I did change the toilet seat in the boys’ bathroom. That was something I wanted done/fixed.

I bought curtains for the media room. Then I replaced them three times before the rod finally stayed up. Then I realized I had hung them too high. And that was only one pair. I may never get the others done. Which will be a waste of the $100 the curtains cost.

I went by the consignment furniture store to see about getting my tables sold. Turns out they rarely take glass tables. R suggested taking a digital picture and seeing if they would take them. I haven’t done that yet.

Sometimes the more you do, the less you feel you’ve done. I cleaned the kitchen, scoured it and everything. Then we cooked again and it’s a disaster area.

But don’t really need. Let’s make it clear first; I have more than I will ever need- except for consumables. Some of those I have too many of too.

Things I want, in no particular order:

Curtains for the media room that are hung well and actually cover the windows when closed.

Head and footboard for the bed. Preferably cherry or mahogany stain. Definitely actual wood.

A new dining room set which sits eight comfortably, has leaves, and doesn’t fall apart.

Non-white couches. (Slip covers will do in the teen room.) My folks may be giving me two leather couches, oh how cool. So I may get those.

Bed linens that I picked out, that I like, with curtains and pillows to coordinate. One problem with those is that I’m having trouble finding something I like. Another is that I haven’t found anything I like that R likes as well.

Get rid of the desk in the teen room that is somewhat broken.

New siding.

New air conditioner.

If I had a new dining room set, then I would want to give my aunt and uncle the table and four chairs. (I think they may want the two nice ones, but I want to keep those.) If I get a new dining room set and they don’t want the others, then I guess I could take them down to the furniture consignment store. Anyway, that would get rid of the large table in my living room corner.

Also I would like a map table for my living room. I’ve always preferred a table with drawers. However, on a TV show the other day I saw a wooden coffee table with a shelf underneath it. That looked nice. I guess I might like one of those. I’ll have to start looking around. If I get one of those, then I would take my glass and brass table set to the consignment store. They’re in good condition and we might actually make some money off of them.

Getting a new dining room set would remove 5 pieces from my house, but replace it with more. However, all of those would be in the dining room and not some in the dining room and some in the living room.

Getting a new map table would remove 3 pieces from my house.

Ah hah. Get furniture to clean out your house. That’s a new concept.

If I could find a Duncan Phyfe dresser in good condition I would buy it. Then I would give my youngest the rock maple dresser I bought my husband for my birthday and get rid of the painted piece in M’s bedroom. I found an Empire style dark wood dresser that I liked, but it’s not a style I tend to like and I don’t want to get something I won’t like later. Been there, done that.

There’s a piece of art I want. But it’s more than I want to pay for it and then I would have to frame it. So I probably won’t get it. I missed one I wanted that was a reasonable price, but I would have had to put it on a credit card and I didn’t want to do that.

There’s another piece of art that I like which is already framed, but I don’t know if I really like it or if it is just that the colors appeal to me. It’s an abstract Asian mountain scene in royal blue and scarlet.

After I wrote this, I came up with another, but now I can’t remember it.

A door. A pretty, non-teal-gray-green front door.

When you have multiple goals, they often compete with one another. The desire to be financially independent will clash with ditching your job and going to film school. A plan to be out of debt and have savings is sabotaged by a steady stream of “small” purchases that are outside the budget. While remodeling a kitchen is an exciting goal, spending all the money that could go to it on kitchen gadgets limits the goal’s promise of fruition.

So, here’s what I think you should do. Look at the options. I know you love options. Think about them. Examine the reprecussions. What does this one look like five years down the road? How far down the road do you have to be to achieve your goals?

Today most people in the US live fairly healthy lives into their early 70s. Good genetics and a positive lifestyle can give you many more years. According to Reuter’s gambling can help as well.

So, if you are 40 look at your life. You don’t love your job but you make too much money to just quit. Your current lifestyle depends on that job. Do you love your current lifestyle more than you hate the job? Don’t say no unless you can easily make cuts in your lifestyle now to ease the transition.

If you can say no, then start looking at ways to trim the fat. Obviously commitments cannot be undone. However, you could drop the Netflix or the satellite, or both. If you half your salary you won’t be able to afford either. If you’ve been going out to eat a lot, stop. This isn’t an imposition placed on you by your financial position, but a choice you make to reach a place you would prefer to be. If you can’t make the changes when it’s an option, how are you going to deal with the reality of not being able to afford those things?

Perhaps you own a home. It is often a valued treasure, but it doesn’t have to be. Renting allows you to move around without having to wait for the market to catch up to your desires. If your house is large, you might be able to opt for a smaller one, but examine your family’s needs.

If your children are off at college and don’t appear likely to boomerang, a smaller and less expensive home might be a good purchase. If you’ve recently refinanced, however, this is going to cost you a bit. Also, the market has to be hot to move a home quickly. If you aren’t in a hurry, of course, you can put your house on the market and wait. But will you enjoy having your house ready for visitors at any moment, cleared of personal items which make it yours in an attempt to show it “designed to sell”? Also, the longer a house has been on the market, the lower the offering price is going to be from most savvy buyers.

If you are not willing to give up your lifestyle, before you have to, then you aren’t going to like having to give it up later. Often this leads to debt, trying to live at the level you prefer rather than the level you can afford.

What if you’re bored? First, realize that everyone is bored sometimes. No one loves every second of their lives and you are not going to be the exception, even if you change your life around to be something totally different.

If you are bored, what simple steps can you take now to undo that boredom and put some challenge back in your life? One thing would be to take a class in something you are not skilled at but would like to be. Maybe take several. Look for weekend classes or seminars in something you enjoy as a hobby or would enjoy as a hobby. Take those.

Change up your life in some other way. Take up weight lifting if you don’t do it now. Or begin to ride your bike. Commit to some early morning walks with your wife, even though you’d rather sleep till you have to get up. Move the furniture in your house around, maybe even shift a whole room. And don’t just go for something “reasonable.” What would happen if you switched your bedroom and the living room? Or your living and dining rooms?

Talk to your spouse about their view of yall’s life. You may find that they are making assumptions about what you want and you may be thinking they want one thing when something else is a priority. There are many things I would like to buy, but I have two problems. One is that I don’t like debt. The second is that my husband’s priorities are different from mine. I rarely purchase something unless there is extra money, while my husband purchases things and we “find” the money. Try acting from your spouse’s worldview for a while. It will be a struggle and not any fun, for either of you, but it will definitely be a change.

Another aspect you should examine is where are you in life. If your children are gone, you have a lot more flexibility to do things because you have fewer financial responsibilities. If your children are small, then adjustments will be easier for them now, even if they aren’t easier for you and your spouse. They’ll just assume that how life plays out is the way it supposed to be. If, however, your children are in their early teens, you have only a short time until college. While it is true that a child can pay for college and there is financial aid for people with less money, this is harder than having the money for college yourself. Maybe you need to plan on making the major changes ten years down the road. Look for smaller ones you can make now.

Realize that competing goals will crunch into each other. Prioritize what you want and stick with those priorities. Let’s say you want to attend film school, remodel your kitchen, and spend money on gadgets as you desire them. Those are three goals competing for your money. You are not going to be in a position to attend film school if you do the second and third. You won’t be able to remodel your kitchen if you attend film school or spend all your money on gadgets.

You will have to clearly differentiate between a goal and a dream. I dream of looking drop dead gorgeous. I have a goal of losing 15 more pounds of fat and gaining 5 pounds of muscle. I am not planning on plastic surgery, which is what it would take to make the first a goal. However, I am eating right, exercising, and lifting weights; that makes the second a goal and not a dream.

If you aren’t willing to PERSONALLY invest in getting it done, it is a dream not a goal. Dreams are fun. You can spend days, weeks, months, even years perfecting a dream. But it is never going to happen because you aren’t doing what it takes to get it. Dreams can, however, get you out of the monotony of your every day life and make the future seem more exciting.

If you are willing to change what you are doing, and not expecting others to make what you want possible, then it is a goal.

If you have a spouse, you have to have the spouse on board to accomplish a goal. After all, if you want film school more than a kitchen remodel and your spouse doesn’t care about film school or a kitchen remodel but is planning on driving a hot red Jaguar or a silver Mazda RX-8, you’re going to have troubles. You may come home with the applications to USC filled out and find a new car in the garage and four years’ worth of payments that you’ll now have to juggle on a student’s salary.

Sit down and talk to your spouse. And listen to what they have to say. Don’t make a list of the five things you want and have them make a list of the five things they want and then say, “Okay. Let’s do my number one first.” They may help you with your number one because they love you or they’re a doormat or simply because they would rather not fight, but that’s not someone who’s totally in your corner. When you are making big changes, you want someone who made the choice with you, not someone who will say, “Well, this is what you said you wanted. Live with it.”

Another thing to do is to examine your last few big goals and/or purchases. Whose did you get? Where has your money and time gone? If you’ve been giving in a lot, if your spouse has been getting the priority, maybe you can talk to them about this and make your dream into a family goal. If, on the other hand, your dreams have been becoming realities without too much work on your part, maybe their dreams and goals have been shunted aside. While it might take effort on your part to elicit what they want, realize they do want it and help them get it. Maybe part of your problem is that you are focusing on yourself and not on your partner. Too much narcissicism will kill anyone’s joy in life eventually. Look at Hollywood for obvious examples.

I have one more comment on goals. Forget realistic. Sometimes the best goals are not realistic. They’re fantastical. And that makes the challenge of achieving them a high that few people experience.

Today is the 16th anniversary of my getting engaged to my wonderful husband.

I love you, R.

A friend from four years ago came to visit. I noticed that I did not have a lot to say to her, other than showing her the cool things I have purchased recently. I had a lot of fun on the outings to do that, so… However, she is definitely not of the acquisitive nature; it didn’t really interest her.

Also she asked about my book and took the novel home with her to read. She is a voracious reader, but she thought that what I laughed at was a bit odd. I talked to my husband about it later and I think it was the aspect of the story being unexpected that I was laughing about. Since unexpectedness is a major component in humor, perhaps I was not laughing oddly after all. It did sound strange when I was talking about it though, that I will admit.

I haven’t read the book in months and wonder what I would think of it now.

She would be more likely to talk about new insights God has given her, but I don’t think he has given me any recently.

I don’t think the visit was uncomfortable, but I am less than pleased with the memories of it.

I was thinking about the story of creation from the first and second chapters of Genesis last night. God created Adam. Then he left him alone. He gave Adam a world which was full, creative, growing, and said, “All this is yours.” Then, I think, God waited. Adam looked at the world he had been given and saw, as God had before him, that it was good. But Adam noticed something. Every part of creation had a companion part, except him. And Adam was lonely. Adam told God he was lonely. I think God knew that Adam would be lonely, but that he waited until Adam acknowledged a need before he provided a remedy.

God created a woman to be a help meet to Adam. Many people have commented on what this means, exactly, but I think that maybe we can see part of what God created in the nature of women in this description. Women are very concerned with relationships, with attachments, with friends and friendships, with nurturing and caring for others. I think this may be what God meant when he created Eve to be a help meet to Adam. Adam did not have any connection to the rest of the world, except in a hierarchical sense of being over or under it, until Eve came into his life. Together they established the first human relationship in history.

I think that the ability to establish and maintain relationships may be a gift from God integrated into the very nature of women. If that is true, then your concern for your friends and your family has been given to you specially, by God, in a way that can be very beneficial to those around you– every good and perfect gift comes from God.

There is also, I believe, a lesson to be learned in the story of Hannah and Samuel. Hannah lived in an age when women married young and their worth was measured by the outside world in the number of children that they bore for their husbands. Hannah was married, but she had no children. The outside world scorned her. Her husband’s second wife treated her poorly. But her husband, a man raised with the expectation that a good wife bears many children, loved her and tried to protect her from ridicule and shame. She was a woman greatly blessed to have a husband who could and would ignore the dictates of society and see her as an individual.

This was not enough for Hannah, however. She wanted a child. She wanted a child badly enough to risk the scorn of the priest who, because she prayed long and hard, thought that she was drunk. (I guess that tells us that most of the women of her day did not spend much time in public places praying.) Here again, although this time voluntarily, she acted outside the expectations of her society. I do not think that she acted outside the expectations of God, though. He heard her prayers and he responded with a promise to give her a child.

Sometimes what is right and true is not what the world around us nor even the religious leaders of our day think and believe. Sometimes we humans are abused by other humans for things we cannot help. Sometimes we are scorned for an appearance of evil or even just their perception of evil. There are two things which I see in the story of Hannah as sustaining; one which is sure. Sometimes God gives us in our lives people who will stand by us, put aside prejudices and learned responses, and love us despite what the world says or thinks. And always God will be there: loving us, listening to us, and responding to us with mercy and compassion.

orig. written 10/3/94