I'm linking up with one of my blogger reads today about aspirations. It's funny that she posted this on the same day I was remembering how the first thing I remember ever wanting to be as a little kid was a songwriter. I find this amusing about myself for several reasons. One, I guess even then I knew I had no singing talent whatsoever,I have never learned how to play a musical instrument, and those musical symbol things are like a foreign language to me. But I have always loved music, especially my country music. So I guess in my little six year old mind I knew I had no hope of that dream so I settled for the idea of a songwriter because I knew I liked and was somewhat okay at writing. However, out of all the things I have ever written I have never written a song. Probably because as my husband will tell you, I can't even remember the words and rhythm to the songs I listen to everyday. I kind of forgot that until this weekend so thought I'd share that little kid thing about myself.
Ten years ago I met my other half. And my other half is the true dreamer, the one always full of new aspirations. Sometimes so much that I feel like I have to be the debbie downer and remind him you can't have everything you desire in life. Then I feel like that adult that discourages all these kids' dreams that I teach. Maybe I am a debbie downer. I guess my thinking was always keep your goals realistic and achievable that way you don't look at the past or your life in disappointment because it takes a lot of work and often sacrifice to reach the things you imagine for yourself. So I guess I will start with all the crazy aspirations in my head and then take a minute to look back at what aspirations I have met in order to remind myself I can achieve things if I am just patient and work harder.
1. So the first one I'm going to deflect onto my oldest daughter. I want my girls to experience playing musical instruments. And if you know my oldest daughter she IS a performer. I know everyone thinks their kid is going to be a superstar. But she has the looks, the personality, and the stage presence. Does she actually have any talent to act or sing? I don't know but maybe with some musical lessons we'll have the Averiella Glenn star. And her sister is just starting to become the little ham herself and she's turned into quite the cutey too so maybe they'll be a duo.
2. So some of these I put on here I do have real plans of working towards and this is one of them. Nate has talked for years of opening his own restuarant. And I have just recently jumped on board with this. He originally went to culinary arts school at Johnson and Wales. But in the new town we just moved to there are four restuarants-three of them are Italian. He wants to have a bar and grill place morealess that specializes in wings that he calls Winging It, which I think is great because we are very jump off the cliff and wing it kind of people. Maybe one other place in town is really a place you can go watch Sunday football or any other sporting events, and we have found it really hard to find a good wing place out here in the whole area period so there is actually quite a market for his idea I think. Then because even though I am the right (I think it's right) brained person who studied English, I seem to have a knack for numbers when it comes to finances anyway. Course anyone that knows us will probably say that's because I watch every penny and don't give Nate any money. He gets some but we have a plan we have to stick to to make it all work. I think he knows this too because in that decade together he has always turned away from the idea of managing his own money. He'd rather hand it over to me and let me figure out how it all works. We go back and forth when we're actually going to invest in this idea. I think it kind of depends on what he starts doing after he finishes his masters.
3. We want to own a bunch of rental houses. Nate likes to fix things up and this is more his idea than mine. But I can be property and business financial manager too in our future business life. With this year we actually have our first rental property. I kind of see this being our only one but who knows.
4. I want to travel and travel more. I'm already a travel junky. There are about a dozen trips we have left in the US that we want to take, plus Alaska and Hawaii, and then we want to go to Africa (Nate wants to do an African Safari), Australia, Italy and Greece. But the last few years since the kids have come we've had to scale that way back and I keep telling myself that's okay because many of these places, especially the ones out west, will be better to do when the kids are older. We try to still take a vacation somewhere new each year.
5. I want to publish a book. I've written them. Now I would just like to publish them or at least one of them. This again is one that I actually plan on doing. I didn't say it had to be successful; just enough to get me back the $99 I'll have to spend on each ISBN number, plus a little extra fun money would be nice. (Maybe I'll give my husband some)
6. I know I mentioned traveling already. But when we finally retire I want to get an RV and just travel the country hitting any spots we've missed and when we get tired of living in it we'll pick a place to retire and stop. We'd be like Forrest Gump RV old people style.
7. I have my masters degree and if I decide to stay with teaching and go back to school at some point, I would like to eventually get my PhD in sociology and teach at the college level and learn how to write good, sociological pieces of writing. In regards to my role as a teacher in general, I always aspire every year to do a better job than in the past with new engaging lessons and behavior management plans and then by the end I always feel like I fell short again and am just plain tired.
8. At some point after having kids and more time to myself again, I will finally lose the five lbs per kid that stays after every pregnancy and go back to working out on a more consistent basis. My recent workout goal lasted about two months before I fell short of that aspiration again. Hopefully by this point when my kids are older and I'm exercising I'll be able to break my chocolate and soda once a day addiction.
9. And most importantly our biggest aspiration is to raise healthy, happy, productive children that thrive in the world when they set out to begin their own journey. No matter what I do with my life I plan on them being my greatest contribution.
So it's a long list and probably everything won't be accomplished. But to remind myself I have reached goals before and I can again my list of aspirations reached (which are probably very similiar to most of yours) are as followed:
1. Happily married to a great man (my dreamer)
2. started a family (love my girls-oh forgot my last family aspiration-a little brother in the future maybe)
3. bought a house
4. own two houses
5. going to be starting my tenth year in the same profession this August
6. have a masters degree
7. living near the ocean (this was a little girl aspiration that has come true-ready to visit the beach this summer)
8. traveling to 25 different states, Mexico, 100+ wineries in nine states (hey, that's an accomplishment to me) and visiting both our families at least twice a year in the eight years we've been out here.
As my husband has taught me there's nothing wrong with dreaming big sometimes. What are your aspirations?
I'm linking up today with one my new teacher bloggers, Mrs. PJ at Rendered and Renewed's Aspirations. Take a second to check her out. Any other bloggers feel free to link up with us too. I thought this was a cute way to remember that even mommies are dreamers too.
Ten years ago I met my other half. And my other half is the true dreamer, the one always full of new aspirations. Sometimes so much that I feel like I have to be the debbie downer and remind him you can't have everything you desire in life. Then I feel like that adult that discourages all these kids' dreams that I teach. Maybe I am a debbie downer. I guess my thinking was always keep your goals realistic and achievable that way you don't look at the past or your life in disappointment because it takes a lot of work and often sacrifice to reach the things you imagine for yourself. So I guess I will start with all the crazy aspirations in my head and then take a minute to look back at what aspirations I have met in order to remind myself I can achieve things if I am just patient and work harder.
1. So the first one I'm going to deflect onto my oldest daughter. I want my girls to experience playing musical instruments. And if you know my oldest daughter she IS a performer. I know everyone thinks their kid is going to be a superstar. But she has the looks, the personality, and the stage presence. Does she actually have any talent to act or sing? I don't know but maybe with some musical lessons we'll have the Averiella Glenn star. And her sister is just starting to become the little ham herself and she's turned into quite the cutey too so maybe they'll be a duo.
2. So some of these I put on here I do have real plans of working towards and this is one of them. Nate has talked for years of opening his own restuarant. And I have just recently jumped on board with this. He originally went to culinary arts school at Johnson and Wales. But in the new town we just moved to there are four restuarants-three of them are Italian. He wants to have a bar and grill place morealess that specializes in wings that he calls Winging It, which I think is great because we are very jump off the cliff and wing it kind of people. Maybe one other place in town is really a place you can go watch Sunday football or any other sporting events, and we have found it really hard to find a good wing place out here in the whole area period so there is actually quite a market for his idea I think. Then because even though I am the right (I think it's right) brained person who studied English, I seem to have a knack for numbers when it comes to finances anyway. Course anyone that knows us will probably say that's because I watch every penny and don't give Nate any money. He gets some but we have a plan we have to stick to to make it all work. I think he knows this too because in that decade together he has always turned away from the idea of managing his own money. He'd rather hand it over to me and let me figure out how it all works. We go back and forth when we're actually going to invest in this idea. I think it kind of depends on what he starts doing after he finishes his masters.
3. We want to own a bunch of rental houses. Nate likes to fix things up and this is more his idea than mine. But I can be property and business financial manager too in our future business life. With this year we actually have our first rental property. I kind of see this being our only one but who knows.
4. I want to travel and travel more. I'm already a travel junky. There are about a dozen trips we have left in the US that we want to take, plus Alaska and Hawaii, and then we want to go to Africa (Nate wants to do an African Safari), Australia, Italy and Greece. But the last few years since the kids have come we've had to scale that way back and I keep telling myself that's okay because many of these places, especially the ones out west, will be better to do when the kids are older. We try to still take a vacation somewhere new each year.
5. I want to publish a book. I've written them. Now I would just like to publish them or at least one of them. This again is one that I actually plan on doing. I didn't say it had to be successful; just enough to get me back the $99 I'll have to spend on each ISBN number, plus a little extra fun money would be nice. (Maybe I'll give my husband some)
6. I know I mentioned traveling already. But when we finally retire I want to get an RV and just travel the country hitting any spots we've missed and when we get tired of living in it we'll pick a place to retire and stop. We'd be like Forrest Gump RV old people style.
7. I have my masters degree and if I decide to stay with teaching and go back to school at some point, I would like to eventually get my PhD in sociology and teach at the college level and learn how to write good, sociological pieces of writing. In regards to my role as a teacher in general, I always aspire every year to do a better job than in the past with new engaging lessons and behavior management plans and then by the end I always feel like I fell short again and am just plain tired.
8. At some point after having kids and more time to myself again, I will finally lose the five lbs per kid that stays after every pregnancy and go back to working out on a more consistent basis. My recent workout goal lasted about two months before I fell short of that aspiration again. Hopefully by this point when my kids are older and I'm exercising I'll be able to break my chocolate and soda once a day addiction.
9. And most importantly our biggest aspiration is to raise healthy, happy, productive children that thrive in the world when they set out to begin their own journey. No matter what I do with my life I plan on them being my greatest contribution.
So it's a long list and probably everything won't be accomplished. But to remind myself I have reached goals before and I can again my list of aspirations reached (which are probably very similiar to most of yours) are as followed:
1. Happily married to a great man (my dreamer)
2. started a family (love my girls-oh forgot my last family aspiration-a little brother in the future maybe)
3. bought a house
4. own two houses
5. going to be starting my tenth year in the same profession this August
6. have a masters degree
7. living near the ocean (this was a little girl aspiration that has come true-ready to visit the beach this summer)
8. traveling to 25 different states, Mexico, 100+ wineries in nine states (hey, that's an accomplishment to me) and visiting both our families at least twice a year in the eight years we've been out here.
As my husband has taught me there's nothing wrong with dreaming big sometimes. What are your aspirations?
I'm linking up today with one my new teacher bloggers, Mrs. PJ at Rendered and Renewed's Aspirations. Take a second to check her out. Any other bloggers feel free to link up with us too. I thought this was a cute way to remember that even mommies are dreamers too.
Those are some great aspirations. I hope you reach them. That you help your loved ones reach their aspirations too.
ReplyDeleteRight now our aspiration is to get our house renovated. I am also currently debating with myself about going back to college.
I don't think we could be teachers if we were not able to dream big. It is also a good lesson for our little ones, to never deny yourself any possible goal. Thanks for the shout out and sharing your aspirations.
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