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Sunday, December 30, 2007

2008 Goals

Current Mood:
CC is listening to: an episode of Law and Order SVU

Steve and I were chatting in bed this morning and we were talking about what kind of goals we'd like to set for ourselves for 2008. He's still deliberating on some of his goals, I decided I'd have 3 kinds of goals for 2008:
I need to make sure I define my goals as measurably as possible, or else it'll be very likely that I'll fail to meet one or all of them--and I'd hate for that to happen :-).

The first goal, the one that benefits myself as a person, I was thinking of improving my proficiency in either sign language or Japanese. Steve pointed out (and rightly so) that I should make sure that my goal is not to be *fluent,* since fluency takes more than a year :-). I just need to figure out what "improved proficiency" mathematically means :-).

The second goal *sounds* easy but it's going to be a challenge for me. I promised Steve I'd stop using the dining room table as a catch-all for all my stuff :-). I know, that doesn't sound like much, but it's gotten to be a habit for me and it's something I have to fix. Case in point:


That's what the dining table looks like at this very moment. Let's see, what do we got--we've got a roll of duct tape, clothes over the back of the chair, my Tinkerbell Disneyland cap, a chew toy for the dogs, a box of cough drops, today's newspaper, a box of tissues... yeah, it's sad :-). I have to fix that this year.

My third goal is something that I'm looking forward to doing. I've been meaning to do some volunteer work for some time but I didn't know what kind of volunteer opportunities were out there.

What I originally wanted to do is find a way that I can assist taking therapy dogs to hospitals, rehabilitation centers, things like that. I even found out that there's even a *reading* program that involves therapy dogs. The objective of the R.E.A.D. (Reading Education Assistance Dogs) program is to mentor children who struggle with reading--and the fact that you have a therapy dog with you helps create a non-judgmental environment for them. Isn't that cool :-)?

Unfortunately it seems that if you want to volunteer in the program, you have to have your own dog, and your dog has to be trained for therapy services. So I started looking for other opportunities.

Thanks to www.1-800-volunteer.org, I was able to find opportunities that matched my schedule. There's a hospital about 10 minutes away from where Steve and I live, and one of the volunteer opportunities they have is for a Coffee Cart Volunteer.

Sounds insignificant, doesn't it? Not when you read what they do. The job description:
Visit with families in surgery and ICU waiting areas and provide free coffee, cookies and TLC! Pairs or group volunteering available. Free uniform and meal provided, including all coffee and cookies you can eat! VIP parking at hospital for volunteers.
They need you for only 2-3 hours a week, and you can volunteer to come by once a month, twice a month, once a week, or as often as you want. The requirements are: "some walking, lots of smiles, and tons of cookies to sample!"

How can you say no to a volunteer opportunity that makes it so easy for you to play a part :-)? I'm not sure if this means we provide our own cookies, though. I called and left a message at the volunteer services department, I'll probably hear from them tomorrow and find out :-). From there I'll decide how often to participate.

I know one thing, though: having experienced being at the hospital during Steve's surgery, I know it would have helped ease the anxiety to have someone from the hospital come by and offer cookies and coffee while I waited for him to get through it.

I know that resolutions are supposed a private matter, but I figure if I posted mine, I would be more likely to stick to it since I'll probably need to report my progress at the end of 2008 :-).

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