My finance professor at Loyola offered us extra credit in our summer class if we’d submit a list of 100 goals to him.  Having a goal of earning an ‘A’ in the class (goal #58 on the list), I decided that if he was willing to take non-finance work as credit for finance, that I would take him up on the deal.  I’ve always been goal-driven, and in fact had written a list of goals of things I wanted to accomplish before I got married (goal list unfortunately long mislaid).  Since then, though, I’d focused on only 1 or 2 goals at a time, and hadn’t again jotted down a list of things to do.  What I discovered in performing the exercise that the act of generating 100 goals was insightful as to what kinds of things I’d like to do.  To get to 100, I had to brainstorm in all sorts of directions.  Goal #1: Read the Bible completely.  Other goals included things like run a marathon (scheduled for Oct 28), run a marathon in less than 4:15 (requiring a 9:43 per mile pace, not yet accomplishable by me for more than 1 mile at a time: hey, I’m slow, but I’ll finish), train a puppy as a seeing eye or other guide dog, help build a house for Habitat for Humanity, read ‘Moby Dick’ (read a few chapters while eating my sushi the other night), receive a patent, ….  [and the list goes on].  Nothing too controversial, though I did vow to get another tattoo.  (I thought about checking that one off while my family was out of town this weekend, but I opted to do more boring things like mow the lawn.)

 Note that I did achieve goal #58 (get an ‘A’).  Goal #76 (get another tattoo) is as yet still pending.