Goals, Not Ghouls

I'm thinking about this whole setting goals and working to achieve them thing. I lost a couple of pounds and I'm feeling good about myself. It wasn't easy. Ups and downs, I kept tinkering with the exercise combination, tinkering with the diet, but all the while I was building this fierce determination. Of course it helps to put it all in print. I don't want to look like a fool. A loser.
And of course achieving this intermediate goal is only a step. I will have to maintain this discipline FOREVER if I want to avoid gaining the flab back, and especially if I want to lose more poundage (which I do, damn that beer belly).
It has been an interesting experiment and one from which I have gained a lot of wisdom. (Wisdom sounds cooler than knowledge).
Somewhere along the way in my life, I got broken. Worked for my Dad for two years after college and that was a disaster. I was not suited for the job and it ate my guts up. I took my college degree and ran screaming into the warm and welcoming arms of accounting. Twelve seconds into that career I realized that the whole corporate thing was hideous and that number crunching was anathema to my free wheeling nature. So of course I stuck with it for 26 years.
In 1994 Carol and I bought a business and I was convinced that was my ticket out. An escape from corporate America, a ticket to retirement. Four years later we were bankrupt and almost lost our home.
Along this life route, hope died. I started marking time. Not working towards anything, empty of inspiration, empty in my heart and in my soul. The walking dead.
I actually believed that I would die young, and was continuously surprised as thirty turned to forty which turned to fifty.
I am not sure what the catalyst was, but this year I decided to try. Set some goals in my head and started devoting myself to achieving them. I noticed that I feel more alive. And now that I achieved one small goal, I noticed that I feel more confident.
Unless you are a pampered idiot with the last name Hilton or Kardashian, you have to work hard to succeed. Especially at my age, where everything is stacked against me.
Vegas odds makers are giving  trillion to one odds that I will ever succeed at anything.
The working hard felt good, and the achieving felt good. I may have discovered a new drug. Someone call Huey Lewis.
2012 looms. I have decided I need more goals. I want to get paid for writing. That is a modest goal. I didn't say I want to make a living from writing, I said I want to get paid for it. Its actually a carryover goal, I wanted that this year but it ain't gonna happen. But my determination and dedication has already ramped up. If I can lose weight at my advanced age, I can succeed as a writer at my advanced age. I have written 60 trillion words in the last 20 years and not one of them has returned to me with dollar bills attached. I WANT that.
I set materialistic goals as well. I want to buy myself a new car. Not a new used car, a new car. I cannot even remember the last time I drove a new car. I want to buy a Movado watch. Within the fabric of the universe, these are tiny goals. I want to be able to afford to take my lovely wife out to dinner once a week. That's the first goal I want to accomplish and I want that one quickly.
I thought I could coast through life and slip quietly into the void. But that would make me just like everybody else. I am better than that and I want a lot more than that. Success in my ancient years will taste so sweet that I will have to give up my passion for dark semi-sweet chocolate.
Change is exciting, especially when it comes from within. When you can feel it in your heart and soul; that's when you know it is real.
Vegas odds makers can kiss my ass.