If life has taught me anything – and to be honest, it hasn’t taught me nearly enough – it is about the futility of setting myself big goals.
As a philosophy goes, I admit this leaves a lot to be desired, but when you have tried and failed as many times as I have, you learn to take the hint and accept that it’s likely your biggest hopes and wildest dreams may well be dashed when they collide with reality.
One of the first goals I remember setting was to actually score a goal. Having somehow ended up playing soccer at the age of seven or eight – I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my idea, though maybe it was – I spent innumerable winter Saturday mornings over the next seven years or so playing for various terrible teams and trying to score a goal.
I never did, largely due to a number of crucial shortcomings in my game, including terrible passing, loose defending and hopeless attacking.
The next goal I remember settling on, this time in my early teens, was to get a girlfriend. My best friend, Ian, who had the same predicament, and I would talk endlessly about how this might be achieved.
In this game, too, I failed to score due to some crucial shortcomings, including going beet red when talking to girls, developing a temporary-though-crippling stutter when talking to girls, and having nothing to say when talking to girls.
At 15, in the hope it might help me get the longed-for but apparently elusive girlfriend, my goal became to get a driver’s licence. This one was missed, too, after accidentally scoring an own goal: coming back from a driving lesson with Dad while driving Mum’s car, I inexplicably hit the accelerator rather than the brake as I pulled into our drive, knocking over our letterbox. In the end, I didn’t get my licence until I was 17.
Perhaps the most ambitious big goal of my youth was what I wanted to do when I grew up.
By the time I had reached what was then known as the seventh form, my classmates were talking about becoming doctors, lawyers, pharmacists and other predictably middle-class occupations.
Egged on by my parents, when asked what predictable middle-class occupation I was intending to inflict upon myself, I said chartered accountancy. Yes, chartered accountancy.
Secretly, however, I had a much bolder, more magnificent plan in mind as my adulthood approached – to never, ever have a proper 9-to-5 job in some dreary office. My ambition, I decided, was to be lacking in ambition; my success would be to succeed in nothing but enjoying myself. The big goal was to avoid having goals.
In the end, I failed in both these plans. While I am not, and never will be, a chartered accountant, I did end up with a 9-to-5 job in a series of dreary offices for decades. Looking back, my life seems like a series of winter Saturday mornings trying but failing to get the ball in the back of the net.
If life has taught me anything since our move to Lush Places (my motion to change the name to “The Cattery” failed), it is that the key to a modestly happy life is to have modest goals and expectations. That way, I am almost certain to reach them.
My humble goals for the first month of autumn, as they are every March, were to have my first dozen Bluff oysters of the year and to fill up the No 1 woodshed with perfectly seasoned macrocarpa and pine.
The first was completed last Friday with a little pepper and lemon juice and loads of crusty local sourdough.
The second, after three days of toil, was ticked off by the following Friday.
This week, my goals are just as lacking in anything approaching ambition: I plan to have a yum cha at Betty’s and fill the second best woodshed with mac and pine. Wish me luck.
