Today's project: cleaning the closets and vaccuuming
listening to: Azam Ali - Forty One Ways
(re)Reading: Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
imagining: dancing on the beach

Everyone has goals (dreams if you will) for their lives. For instance, I want to go back to school for my Masters and have a career as a librarian/archivist. I want to have a child and to own a home. I want, one day, to travel more. These are not unreasonable goals, perhaps even modest.

But what do you do when your goals conflict with those of the person you deem your partner? Where do you draw the line between reasonable and selfish?

Some people have goals that are far simpler: a roof over their heads and a full belly. Perhaps merely the means to maintain these things is goal enough. Imagine this: you have been on the streets for most of your teenage life. Having the means (a decent job) to keep an apartment and a reasonably full fridge and some leisure time is probably paradise. Not having dared to think beyond this point to avoid disappointment, how would it be to realize that you were now in a place where you could possibly think about more? Would it be too much? Too overwhelming? Would it still seem impossible, something for other people? Or would it be like a door was flung open on infinite possibilities?

The optimist in me would like to believe the latter, but the realist in me is suspicious that the former may more often be true.