A very recent post by Jonathan at Smart Wealthy Rich about what happens after you reach your goal, along with some commenter remarks, caused me to think about goals I'd set for myself and where I stand with them today.

About six months before graduating high school, I set a simple goal for myself. I lived in a little town (7000 people or less) and wanted to get away from that and the small town routines. I decided I was going to join the military. I was only 17, so I had to get parental permission on my documents. It wasn't difficult to sell it to my parents since my father was a WWII veteran (and a POW of that war). In September of 1978, I entered basic training for the United States Marine Corps. My first goal was complete.

My next goal was to simply finish my first contract, which was a mere three years in length. Time went by so fast, I found myself reenlisting just after the second year was completed. It moved that goal out another four years.

That goal changed again when I met and subsequently married my wife. I turned it into a long term goal to retire from the military at 20 years. The life of a military serviceman is constantly in flux, so any other goals prior to the retirement would have been foolhardy. Other things came up, though, that created short term goals — more than I can possibly remember. With the introduction of my two sons into my life, another long term goal of seeing them make it through high school and possibly college came into play.

I met the retirement goal in September of 1998. With an additional 10 years remaining in the Fleet Marine Corps Reserve, I set another goal. This one was to move to the Philippines around 2008 or 2009. My monthly pension wasn't much in the United States, but was sufficient for me to live in the Philippines. Well, since my younger son graduated from high school when he was supposed to (despite his early years with learning disabilities), and I wanted to see him in college (no matter how successful he might be), I started researching tuition and related costs. A year after he graduated from high school, I sent him (along with my mother-in-law) to the Philippines to start college where it was much more affordable.

A year later, I made the decision to move me and my wife to the Philippines, more than two years ahead of schedule. There were some deeply personal reasons that I won't go into (ever) that prompted that decision. A goal was met early.

After moving to the Philippines, I was left with only one goal remaining: To see my younger son graduate from college. My older son had already served three years in the U.S. Army and had some college courses under his belt when he married his wife (who was in the U.S. Air Force) and subsequently joined her in Germany where she's stationed now.

I sat back and thought hard about where I was and where I wanted to be in the journey that is my life. My son is now in his second year of college, with the remainder of it and two more years before he receives a degree. What am I going to do when that's all over with?

I believe I'm at that point in time where only small, intermediate goals are important. Perhaps a larger, long term goal will once again be put into place, but it's not important to me right now. In the meantime, all I can do is plug along every day doing the best that I can do in the things that matter to me the most.