What follows is the response to my brother Josh���s mini-meme:

What are your short term goals? (Within 1 year)
For my short-term goals, I���m going to cheat and refer to this post that I wrote recently. It���s kind of vague, so some specifics are: greater patience with my family, more cleaning around the house, daily meditation/prayer, daily writing, daily reading, daily exercise, daily artwork, straight A���s this semester, the study of French and Japanese and Koine Greek, completion of a big project at work, finishing the mindonfire relaunch, the presentation of papers at two religious studies conferences in the next year, a trip to China, redesign of the Exponent blog, submission of a personal essay for possible publication in a book. I spend a lot of time creating goals, and not enough time accomplishing them�Ķ

What are your long term goals? (Within 10 years)

Watch Jana become a professor and my children graduate from high school and college and hopefully turn into decent adults (they���re already wonderfully decent human beings of the smaller variety). Get out of debt. Get my PhD in religion. Refine my writing craft and publish my first novel. Write! Teach! Serve! Inspire!

What is your retirement goal? What is your legacy goal? (What you hope to leave behind)
I don���t plan to retire if I can help it. My goal is to live my ideal life now, rather than in the distant future. And one cool thing about professors and writers is they can do like the great heroes and ���simply fade away�Ķ���

I used to spend my life wanting to do great, world-transforming things. Now I want to just transform people���s lives, one personal contact at a time. I do stupid, callous, selfish stuff, too, but I hope that my ultimate collective contribution weighs heavily on the positive side. I hope also to leave a bit of myself behind, in the form of writing, changed lives, perhaps a little foundation or two, that continues to help people after my physical presence on this earth has ended.

I hope, too, to produce something of sublime beauty in my life, and to build a few bridges between people with different views of religion.

All of this, of course, is inshallah, that is, ���God-willing.��� John Lennon said that ���Life is what happens to you when you���re busy making other plans.���