Attend to your goals

It was a Wednesday night when I realized I had to add a little zest in my life. Some people may have gone to a movie, worked out or chatted with an old friend by the name of Jack Daniels. I decided to make my third life goal.\nWhat's a life goal, you say? Well, it's just a little goal with a number attached to it. And it's something that everyone should be making.\nI try to make a new life goal each year. My first was to write a presidential speech, then after watching "The Life of David Gale," I made freeing a death row inmate with DNA evidence my second.\nSince then, months have passed, and I have sat contently enjoying school and life but knowing all the while I should be pursuing something else. Then, like in a torrid game of dodge ball, something hit me -- and it hit me hard.\nThree things came together: I need an internship, I love a good success story and to me, older men are hotter than the Fourth of July. Combining these three elements led me to create life goal No. 3 -- work for Mark Cuban.\nI am a journalist, not a business student, and so this life goal may seem a little off to you, but to me it makes perfect sense. I could intern for a newspaper, try to work and starve in New York, or I could beg a guy who was once in my shoes for an internship and be a part of something I actually respect.\nMark Cuban paid for college by giving disco lessons and spending all of his financial aid on starting a bar that was closed in less than a month. He had more fun than many of us will have in a lifetime while at IU, but he always had a plan. He's a "life-goaler" himself, and that's why he is the focus of my inspiration.\nSo I e-mailed him a ridiculously forward and motivational letter and never expected to hear from him. I assumed I would have to change my middle name to "Stalker," head down to Dallas and peek in some windows to get an acknowledgement.\nI was wrong.\n"The Cube," as I now will refer to him, e-mailed me back the next morning, telling me to send my resume at a later date and he would see what he could do. At first I was disappointed, but then I realized I'm 19-years-old. I'm nowhere near ready to work for a billionaire, and it was pretty cool he even took two seconds to acknowledge my pathetic letter. More importantly, I realized just how powerful a goal really is.\nGoals give you hope and determination, they give you a path to follow in life. Goals give you a reason to look at yourself and want to erase the bad while tripling every aspect of excellence. They make you humble when you fail to reach them and nothing short of a badass when you attain them.\nSo whether you want to win the lotto or lose 50 pounds, make it a life goal and stick with it. Buy that Hoosier Millionaire scratch-off ticket every time you enter the gas station, and keep "Sweatin' to the Oldies" with Richard Simmons when you think no one is looking. Do these things and know they can come true. Not everyone has goals in life. Not everyone thinks they can be a world champion thumb wrestler or make a million. So if you do, maybe you just will. And maybe you can be the next "Cube"