Goal-setting: getting where you want to go

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat."

Today is Friday, February 22, 2013.  My topic is goal-setting in order to get where you want to go.

The Cheshire Cat knew what he was talking about.  In order to know what road to take, you have to know where you want to go, and that means setting a goal.  I've already got a goal for this blog: to write something each and every day for a year.  

When I was teaching, educators were starting to use S.M.A.R.T. goals.  We'd actually done these before without calling them that, but we found that it's easy to make a great-sounding goal but totally miss one of the important characteristics.  So... let's see if my goal meets the S.M.A.R.T. guidelines.

Goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound.   

My goal is specific to this blog.  I am to write something every day.  I guess I haven't specified what to write about, but that's why I chose the title, "Random Thoughts" for this blog.  It will be random.  However, last night I hit upon a thought - to use a quote from a beloved story at the top of each blog entry.  For some reason, these quotes have a way of helping me think about what to write.  In fact, I'm re-reading Alice in Wonderland to get more quotes.  It occurred to me that this story is one of those archetypal stories that describes some people's lives, a kind of "hero's journey."  Another story that I love is The Wizard of Oz.  I'll work with quotes from Alice for a while, and when I've come to the end of good quotes there, it will be on to Oz for me.  After that, who knows?  I'll definitely do some thinking about that.    For now, my specific goal is to write something based on a quote from a story that I have come to love.

Measurable: well, yes, if I can count 365 entries by February 21, 2014, then I will have met my goal.  

Achievable: yes, I think so.  I am certainly capable of doing this.  I have the time, now that I'm retired.  One of the things that I never really got the hang of, while I was working, was structuring my free time.  No matter where I was teaching, whether it was in a public school or at Berlitz, my work was time-bound, and I lived by the bell.  When I worked in public school, I often had a job during the summer, for at least part of the time.  I did learn to make short-term goals for the summer, such as getting my yearly doctor appointments out of the way, deep-cleaning my apartment, reading a certain number of books (including a number of specific titles that I had saved for summer), seeing certain movies (even if it meant getting the DVD because I missed seeing it on the screen), and socializing with friends.   That last goal probably seems strange to people outside of education.  While I did usually do two or three purely social activities during the ten months of school (ten, not nine, because I was a teacher, not a student!), my friends and I just never had the time to just hang out and chat, with no time constraints.  Summer vacation was the only time we could do that.  At the start of every summer break, I would make a list of people I wanted to spend time with, and contact them all to arrange a time to meet.  Some of them had summer jobs or attended summer school classes to work toward an advanced degree.  Many of them were planning to go out of town on vacation, and since we were in Minnesota, a fair number of people would go "up to the lake" for an extended stay.  It usually took the whole summer to cross off every name on my list.  I got a lot of satisfaction, over the years, in being able to do every single thing on my "summer to do list" by the time school started. 

The problem, though, is that, on a daily basis, I have never had to structure my own time.  I've heard writers say that they had to force themselves to write for a certain amount of time or between certain times of day, and that may be a discipline I will need to work on.  For now, if I can carve out a little time each day to get in a blog entry, I will be satisfied.  I'm writing this a I drink my morning coffee, except that it's not really "morning," because I got up at noon.  Maybe I should be more specific, though, about the time I spend on this thing.  OK, so I'll devote at least two hours to this project per day, and I'll get it done right away as soon as I get up - whenever that is.  It will be nice to have a goal again that I can feel good about achieving.  One of the big things that's been missing in my life now that I'm retired is having goals on a daily basis.  I'm starting to do that a bit more now.  My other goals for today are to get my laundry done, finish reading Alice in Wonderland, and finish one other book that I promised to summarize for a group of people I'll be meeting with tomorrow.

The next characteristic is "relevant."  As I transition from being a teacher to being a writer, this blog is totally relevant.  The goal is to write, and keep writing, constantly.  When I'm not writing, the goal is to continually think about new topics to write about.  I have a file that I started with quotes and topics for the next couple of weeks, and I'll expand on that.  As I said earlier, I'm re-reading Alice in Wonderland, and I will re-read The Wizard of Oz, as well.  Meanwhile, I'll be looking for some other story that I might get some good quotes from.  I just thought of two authors whose work I might quote:  Dr. Seuss and Arnold Lobel.    If I extend this blog into next year, maybe I'll quote other types of books that I've read and loved.  

Last characteristic: "time bound."  The deadline for this particular goal is February 21, 2014, and I will have made 365 entries, one for each day of the year, based on a quote from a book. 

But that's only one goal.  I will have to formulate some other short-term and long-term goals in order to fill my life again, now that I'm retired.  Bear with me - this will take some time.  :-)

Begin at the Beginning

"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

This advice has stood me in good stead ever since I first heard it.  For our Senior Class Play, the 1971 graduating class of Luverne High School performed "Alice in Wonderland."  The other day I found myself thinking that I should have read Lewis Carroll's book before that time, but then, I wouldn't have appreciated it earlier.  There are no coincidences.  

So, to begin...   Today is Thursday, February 21, 2013.  Why did I choose this date to begin?  Well, I didn't.  I mean, I didn't choose the date on purpose.  It's just that there's no time like the present, and I've been putting this off for long enough.  My goal will be to write something every day for a year, mainly for the sake of maintaining discipline.  The ulterior motive is to get to the point where writing is not only a way of life, but also hopefully a means of earning some money.

Today's topic is "Retirement."

A few short years ago, I was really looking forward to this time in my life.  I wanted to be free to get up and stay up as late as I like.  I wanted to be free from the time constraints and energy demands of a job.  I wanted to have time to read good books and expand and hone my writing.  Above all, I wanted to be free to travel. 

Now that I've been retired for nearly two years, I see that retirement can impose its own constraints.  Actually, that's not quite true.  It's not "retirement," per se, that imposes constraints, but rather, it's the way we have structured our lives up to that time that creates the constraints within which we must live.  

If you have worked until "full-retirement" age, saved money since the day you started working, wisely invested in the stock market, bought a house and paid off your mortgage, and paid off all your debts, you might not have too many constraints.  And if you've managed to preserve your health and carefully nurtured your relationships with family and friends, you have a few more options open to you. Above all, if you have carefully considered and worked toward a specific goal for your retirement years, you will have avoided some of the constraints that could keep you from achieving that goal once you are actually retired. If you have not done these things, then you will have created some constraints, many of which will be hard or even impossible to overcome.

It's true that I've worked most of my life, since the age of 23 or so, but I did not work all in one place - or even all in one country!  I certainly never thought much about saving money for the future.  If I had money - and there were times when I had plenty - I spent it, knowing that there would always be more later.  When I lived in Japan, I did learn about saving money to buy what I wanted, because at that time, credit cards were not in use among the general public.  The experience of having to save up for things instead of buying on credit did serve me well later on in life, but the fact that I never really saved much money is the source of one of my most stringent constraints now that I'm retired.  At this point, I despair of ever being able to save money again.  

I did have one savings account that I put a bit of money into each month - a lady sat me down when I first started teaching at St. Paul Public Schools and told me I would be glad I did.  She was right.  That entire account was just enough to buy a used car outright when my trusty Lumina finally decided that it no longer wanted to run.  Bing-bang-boom.  I do have the car, but the money is gone.  So much for my savings. 

The retirement income itself is pretty paltry - even combined with the Early Retirement Incentive money that they added on.  I finally attended one of those retirement seminars late in my career and realized in shock and horror that "full retirement" does not mean the same as "full salary."  For teachers, anyway, at most, one can hope for maybe half of what you used to make when you were working. That's if you work until full retirement age.  According to the Social Security website, for those of us who were born between 1943 and 1954, the full retirement age is pegged at 66.  For those born between 1955 and 1959, the age gradually increases in two-month increments.  For those whose birth occurred in 1960 or later, the full retirement age is set at 67.  There is talk of raising that to 70 at some point.

Retirement benefits for public school teachers are figured on the basis of your number of years of service, your age at retirement, and your salary (the figure that is used as your gross salary on your W-2 form) - they use an average of five years, and they take the highest five salary figures.  Those of us who got our master's degrees early enough to pay off our education loans well before retirement had a good head start there.  But I didn't start teaching until I was in my mid-thirties, and the first two places I taught, i took the accrued retirement benefits with me in cash.  That meant that I had only accrued 18.5 years of service, even though I worked for a total of over 30 years.  I retired at the age of 58, which counted against me.  The only reason I retired so early was that I knew the Early Retirement Incentive was a one-time offer and I new that my health would give out soon if I didn't stop and rest. (Having to recuperate not only from cancer, but from the TREATMENT for cancer has created some added constraints.) The net result was that I am making only about 20% of what I made the year I retired.  That's a HUGE drop, and as you can imagine, there has been a huge impact on my lifestyle.  The Early Retirement Incentive has been a Godsend, but it's tied up in an IRA, and difficult to take out.

On the plus side, the smartest thing I ever did was to get into a debt management program, which paid off debts accumulated from three different credit cards.  Before I went on that program, I managed to pay off my car loan and close down all the department store credit cards that I once owned.  Those were really the best decisions I ever made, and they have served me well in retirement.  I now have a credit card, but I have managed to keep the credit limit low so that I will never again get so deeply into debt that I can't see my way out.   While I was in debt management, my experience of having living on a cash-only basis in Japan proved to be invaluable.  I was paying so much per month to toward the debt that when I finished, I was able to buy outright a pair of hearing aids, a new computer, new glasses, and a bridge for a tooth that had to be pulled before I underwent chemotherapy. 

The financial constraints mean that I can no longer just walk into a store and buy whatever strikes my fancy.  I have to ask how much something is every single time, and I have to weigh carefully whether I really need it.  Travel is nearly out of the question.  Even road trips have to be planned very, very carefully, and I end up spending months recuperating, financially, from any extended travel.  While I still occasionally buy books, I have to depend a lot more on the local library.  I'd love to get a Kindle and take advantage of the reduced price for electronic books, but frankly, the hardware is beyond my means at the moment. 

So those are the financial constraints.  The other major constraint has been my health.  I'll go into that in more detail in another blog post, but suffice it to say right now that many things are off the docket now because of my health, including extended travel or even getting a part-time job.  Both my finances and my health caused me to decide to move to South Dakota, the place where my parents and one of my siblings live.  This state has no state income tax, which saves me a few hundred dollars a year.  Also, living expenses here are much lower than they were in the Twin Cities, in Minnesota.  The abrupt move meant that my social life was suddenly cut off, except for my online life.  The upshot there is that I have hundreds of friends online, but almost none in-person, except for a few people I've met recently in special-interest groups.  At present, those people are still just acquaintances, rather than friends.

I guess the other major constraint that I created for myself was my lack of a specific goal for retirement.  If I had put some time and effort into a hobby or volunteer activity, I might have had more of a focus for my retirement years.  Instead, especially with the abrupt move to a different state, I found myself with virtually nothing to do.  The fact that I was hospitalized with not one, but two pulmonary embolisms within two days of my moving date did not help matters.  For my first few months in South Dakota, I found myself not only with nothing in particular to do, but with no energy to do anything, to boot.

A dream I had a while ago described my situation with a perfect analogy.  I was holding a colander and I had put in all the things that I wanted to do during retirement into it.  My spiritual guide took the colander and shook it, hard.  With a sinking feeling, I watched as most of what I had put into the colander dropped through the holes.  My spiritual guide handed back the colander, saying, "That's what you have to work with."   The colander represented the constraints that I have created for myself.  The remaining contents of the colander represented the building blocks of my new life.