Meeting your goals is hard. If they are real goals, then achieving them is the result of long hours, lots of mistakes, and plenty of lost sleep.

Over the past year I had two long range goals: to complete and publish a large technical book, and to start selling an iPhone app on the App store.

And what do you know: I succeeded. After all the labour, I now have a new book on store shelves, and a cute little app in the store.

Mighty achievements, both. But after the initial accomplishment, life has gone on. I can’t speak for my book, but the app is a very minor thing, selling one or two copies a day; the book about the same if I’m lucky! It’s left me with a particularly odd feeling: while I’ve done what i set out to do, and while the goals were certainly difficult and worthy, their accomplishment has ultimately meant little.

Well, that’s depressing, isn’t it? Perhaps not, though. For while many do get published, and while many do get on the App Store, it’s clear that getting to both places is just a first step. A tough step, a rare step, but still just the first.

What matters to me now is whether we take that second step. And it’s clear to me that while I’ve taken two steps with my double goals, they are coming together in a single direction that may, at long last, provide some direction to my scattershot life.

Yes, I have a new project. It’s big and ambitious, but if done right, its success could really mean something.

Done wrong, of course, and I consign myself once more to oblivion.

See you soon.