What Do You Want?

I had a short day this week, since I had worked late the previous day and had patients in a very beautiful area. I took a bunch of pictures, including one of a brick, weather beaten home with a large porch, it sat on a large grassy hill with a tilted road sign posted beside it and I thought to myself - that is what I want. When you drive a lot, you tend to wander around mentally, you'll have one thought and it will segue way into an internal conversation. I started thinking about how we all seem to think we should have this Ultimate Goal, What Do I Want Out Of Life sort of thing. Doesn't it always seem like everyone else gets there - and you don't? But on further reflection I think we do obtain our goals and then move on to a new one. When I was ten, my deepest desires were Jay Osmond, a dog, a bike with sissy bars and a banana seat and above all, to feel safe and to be left alone - the last being a life long ambition. In my teens I wanted Steven Tyler BAD, a car with bucket seats, to move to NY to be a writer. I wanted a walk up loft in an artsy neighborhood and ability to ride the subway without having to make fourteen phone calls to the Palominos. As I hurtled toward my late teens I wanted to be free of some of the people I had hung around with, to get away from the drugs and find a way to live with memories of childhood and myself. Going to my twenties still wanted to Steven Tyler but wanted David worse, no more studio lofts or apartment, no writer, but I did get the car with bucket seats - and a cat, my first, I wanted a child - and then another.  As time marched on I wanted to be a baker, ended up a nurses aide due to financial collapse and finding myself the breadwinner of the family for a period of time. Then finally college, to be a nurse - who saw that coming? Not me, I can assure you. Some of my goals have been fulfilled - just not the way I saw it. I do work in the city, but the city is Pittsburgh, not NY and the only things I write are supervisory notes and Letters Of Medical Necessity. But I am a writer, aren't I - I've had this blog now for exactly ten years. If you look, my first entry was in July of 2004. I don't earn my living that way, but I enjoy it and given the counter on the top that I started a year or so ago, so do some other people. And I do feel safe, finally. We don't have huge property but we have almost six acres, I have about 3 wooded acres to work in. I have old chairs scattered throughout to sit and read quietly, I have to say that is where I'm most content these days. My two Fearless Companions snort and snuffle their way through the brambles and have learned to stay within earshot. I've always been a bit of a loner, had brief periods of not being one, but for the most part I enjoy my own company, I enjoy the quiet of me. So in retrospect, maybe my goals have been accomplished, well maybe not all of them, but some of them don't need to be accomplished and others have turned into new goals. Life is static, ever changing.