connection/community

My Personal Goals for Summer 2010

At my new job, I’ve been doing a lot of lesson planning about how to guide adolescents through the process of setting and achieving personal goals. When I write activities, I always like to try them myself. So, please enjoy this initial brainstorm of my summer goals:

• Write more (and post it online; hence this post)

• Demonstrate engagement and success at work

• Achieve and maintain physical health in body-positive ways

• Plan a wedding (the wedding of myself and my partner, to be exact)

• Review the statistics that I learned in college

• Launch a Sex Ed Team at the center where I’ve been teaching

• Strengthen my relationships with my partner, friends and family

All right! That’s a nice list. I’m pretty sure I have a to-do list somewhere, but that’s quite different from a set of overarching goals. Remember that this list is just a brainstorm, and I haven’t prioritized or expanded upon any of these goals. But I’m glad to share them.

I’ll elaborate on the first goal right now. I want to write more. I haven’t posted on this blog in month! I apologize profusely. At the same time, I want to validate that not every time of life is a time for writing. Some times are times for doing and speaking and listening and sleeping. The last few months of this spring, I was reading a lot and feeling a lot and thinking a lot, but I wasn’t pulling it together in writing. Over the course of this summer, I hope to express some of what I’ve been thinking about. But what do you want to hear? This blog is, in a large part, of course, for myself—but I’m also at the point at which I encounter about 5 topics each week about which I would love to write, and clearly they’re not all getting on here.

Do you want to hear my responses to other blog posts about sex ed and related issues? Do you want me to comment on the news? Do you want my reflections on my personal processes? More thoughts about education and how to teach this stuff to teenagers? More about politics, or about personal lives? I’d love some input and guidance.

In addition, I’d love to do some writing about the personal goals I listed above. Are there any of those that you’d like to hear more about? Do you have any suggestions or feedback for me as I explore these goals? Is there anything that I should be working on at this time that I blatantly missed? It’s just a brainstorm, so please forgive me if I did!

Well, I’m glad I started writing again, and I look forward to writing my second summer post next week.

Published by Mimi Arbeit

applied developmental scientist, antifascist community organizer, sexuality educator