goals, part I

It's Sunday morning.  I should be getting ready for church.  Instead I sit here with wet hair, uncaffeinated, teeth still waiting to be brushed...

... something is definitely wrong.

There are about a bazillion thoughts swirling through my head these days.  Thoughts of what I'm doing with my life and where I want to be eventually.  Thoughts of the old friend I saw yesterday for a brief hour and a half, realizing that relationship will never go anywhere other than simply being old friends.  Thoughts of the former roommate I never got along with who recently facebooked me and told me that she's now teaching for one of the bigger school districts in the area and singing with a prominent classical St. Louis group and playing with one of the university orchestras... well, good for you my dear.

... Why am I not singing with a prominent St. Louis group?  I may be a pianist but my voice is just as good as hers...

... and then I think about how I have no goals right now.  I'm just teaching and accompanying.  And trying to exist.

I keep thinking that one of three things is going to happen soon:

1. That I'll go back to school or be asked to interview for some fabulous job (one that would incorporate my teaching into it).
2. That I'll miraculously save up enough money somehow in the next year or two and gather up enough courage to haul off and move somewhere amazing (like Europe or a third-world country with beautiful landscapes where I'm the only pianist within a 50-mile range).
3. That a man will come along and I'll finally stop dating the wrong guy and instead fall in love with the right guy... which, given the current state of affairs in my heart after having simultaneously lived through my parents divorce and myself been dumped... well, I'm not sure I'm ready for this to happen just yet.

All that to say:  I basically live in a dream world.

I heard the other day on NPR that the job additions report for August was 35,000.  That means that 35,000 jobs were added to the market in the last month, while 11 million people remain out of work.  35,000 may as well have been zero.  Awesome.  I'd say the chances of being asked to interview are like... -1000, Katie.

And I would love to move to Europe, but do you know how homesick I would be?  We won't even talk about it...

And any man who would be interested in me can send in their resume for my files.  I'll probably get back to you in another 4-6 months.

So morale is a little low today.  I need to go to church.

More later... but my assignment for you, dear Reader, and for myself is to come up with some goals.  Not resolutions, which get made and forgotten.  But some real, honest-to-God goals that are not only realistic but reasonable, meant to be achieved in the next 3 to 6 months.  Dr. Knerr calls it insurance -- when you make a goal you know you can achieve.  Those kind.  At least two or three.  Typed and double-spaced.