Goals

While at church today, I was thinking about how important it is for us to change to become better people. This reminded me of all the times in my past where I set goals for myself to do certain things or accomplish something. I am a pretty goal-driven person. I thought I would share a few goals I had in the past:

1) Train to be a Navy SEAL. I read everything I could find in the library and online about Navy SEALS when I was 13 or 14 years old. They were the epitome of coolness to me. I set up a physical fitness training pattern so that I could be ready by the time I was 18. This constituted that I do 50 push ups and 100 sit ups right before bead, and I would increase that number by 1 each night. I followed this program for about 3 weeks until I went to a scout campout and was too embarrassed to do my push ups, so I got out of the habit and was too lazy start it up again. The great thing about this is that during my 3 week training period we did a physical fitness test in P.E. and I could do the most push ups in my entire grade. I even beat Ricky Hernandez who was the most athletic kid. I felt pretty awesome.

2) I set a goal for myself that I would ride my bike every day to school in the eight grade. This may not seem very hard core, but it was. My school was about 5 miles away, and the winters in Berlin were brutal. There were days that I would come to school riding my bike and I couldn't lock it up at the bike rack because my fingers were too cold. The keys kept falling out of my hands. And there was this one time where I was riding on the side walk and a car was parked on the side of the road. The person sitting in the passenger seat opened the door right in my path and I had to swerve into the bushes. I flipped over the handlebars and landed on my back and got the wind knocked out of me. I then tried to explain in German that I was alright, but I was so out of it that I'm not really sure what I said. I think I had a handful of near death experiences during that year. Trust me, bike riding is hard core.

3) I set a goal that I wouldn't eat chocolate for a year. I was talking to someone who did this before and her mom paid her $100. I asked my mom if she would pay me $100 if I didn't eat chocolate for a year. She said no. But because I'm so awesome, I decided to do it anyways, just to see if I could. I started my chocolate fast on Halloween of 2003 and made a goal of not eating chocolate until Halloween of 2004. I almost made it. I slipped up at a German Christmas Party for my AP German class at Stone Bridge High School. I ate a chocolate muffin. I was so angry with myself that I decided to go without anything sweet for the rest of December. That was hard. But besides that, I didn't have any chocolate. I used to dream about Peanut M&Ms and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I ate tons of Reese's Pieces because they almost tasted like chocolate but contained none. I even wrote a letter to the Reese's Pieces company explaining how much I loved eating their candy and asked for some free bags of it. I never got a reply back from them.
Let me tell you, Halloween 2004 was great. I ate so much chocolate that I felt sick.

4) I have made a goal that I will never buy a tie. I never have.

That's all I can think of. I guess my goal now is to not fail any of my classes. I haven't yet.