Reverb 11, December Third

What are your ambitions? What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to/detracts from your ambitions? Can you eliminate it?

I have a list of goals, arranged in chronological order, that repeats in my head on a daily basis:

1. Graduate college
2. Move into my own place
3. Complete grad school
4. Create second (and more lucrative) career

Over the past five years, six months, and 23 days of sobriety, I've slowly and painstakingly (because, y'know, it took pain to accomplish) discovered and discarded most of the habits that stand in my way.  There are a few left.  For one, I still don't save enough money.  I need to acknowledge that I've gotten better at that with each year, so in just these last few months of work I've managed to put away a decent amount.  I could set aside even more, but I have what we in AA call "financial wreckage [of the past]".  I dedicate some of each paycheck to getting square with the Bank of Dad - for the loans, and the...let's call them the times I took out a loan without him actually exactly knowing about it. So I'm pretty fiscally responsible, these days, but there's always room for improvement in this area.

The thing I really need to get rid of?  My impatience with all of this.  Underneath all of my progress, all of my growth as a human being, all of my acceptance of my past, I still feel like I should have accomplished that whole list by now. It's not fair to me to feel that way, and it often intrudes on my sense of gratitude for the things I have accomplished and the fact that my life is pretty awesome as is.  It also has a serious impact on self-esteem, which intrudes on other things.  In some ways, I feel as though I won't be any sort of complete package (to offer to someone else) until I wrap these things up.  I mostly love myself as I am; in some part of me, I just don't expect anyone else to.

Can I eliminate it?  I dunno, but I'm working at it.  That's my major psychological hurdle these days.  Technically, it's not standing in the way of accomplishing my goals; it's standing in the way of getting the most pleasure/fulfillment out of life in the meantime.