So as the solstice approaches and with it the “official” beginning of summer it is time to reflect on summer goals. Since I have never left the educational schedule in my work life I still put a lot of emphasis on what I can accomplish during the summer that I wish I could do during the school year.
I’ll post my goals in the comments section — if you wish, please do the same.
1) Fill up a page with drawings every day. Whatever drawing skill I have ever had sits fallow most of the year and so it is not there for me when I want it. Not to go into it too much but my daily drawings pretty much stopped after I took Mr Thomas’ art class in 6th grade. I still regret this failing of will on my part.
2) Finish the living room and hallways. New molding. Slate in the hallway. Bamboo in the living room. Paint on the wall. Ugh.
3) Go running three times a week. Yes, I’ve finally succumbed to running. I just don’t have time for any other form of exercise and now that I’m sitting a lot more at work I need the exercise. Running is cheap and fast.
4) Cook more — eat out less.
5) Take more photos and post them on Flickr.
1) Walking and running/jogging. I have been so far successful at waking up at 6 am to do this for the past nine days. Maintain and increase.
2) Cook more. Eat out less. We’ve been better about this recently, and our garden is already providing us with a lot of lettuce, and before too long, kale, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes.
3) Eat less in general. As with above, this is improving as part of an overall goal to lose weight and establish healthier habits.
4) Continue working on the house: cleaning, organizing, gardening, and plan to put in a small patio in our back yard next month.
5) Work ahead on fall course.
6) Have baby.
After that, all bets are off.
1) Get off my Cobblestone Magazine assignment on time (if they don’t want any changes, I just managed to do this).
2) Finish work for my SVS kids book on time.
3) Finish the two books I have started reading.
4) Get fifty more pages written on my latest novel-in-progress.
5) Get some of my ideas for drawing and paintings out. (J.E. if you can fill a page with drawings every day of the summer my hat is off to you. It’s not the quantity that you will likely wrestle with, it’s the consistency.)
6) Get things framed and ready for my fall show including preparing the talk as well as for the UWEC faculty show.
7) Spend some good quality time with wife and kids including continuing to read every night.
8) Have a successful trip to New York with our church kids.
9) Get more prepared for the fall semester than I was last year.
10) Send off a few query letters. (it’s actually rather doubtful that I will do this, but hey…)
11) Have fun with my parents when they come and have fun with James and Sarah when they visit in August.
12) I’d like to eat more healthy, really, I would, but I just snarfed down a Peanut Butter Cup Mix-In from the Coldstone Creamery so I really would feel like a hypocrite listing that, though I do want to take longer and more frequent walks with Agnes.
13) Recognize my own limitations.
14) Catch some thunderheads at sunset.
Just reflecting back on summer goals and seeing how we did with them. For myself, I’m quite pleased overall.
1) I did walk and run quite a bit this summer, though admittedly that has gone by the wayside the last couple of months. But we did just get our elliptical trainer repaired, so hopefully I can exercise on that through the winter. I’m no J.E. in terms of waking up at 5:30 am and jogging around the middle school track. Grade: B
2) We are cooking much more and eating out much less these days, certainly. So that has been a steady improvement. Grade: A-
3) Overall I think I am eating less and better, but still have some trouble with portion control. Still, I think this is steadily improving. Grade: B+
4) Indeed, as Peters can attest, I put in a patio in our backyard, and have even this fall replanted our grass in the backyard. There’s always more to be done, but considering all that has gone on in the last three months, we’re doing well. Grade: A-
5) I am in the thick of my fall course at Macaleter, and really prepared well for teaching the class the second time. It’s a scramble week to week sometimes, and now I wish I were planning more ahead of time for my spring Crafts of Poetry course, which I am inventing from scratch. Grade: A-
6) We did have the baby, and that has gone so well, and has helped put into perspective all of the above. Grade: A
Overall grade: A-
(Can you tell I have midterm grade assignments due today?)
Positive Psychologists tell us that the who function the best have three things in balance- goals, pathways, and agency. Goals, are self-explanitary. Pathways are means to reach your goals. I.E. if I want to go to college, the pathways are acceptance to a program (which can be broken into smaller and smaller steps), financial resources, a way to get there, etc. Agency is the drive, the thing that gets one off the couch and moving on their motivation. The concept is that if one has these things in balance, then they are accomplishing things of meaning to them, and they are getting the sense of accomplishment and mastery that go along with it. They flourish, and recieve positive feedback fromthemselves and from their environments. In a sense , the opposite of what happens to a lot of depressive people who get locked into a self-defeating feedback loop. I like the idea of it. By the way, Shotts, your baby is an A+. Congrats on your summer!
Thanks for this, Petes, including the very positive grade. I’ll pass that along to Beckett. Interesting about positive psychology: it all makes a lot of sense to me, and is mostly quite intuitive, at least as you describe it. But it’s important to make the intuitive intentional. Thanks!