was ten years older, my love would likely be the goddamned Chiefs, but they would have killed me by now.  I'd be drinking heavily if this were the case.

Kicking the drink made me put a lot of this emotional commitment bullshit in the trash can.  I barely follow sport at all these days.  I'm still prone to it--everyone is.  I don't want to go back to living like a robot (a necessity at one point) whereby every single decision I made I tried to remove the emotion.  That didn't work any more than emotional guidance.   The answer is almost always in the middle.

San Diego, still missing the brown and gold.

Again, major props to Ken Burns.  His Baseball documentary is an American masterpiece of film.  So, naturally, a guy like me that's committed to happy feet and running all over the goddamn country has to make the thing a little more stupid by concentrating some activity on the most densely packed urban areas in North America.  At this point, I could do without most of the cities, but that's where the ballparks are located.  It seems like decent progress is being made here, I think the count is now eleven left.  I've jumped all over this one, I like this stunt.  It's expensive too, but I've blended it into the fabric of these other dipshitted things to do almost as well as I could.

Goals:  Presidential Libraries

What's it say about a guy who adds Presidential Libraries to this list?  Well, it says I'd very much like to finish all the lists, but am awfully impatient.  The sprint to finish the ballpark thing is crucial.  The number would be only nine if not for the constant addition of new facilities.  I've been trying to stay out of the way of places known to suck, or that might relocate.  This has been a blast.  I've loved the libraries.  I don't have to "do" anything, but can "be" and learn.

Bush 41, College Station, TX, view from bookstore.

What do these all have in common?  They all have been essential to keeping me out of the bottle to this point, so they need their props here.  It's the idea that there's something out there to look forward to.  We all need this.  Some have it in their kids, pets, themselves, their loves.  Wherever it is, everyone has some concoction of this.  For many, it's video games, some are passionate about all sport, I certainly was for a great deal of time.

This year, I have nothing on the calendar.  Yet.  This has to change, because I'm running out of decade.  I'd imposed time limits on the ballparks, at least.  Figured some bastard could always start adding libraries, and then I'd need more time.