First

You know what I really want?

I am sitting here, at a fairly large desk (more of a table, really), in a fairly small room, and I think I have figured it out. Quite some time ago, my mother decided to give me some career advice.

"Decide your career," she said, staring at me intently, "not on what you want now, but on what you want your life to be like when you are my age."

My mother is fifty-one. I am barely twenty-one, have never been in a serious relationship, and have yet to finish college. Trying to plan thirty years into the future seems to be dependent on my goals and values being the same at fifty-one as they are at twenty-one. After this leap of logic, I realized that I don't want to be the same person in thirty years; I want to be different. Cue the lights and cameras and action and blog...

Baby steps, you understand, readers? I could make all sorts of metaphors about Rome and time and candles and darkness, but I hate bumper-stickers. What I have decided to want, right now, is to be an Informed Human Being (this is, shall we say, the Overall Goal).

My first small goal, which will be detailed on this blog, will be to read a book a day for the next six months. You know what else I want?

Just outside my Very Small College Town, there is a restaurant. Whenever my parents come to visit me, that is where we go. The restaurant not only serves amazing Italian comfort food, but also is one of those places you could imagine spending significant periods of your life in. You know the type of place. Lots of wine, perfect lighting, not too formal...

You know what I want to be doing in a year?

I want to be holding a class of wine. I want to be looking at my family. I want to feel accomplished, and proud, and happy. This is the Secret Goal.