So I’ve left school.

Graduated university.

Started and finished my first job.

Moved to a new city.

Visited most of the places (in Europe, at least) that I want to go.

What next? What now?

I often feel like I’m just strolling (or sometimes hobbling) onward down the path of my twenties, with my thirties looming large on the horizon, without much thought of where I’m going. I’m progressing in my career, but am not especially upwardly mobile at this point, enjoying life with friends and community which comes and goes, and reading a seemingly ever-growing wishlist of books; yet I often don’t seem to be very good at choosing and meeting new goals for myself.

It’s very easy when you’re a teenager. Your goals are to go to university, to get a good job, to go travelling or to just start out on your own. Once you reach thirty however, it seems like many of those goals have been achieved/don’t matter so much anymore. Sure, there are so many things that I want or wish for my future, but choosing specific things to work towards is hard when the options seem so broad.

For someone in my position, who is essentially still untethered, the question of what to do and where to go just seems impossibly open and the future hard to see. What is easier to see, easier to focus on, are those smaller, more achievable goals that I can set for myself.

Perhaps to get really good at making that one thing I love to make. I’ve got scones down, but what else can I learn to bake?

Or improving my photography skills; something that has brought me lots of joy recently.

Watching or reading that thing that everyone is talking about. The Handmaid’s Tale has proved particularly engaging and terrifying to me.

How about pro-actively making a new friend or working on that friendship that has proved difficult?

Even signing up for a 10k. This proved very motivational for me – and I even got a medal at the end of it. It’s rare as an adult that you are rewarded for your effort in such a concrete way, but the feeling of achievement and success certainly made the training worth while.

The feeling of achieving a goal, of getting slowly better at something or completing the task that you set yourself, is a positive and self-esteem growing feeling. Even as my future remains somewhat nebulous and uncertain, I know that I am better able to navigate the road when I set myself goals, big and small, to achieve along the way. Small successes remind me that I am growing, changing and still learning. I may not be in my twenties for much longer, but I pray that I will keep on learning and growing during all the years ahead.