Every time I reach a goal, I find myself mourning the journey that’s ended. Goals are funny that way: they’re more like punctuation marks than complete thoughts.
I’ve spent the first 35 years of my life “getting started.”
I built my personality and beliefs. I got educated. I established myself in a stable career that I love. I discovered my passions and hobbies. I found a spouse and “I” became “we.” We picked a place we wanted to live and we moved there. We had a couple kids (third on the way). We established a business. We accomplished a set of financial goals to lay a solid foundation for our future.
We just bought our first home. It took us longer than most people we know, but we finally made it. I can’t help but feel that this was the last of the “getting started” goals. I’ve somehow stepped over into the next phase of life:
“Being.”
I’m not sure what else I would call it. During the “getting started” phase, most of our goals felt like gatekeepers to our future. “I can’t get my dream job until I finish my degree,” or “we shouldn’t buy a house until we have our other debt paid off and an emergency fund saved.”
I’m left now with my process-oriented goals: be a great husband. Be a great dad. Be a great educator. Be a great rock climber. Be a great business owner. These goals don’t have distinct start and end points. I’ve been working towards them already. I won’t wake up one day and graduate from “dad school.” I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be a better husband.
I’ve paid my dues. We’ve paid our dues. Now it’s time to just “be.” Enjoy the ride we’ve built for ourselves.
It’s always been easy to write about things that are relevant to my students: I might have been ahead of them, but they’re in the “getting started” phase of life too. I’ve been sharing the advice and experiences I wish someone had shared with me as I worked towards each of my big life goals. It’s been authentic because I really just shared what I was going through.
Now I find myself at a cross roads.
Do I continue sharing what I’m experiencing, even though it is farther removed from the students I hope to serve? Or do I try to keep talking about the foundational life goals, the journey of “getting started”? Can I keep an authentic voice as I reflect on what it meant to “get started,” now that I’m no longer there? Can I keep myself interested?
The truth is, I’m thrashing around right now. Not sure what TonyFerrar.com or IntentionalAcademy.com should become. How much of my life should I devote to running them? What should they be? For who? In the past they were a place for me to vent, to share advice with others going through similar challenges. In other words, they were as much for me as for their audiences. I don’t really need that any more. I don’t need the escape or the hope of a better life “if I could just get Intentional Academy off the ground.”
I simultaneously find that liberating and stressful.
I’ve worked hard to create them, and don’t want to put these sites/communities down. But I also don’t want their care and feeding to eat into my “being” time. I used to feel like I HAD to do the Intentional Academy. It was a requirement for a full life. Now I see it as an important thing that needs to fit in with all the other important things I’m doing.
Maybe that’s the keyword for this phase: instead of “being” maybe it’s “doing.” I still have a big goal of changing the world. It’s just a lot harder to decide what to do next.
Anyhow, I just want you to know I’m still here. Still pulling at these ideas, and trying to figure out where to lead us next. Stay tuned.
