Jen’s Life Goals: 1993 Edition

Revisiting my 21-year-old aspirations for the future.

Hi, it’s me.

Happy New Year? Please excuse the question mark – I’m treading lightly into 2024 after the year we had at The ZugHaus. 2023 started strong with an uneventful January and ended with some relief in November and December. But holy cow, that middle part was something. I’m not quite over it, carrying around a lingering fear that another shoe is waiting to drop. After word in early November that Bryan’s CT scan showed “no cancer detected,” I mentally checked out of basic life maintenance responsibilities and just sort of let life happen. (Bills be damned! What do you mean we need groceries?!) It felt good to take a much needed writing break, too, where I disconnected from my laptop and didn’t work on any writing projects. 

Spent a few days away with framily (friends who are family) on Hammersley Inlet, one of the many Puget Sound inlets outside of Olympia.

Every year Bryan and I take some time between Christmas and New Year's for our annual family planning and retrospective. It’s not a goal-setting thing where we decide to read a certain number of books or lose a certain number of pounds. Rather, it’s a broad look at what we want to be ABOUT over the next year — how we want to spend our time and money, and how that fits in with the general direction we’ve set for ourselves.¹

We frame our planning around four categories:

• Health - physical, mental, spiritual

• Work - financial, career, home

• Play - travel, creativity, entertainment

• Love - marriage, family, community

These come from the book, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans.

I like the approach of paying attention to all four of these areas because, at least for me, planning can tend to focus heavily on career, work, and financial tasks. But I’m also a Whole Person who is married to another Whole Person, and we work hard to stay playful, healthy, and plugged into a community for the sake of our marriage and our sanity.

Have you ever explored an old house or building that still has some stuff in it? Like maybe a dusty chair tipped over, a couple boxes of paperwork, or an old shoe. Our garage was built in 1921, and when we moved here, part of the the interior flooring was still dirt and the house’s original lower kitchen cabinet was sitting in the back, storing paint cans and tools. A couple years ago we built out Bryan’s office in there and had to remove a bunch of stuff to make room, including a large metal hook that hung from the ceiling from a chain. I’d never noticed it before when the garage was full, but seeing the hook hanging in an empty space with a dirt floor below it made me realize our garage was probably a barn where the original 1921 owners hung and dressed their hunted game. I took a moment of silence to look around and imagine where they hung their tools, what their clothes might have looked like, and how old the hunter might have been.

Going into our planning last week, I felt this same kind of nostalgia for a bygone era, wondering what I might find once we dust off the cobwebs of last year’s mostly-abandoned plan. With our attention focused on Bryan’s cancer treatment and finding ways to stay above the mental darkness, we didn’t track our ambitions for the year and opted to meander into whatever felt supportive of our mental health. I assumed we accomplished nothing we set out to do in 2023.

But I was pleasantly surprised! Even though we canceled our New York trip² and didn’t schedule quarterly writing retreats as planned, we finished our backyard remodel with a beautiful PNW woodsy rain cover for our weekly Open Fire Nights³ and bought paddle boards and a kayak that we used all summer long.⁴

Of the many things we didn’t get to last year, we’re revisiting some this year and letting others go. Sometimes you just can’t go back. 

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Recently while reorganizing our storage area, I got sidetracked by a clear tub of memories. I began rummaging through it and found an artifact of the identity crisis I had when I was 21 years old:

A list of my life goals from 1993 when I was 21 years old.

I remember making this list with my friend, Sarah. In fact, the list is in her handwriting, which I recognize 30 years later because we’re still friends who send notes to each other.

On the other side of the paper is a timeline of my life, also in Sarah’s handwriting, showing significant moments of triumph and disappointment. It’s pretty extraordinary to look back on what an Old Soul she was in her early 20s to patiently walk this Eeyore through a mental health crisis in the days when our mental health garnered very little consideration.

The year was 1993. I would have been a junior in college if I had gone back after my sophomore year, but undiagnosed depression, undiagnosed ADD (attention deficit disorder), and a phone call from my dad prevented me from returning to school. 

At the time, Sarah and I shared a one bedroom apartment in the lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle for $450 a month. To pay my half ($225!!), I did mostly office temp work but also put an ad in the local paper’s help wanted section listing myself as a “Jill of all trades.” This led to an uncomfortable meeting at a restaurant with a rich guy looking for a personal assistant in his home. I turned him down due to a creepy vibe. 

I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with my life or how to move forward without continuing school and getting a degree. I had no financial support. I was angry and panicked. It’s always going to be this way, I thought. I’m doomed. It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties that I realized I was trapped under a wet blanket of depression back then. I had assumed I was unambitious and lacked an imagination for what my future could be after my plan was disrupted.

This was the context for Sarah’s crayon list-making intervention, for her asking what I wanted my life to be about. Here is what 21-year-old depressed and panicked Jen wanted:

1. Marry

2. Stability

3. strong/confident

4. Be giver

5. Prayer warrior

6. Travel

7. Financially stable

8. Wisdom

9. Teach junior high on relationships

10. Bible school

11. Ministry with husband

12. People at work saved 🫣

13. Teach on finances

14. Right relationship with dad

I see this 1993 Jen so clearly. She is steeped in evangelical culture and feeling completely unmoored (I see you listed twice, stability). She dreamed of settling into a quiet life with a partner, of being part of a community, of being a participant in people’s stories, not just a bystander of life. She loved being a part of something. 

When I look at this list through the gracious eyes of my middle-aged self, I’m so proud of who I am. The me I am today is not so far from the me I was in 1993. The through-line from 1993 Jen to 2024 Jen is community and belonging. It’s partnership and service. It’s purpose. A few weeks ago I was telling a friend about the late ‘90s when I lived in a big house with a bunch of roommates. I told her I had a big room on the main floor with a TV, so my bedroom became a spot where everyone hung out together. On New Year’s Eve of 1999, a few housemates and I snuggled into my room to watch the PBS special of communities celebrating Y2K around the world.

“Oh,” said my friend. “So you’ve always been a community builder.”

Yeah, even though I hadn’t thought of it that way, I guess I’ve always been like this: putting down roots of stability, partnering with others, and opening up my space for community connections. 

I’m heading into 2024 with this deep self-history and appreciation for everything I’ve accomplished in this life, for staying true to who I am, and for the life partner I have in Bryan. How fortunate am I that I hooked up with a guy who is about the same things I am? 

If I were to rephrase some of these life goals with a more nuanced tone while keeping in the spirit of the goal, here’s how they would look:

1. Marry someone who makes me laugh

2. Find stability in myself

3. Be confident in my strengths

4. Be generous

5. Be an encourager

6. Travel

7. Practice financial responsibility

8. Share my wisdom

9. Mentor others

10. Stay a lifelong learner

11. Live life out loud with my husband

12. Embody the gospel in my life and actions

13. Mentor others

14. Right relationship with dad

My life took a significant turn at 21, and I wandered for a long time after that. But in dusting off that old, abandoned plan, I realize I’ve accomplished almost everything on my 1993 Life Goals list! Depressed and panicked Jen had more imagination for seeing into the future than I gave her credit for at the time. So even though our plans didn’t work out last year, and even though we had a health scare or two, I can’t bring myself to say it was a bad year. Bryan and I had each other, we had our community, and I’m still me.

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Jen

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Please say hi in the comments! 👋

• It’s good to be back on Substack! How was your New Year? Did you party, or were you in bed by 10pm like me? 😂

• Do you do any formal annual planning? What are you looking forward to this year?

• What artifacts from your past remind you of who you are?

1. You can read about last year’s planning in a guest post I wrote for

Rocco Pendola

in January 2023:

Never Retire - How A Seattle Family With An Income Property Plans For (Never?) Retirement

2. You can read about our canceled NY trip from June 2023 here:

3. You can read about our weekly Open Fire Nights in this post from November 2022:

4. Read about our stand up paddle boards and watch a video of me standing up for the first time here: