Clue One: The Folly of Goal Setting

I am almost pathological in my goal setting behavior. I have a five year plan and a ten year plan. I don't actually write these down. But, I do, generally, have a pretty good idea what I would like to accomplish in various time frames. I can't say that I always accomplish everything as I have goals at varying levels of important. There are must do goals, goals that I would like to accomplish, and goals that might be fun if I get around to them.

Every year I make News Year's Resolutions which I do write down. I actually check the resolutions periodically to see if I am on track for the year. I don't always accomplish all of these either. Most do get accomplished to some degree. One or two might be bumped to the next year. And there are those that I abandon after reflecting on them and deciding that that are not worthy goals.I set goals for each month and have a To Do List everyday. The same applies to these as far as accomplishing them. 

I am not revealing all this to convince your that I should be on some sort of OCD medication. Rather, it is to establish the fact that goal setting and goal driven behavior is just a part of my nature. That is, until just a few years ago.

I usually start working on my list of New Year's Resolutions in early Fall. I do this because I want to have time to think through the goals that I will be dedicating my time to in the following year. I'll jot them down, reflect on them, and revise them so that I have a pretty solid list when the New Year shows up. But, when I began to ponder my initiatives a few years ago, I found that I was incapable of identifying any reasonable goals. This was a huge problem and I began to give it some pretty serious thought.

After reflecting on this for a while, I realized that the reason why I was having trouble setting goals was that the future was in a state of flux. I am usually pretty good at predicting, in general terms, what is likely to happen. I do not have any clairvoyant talents. I just know a few tricks. I ramble on about these in another one of my sporadically attended blogs Patterns and Predictions which you can look at if you feel so inclined.

Nonetheless, I realized that with the future largely opaque to me we must be in an unusual time. And that was my first clue.