30 by 30

I'm pretty bad at goal-setting. I have all these fairly nebulous ideas of what I want out of life (loving husband, being a stay at home mom, house with white picket fence, financial freedom, etc.) but I'm scared to commit it to paper and determine the actual steps I will need to take to reach these goals. There's a pretty obvious explanation -- if I never actually set the goal, there's no sense of failure or disappointment if I don't achieve it. I am realizing that I am very scared of failure, and that in some areas of life, I set the bar as low as I need to in order to ensure that I don't fail. It's honestly pretty sad.

I thought that putting together a list of 30 Goals by Age 30 might help kick-start me into a goal-setting and achieving mindset. I have just over one year to complete all of these, so they are fairly simple, nothing dramatic or crazy.

(I will strike through the goals as I complete them!)

1) Make Nie Nie's Mud Cake Magnifique (I wanted to make this for my birthday this year but didn't get around to it. I'll make this version.)
2) Begin a set community service time at least twice monthly with the kids, such as visiting a nursing home
3) Complete all 30 days of the 30-Day Shred
4) Run a 5K race
5) Run a mile in under 10 minutes
6) Read 6 books (I used to read about that many in a week or two)
7) Go on a date
8) Take the kids sledding (I avoid being cold as much as possible)
9) Systematically declutter the entire house
10) Take a family vacation
11) Make a treasure map/vision board (astrologists say the best time to do it is Aries New Moon, not January 1st)
12) Make plans for my life on paper
13) Learn how to knit in a relaxing manner (it tenses my shoulders up badly)
14) Have a Lord of the Rings marathon (or Star Wars could be substituted if I wnt to involve the kids and they can't handle LOTR)
15) Give blood twice (have done once)
16) Go to a country dance
17) Have a (pint or larger) green smoothie every day for a month
18) Clean the house and stick to a program/method of keeping it relatively clean and clutter free (probably Flylady or some variation thereof)
19) Maintain an Emergency Fund savings account of $1000 and replenish it each time any is used (I wanted to do a debt-reduction goal, but this area of my life is SO up in the air right now)
20) Take the kids on a picnic
21) Get a house/dwelling with a backyard and have a successful garden
22) Organize my recipes
23) Go to a concert, opera, or play
24) Start digital scrapbooking (I have software, lessons, tutorials, kits, and Quick Albums already)
25) Start a business
26) Avoid getting married (I have nothing against getting married eventually but I need to be smart about it and not rush into things this time)
27) Determine, accept, and move forward courageously with my religious/spiritual beliefs
28) Become licensed as a professional engineer
29) Make friends with a real-live woman (not just on the internet), including actually doing something with her face to face (outside of Visiting Teaching, Relief Society Meetings [fka "Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment", fka "Homemaking Night"], etc.)
30) Get my kids in bed by 8:30 for 30 days, use the time in the evening to work on these goals or do something for myself (NOT including mindlessly wasting time on the internet), and go to bed early enough to get 8 hours of sleep (this goal might directly conflict with #25)