Goals for 2012, or the lack thereof

Over the past decade, a friend and I have traditionally written personal goals for the new year and shared them with each other.  This year, for a variety of reasons, I'm opting to live without goals.

However, if I were to write goals for the new year, they might go something like this...

Thanks to my beautiful wife for passing this along to me, even though I thought she was poking fun at my need to set goals. :>)

When the going got tough...

...to be honest, I wanted to quit.

Since Christmas Break I've been trying to get back into the running groove. Unfortunately, beginning about that same time, I began to suffer from painful IT band issues. In an effort to keep myself motivated to get out there and pound the pavement, I signed up for the 25K Riverbank Run. A little nutty, I'll admit. Yet I knew that if I didn't have that out in front of me, I probably would have quit. And boy did I want to quit.

On at least three occasions (and probably more), I came home and told Christa that I was done running. It was time for me to be content walking and cycling. She did a great job of just listening, and then usually suggested to take a few days to recover and then try it again.

Towards the end of March when my mileage was about half what it should have been according to my training schedule, I discovered that I had overlooked one possible contribution to my IT band pain: insoles. Even though I replace my shoes on a regular basis, I hadn't replaced my insoles for many (read: around 5!) years. Once I put new insoles in my shoes, the pain started to go away.
Yesterday, I achieved my goal: I finished my 25K run with a smile on my face. The run was great. Lots of energy, the rain stopped just in time for us to start, and the temperature was perfect. No record time, but I feel great about my effort.

Without going into too many details, I see so many parallels between my efforts to train for my run and the work of the ZPS TPIT. I was reminded of that as I finished up reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard yesterday afternoon. Two quotes from the final pages resonated with me:

Change isn't an event; it's a process. (p.253)

To lead a process requires persistence. (p. 254)

My run yesterday was certainly an event, but it wasn't the change. The change is my getting back into running. Likewise, handing our staff and students new technology in the coming months will be an event, but the technology itself won't create a transformative change. That change is going to be a long process, one for which we will be persistent.

Balance

For the past five or so years, a good friend and I have been setting goals at the start of a new year. The hope has always been that by sharing our goals with each other, we could support one another as the going got tough.

Life gets busy, though. This past year we checked in with one another about once a month (we currently live 600 miles apart), but I couldn't even tell you what my goals for 2009 were without looking them up. So this year we're simplifying things and going with a single goal.

Why am I sharing this with you? My goal for 2010 is to maintain some semblance of balance in my life and one of the areas that throws me off-balance the most is work. Mostly because I love my job. It's always challenging, never dull, and no two days are the same. I'm also eager to watch and learn from others, to collaborate, and to do lots of reading and reflecting. However, while I try to never put work before my family, I will often sacrifice my personal time for work. And that doesn't make me the best husband or father (or teacher or friend, for that matter).

That being said, I need to lighten my load. I need to choose wisely where I devote my time and energy. I'd love to be doing more writing about the thinking that I've been doing as a part of our Comprehension and Collaboration book club, about the small group of folks who have committed to studying constructivism and inquiry and applying it in our upper elementary classrooms, or just about the learning I do in my own classroom on a daily basis. But as you may or may not have noticed, I haven't posted much here over the past month. I can't seem to find the time. Maybe it's the holidays. Maybe it's having a two year old at home (in addition to 3rd & 1st graders). [I've noticed recently that many of my favorite bloggers have kids that are at least high school age, if not older. Maybe there will be more time then?] Maybe I'm simply trying to juggle too much.

Anyhow, friends and colleagues, I'm asking for your encouragement to help me maintain balance. The next time you see me getting ready to jump into a new endeavor, remind me to think on it for day or so before committing. Also, this doesn't mean that I'm not interested in reading something new or working on a new project, I just hope to be more mindful about it.

So, thanks for listening. How about you? Any goals, personal or professional, for 2010?

[Photo credit: SlackLine by Speleo Perdido on Flickr.]