A Souffle is Not a Life Goal (aka: Pondering the 5yr Plan)

“What is your dream?”

One of my coworkers wrote this question on the top of a large white board that hangs outside his cubicle. Over the course of a few days, other workers stopped by to scrawl their ideas on the board, some realistic, some not so much. I paused a few times just to stare at the blank white space, as though waiting for inspiration to appear below the colorful writing.

But nothing came.

What is your dream? Sometimes, I look around the internet and begin to feel left out of this whole passion movement. “Follow your passion.” “Don’t give up on your dream.” “If you can dream it, you can do it.” I feel a flutter of panic – wait, I’m supposed to have a dream? I’m supposed to have some specific, long-range goal that fills me with fire whenever I think about it? But what if, right this moment, all I have is a half-dozen lukewarm short-term goals? I would really like, for example, to learn how to cook a soufflé. Does that count as a dream? Is it healthy to crave a simple glass of water, or must I desire the entire lake?

It isn’t that I never have large goals. I have set and fulfilled some rather large goals in my life, which were important to me at one time or another along the journey. But now?

Then I had a bright idea – Pinterest! Surely Pinterest can help me to organize my muddled dreams and goals for the future. Okay, I’m totally kidding. Except for the occasional awesome recipe (like soufflés, for example) or hilarious joke, I mostly find Pinterest a dull way to spend time. But the other day, a particular post jumped out at me: The 5-Year Plan. So I clicked the link, and found this:

Well, that seems so simple. It should be easy to make a 5-year plan, right?

Wrong.

It was far easier to come up with tentative, bucket-list style plans that may or may not ever happen. It is far, far harder to make attainable, realistic, mid-range plans, especially if you also have to muster up some passion about them.

Career – This is the simplest. Finish earning my two college degrees and a couple more IT certs. Get a decent, full-time, well-paying job in the industry – preferably one that will lead me down the Systems Admin/Network Admin trail. This is definitely my career goal. Am I confident about it? Absolutely. Passionate? Some days.

Financial – This totally depends on the career goal.

Social – Umm…next?

Family – Well, I’ve already got this great family with my three great kids and me. Adding a dog would be cool, if our landlord allowed it. I hesitate to use university as a family goal, since a college education should be my children’s goal for their lives, not mine.

Health – Stay healthy. Keep on keepin’ on.

Relationship – Nada.

Travel – This is the only life goal that really gets my heart pumping. I have a long list of places I am dying to visit. But within 5 years? That all depends on financial goals, which all depend on career goals. So it is really hard to invest energy into getting passionate about it.

After pondering this plan, I also perused a few other websites about creating a 5-Year Plan. But the ideas were quite similar. Decide where your passions lie (Travel, doing fun things with my kids, my career path, writing). Write out a 5-year plan. Then create short-term objectives toward reaching that goal. Since the only solid plan I made had to do with career, the next step was easy: get off the computer and do your homework, dummy!

The perfect soufflé can wait.