Goal Talk

Five months and 11 days ago, I moved to Korea.  It's been one hell of an experience.  I've learned so much about myself and life in general.  These are things I will wait to discuss however.  Instead, I want to talk about what I hope to get out of my last 6 months or so.  I currently spend a lot of time with a good friend I've made from England and my Korean 'girlfriend' (a little complicated situation).  They are both moving out of the country however, so things are about to change for me.  In a few weeks, I'm going to have a lot of alone time.  I want to use this time to be productive, so I feel like I need to really sit down and look at what I hope to get out of the rest of my time here.  I ultimately would like to make a nice, crisp bullet list of short-term/long-term goals, but right now I just want to babble.


The most obvious goal is to spend some time with the Korean language; however, to look at it in 'economic' terms, there's not a lot to gain.  I will need to put in a significant amount of hours of work to truly get much of a usable grasp on the language, and after all of that, I will more than likely never use the language again.  The cost is much more than the likely pay off.  Yet, I think I would gain some personal satisfaction in knowing I learned something of the language.  I would get that confidence of knowing that I could do it.  Thus I've sort of come to a decision of spending some time on it, and I hope to have an incredibly simple conversation with a stranger at some point.  I want to be able to answer a question a stranger asks me in grammatically correct Korean.


Another more superficial goal I have is to get a bit more muscular.  I have been a bit hit and miss in trying to work out everyday.  I really want to become more consistent in forcing myself to go.  I want to develop a work out plan and stick with it.  My ultimate goal in this area is to be proud of my body by the time I fly home.  I don't think I am in terrible condition now by any means, but I want to be impressive and proud of myself.  I'd like to be one of those guys that doesn't get fat for quite a while into his adulthood.


Really these are my two main goals right now, and I feel a little guilty about that.  They are not very long term, and they seem a little too pedestrian to be really proud of; however, that's what they are.


Very quickly, I'd like to mention a few other GENERAL goals.  I want to read and extrapolate the information from The Art of War.  I want to be able to quote the text in appropriate situations and truly grasp its meaning.  I'd also like to be able to do the same with The Prince, however for now, The Art of War is my first goal.


I want to be a better cook.  This should not be difficult, as I can cook virtually nothing right now.  I will be happy if I can cook a solid 3 or 4 meals very well.  I'm not too dead set on this goal however, because most things I learn to cook here may not translate to cooking in America very well; nevertheless, I'm sure I can find some things that translate.


Long term, my incredibly general goal is to keep becoming more mature in everyday situations.  This is not going to be very measurable, and it's bound to have its' ups and downs, but I want to feel comfortable with my maturity.


As of writing this, I'm not doing a whole lot to achieve these goals.  I hope that by "putting them down on paper" I will be a bit more motivated to work on them.  Also, these are all great, achievable goals to have in solitary situations - the situation I should find myself in over the course of the next 6 months.  I will be distraction free and bored, so I will have no excuses when my time comes up.  Anyway, this list is bound to change, so I'll try to update it and give some status updates as I go..