On Fear, Wishes, and {Gulp} Goal-Setting

I turn 39 this month. And if you're good at math like I am, you've deduced that I have only one year until the big one. 

My 40th has mocked me from the future since my 30th. I cried on my 30th birthday because the end of my 20s felt like the end of my youth. Clearly, I had no sense of perspective. I wouldn't go back to my 20s for anything now. That girl was an anxious, people-pleasing, clueless baffoon. She had issues for sure. 

{I write as if my soon-to-be-39-year-old self has reached some sort of Nirvana-like, self-actualized state of perfection. As if.}

But as my 30s is wrapping up, I feel an inspired urgency to set some goals. I have a love / hate relationship with the beast of goal-setting. For someone who has a strong perfectionist streak, unmet goals can feel like failure, even if the goals are completely unrealistic. 

And we all know that a giant scoop of failure on top of the proverbial 40th birthday sundae could have disastrous {and gluttonous} results. I could end up eating 40 birthday sundaes in my despair. 

So I've got these goals {only two} and no, I'm not brave enough to share them with you. Not yet anyway. But I've been thinking a lot about how I need goals yet also fear them. I read somewhere that a goal without a plan is just a wish. That truth hit me like a freight train and I haven't forgotten it. 

We all have wishes {I call them dreams} but we rarely put pen to paper to make the plan to reach the goal that fulfills the dream. Dreams aren't inherently a virtue. Dreams can be narcissistic, indulgent, and skewed for sure. But they can also be inspiring, life-giving, and world-changing. 

My pre-40 goals aren't world-changing in the least. They are personal and symbolic, achievements that tug at my soul hard enough for me to pull out the pen and paper.

Though fear of failure often keeps me from setting goals in the first place and that's probably normal, it's also ridiculous. And cowardly. 

If there's anything I'd like to kick to the curb as I approach 40, it's cowardice. Much of my inner life has been characterized by fear. Fear of others, fear of failure, fear of the future, fear that I'll never measure up to my own standards. 

And so this goal-setting / dream-wishing thing is forcing me to reckon with fear, to write it down, to pray for brave, and to bathe my loosely-held dreams in grace. 

....................................

Now what about you? Are you naturally a goal-setter or do you have a love / hate relationship with them like I do? Also, have you ever made a birthday "bucket-list?"