Goals Vs. Resolutions

January 31, 2013 at 8:28 am (Uncategorized)

I’m not sure I’ve ever written about this in text, but I adamantly do not believe in resolutions. Someone recently asked me about my New Year’s resolutions, and made me cringe in the process. While the word resolution implies a certain amount of commitment, I think that most resolutions involve very little commitment and act as little more than lip service. 

So instead of resolving to make a year better, I think acting on it is way better. And I don’t think it’s about years as much as day-to-day. I strongly believe in goals and goal-setting. I think my affinity for goal setting started back in the day when I worked at the shelter and set goals with the residents in housing. We would sit together, come up with some grand overarching goals, and then create steps to meet that goal. Additionally, these steps and goals themselves would be reevaluated on a weekly basis to ensure that they were realistic, practical, and attainable.

And therein is the big difference between resolutions and goals. Goals can be achieved. Resolutions generally contain little strategies, adjustments, or true plans. Buying a membership to a gym hardly serves as a plan if a person doesn’t have time in their schedule to go. 

Good goals contain a few important elements:

1. They are personal and individuals intend to meet them. If a goal is assigned to you, you don’t take ownership of it, and let’s be honest, you probably don’t care much if you don’t achieve it. This is how I felt when I worked at Hallmark and they made sales’ goals for the day. I really didn’t care. I smiled. I talked about product. I got paid. There was nothing important or intentional about it. It wasn’t a goal I cared about meeting. These external things aren’t particularly useful goals, even if they are “good for us” or things we want to change.

2. Goals have to be incremental. I’ve set large overarching goals for myself over the years. I achieve few of these. However, when I break them down and they seem manageable I can do it. For example, finishing a PhD seems like an insurmountable task. But finishing coursework was doable. Finishing candidacy was doable. Getting into the field seems to be doable (God-willing I’ll be there in a week or two). Small, incremental steps make goals more manageable and less terrifying. 

3. Goals must be measurable. Setting a goal like “I will love my family more” doesn’t help you to achieve it. Who can measure love? But setting a goal like spending time with them–that’s measurable. 

Anyways that’s all for now~

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Strong Roots, Tall Branches

January 19, 2013 at 8:26 am (Homelessness, Philosophy)

I don’t often write posts like this. I find them too self-indulgent when constructing them. Too open. Too honest. I’m not what most people would call closed, but I’m hardly open about pieces of my life either. Particularly my thoughts on those pieces. And yet here I am. And maybe it won’t be interesting enough to read, but it’s honest, and it comes from a place of complete and total honesty.

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It was spring and I was starting a one-week class, as was often my tradition in the spring. The world was full of promise. The sun had already broken through the city’s winter shield. It seemed like it would be a good year. The Flames had made it to the Stanley Cup finals. And I had a job interview before class began that day.

It might be conceited to say, but I am incredibly good at job interviews. I have the kind of intuition people can’t teach, which makes job interviews easier than they’re intended to be. I can gauge my energy output and their response, I can understand body language and whether I’ve lost people mid-description. Honestly, this is all founded in intuition. Not say that I haven’t taught other people to mitigate interviews, but my ability here is innate.

Because it was spring, I’d chosen a full pink skirt and a white hippie-style blouse. Both of which, I would quickly learn, were semi-inappropriate for where I was interviewing. Upon my arrival, I quietly kicked myself. I’d entered a nearly informal environment. Most of the staff were wearing blue jeans. In fact both of my interviewers were wearing blue jeans. I stuck out. 

The shelter was not what I had been expecting, but then, I guess, I had no foundation for expectations. I’d never been to a shelter. Had only talked to homeless people in passing when I saw them panhandling on the corner (which, for the record, is just human decency when you pass anyone on the sidewalk–passers-by always earn a smile). There was no question I didn’t belong. I had little doubt that this would chalk up to be a HIGHLY unsuccessful interview.

But through fate, kismet, providence, or whatever you want to call it, I got the job.

And within weeks, the position rattled me enough to wake me up from the haze in which I’d let myself live, the feigned happiness I’d let myself fake, and I realize something important about myself: I had to be honest with me. Lying to myself wasn’t working for me. And in finding that self-honesty, I came to a place where I could be honest with everyone else in my life and I could function in that job.

Changes came. They inevitably do when you’re made to face your own frail humanity. And by grace, in just looking at it, you can find some type of transformation. 

At the shelter when I faced my own humanity day in/day out, it became clear that my life was changing. I think, at some phases in life, encountering extreme poverty (whether that’s economic, relational, or both) can be transformational. There’s no doubt in my mind that before I started I lived in a naive bubble. I didn’t really understand. Growing up in a Conservative city meant accepting a narrative and mindset that centered around self-sufficiency and responsibilization. Yet the people I met hadn’t asked for their circumstances. Responsibilization didn’t fit. Self-sufficiency seemed more impossible when I looked at my own life and all of the love and support I received from both friends and family. I think in seeing it, it fostered compassion in a way that no book, article, or narrative could. 

I was meant to stay for a summer, I stuck around for two years. They were a good two years. I learned. I was reformed much like a potter reforms clay. And in many respects, I found a personal passion, especially when questioned about my time at the shelter and the people I worked with. It’s easy to cast judgment on people you don’t know or haven’t ever encountered, and I often found this happened to me. But at 20 I dug in my heels and I defended those who weren’t present. I saw myself in them. That if, somehow, I hadn’t the social support that I do, I could end up in impossible circumstances with no way out. 

This, of course, developed into far more. I kept training, even though they offered me a permanent job following my first graduation. There was more to learn, and in some way my experience drove me to more. I loved being on the front lines, but I’m too emotional. Too compassionate. I could see myself burning out in a few more years if I worked front line for too long. 

But perhaps this is why I study what I study. I believe that people making changes in their lives require support. They need help. We all need help. I think sometimes it’s just easier for some people to ask for it than for others.

And who would’ve thought that pink skirted, blouse-wearing, pseudo-hipster that entered those doors would find a lifelong passion that day? Who could’ve seen that one coming? I didn’t. I couldn’t have anticipated how being there would change the entire trajectory of my life. Yet here I am. I guess, it’s important to challenge yourself. I wasn’t confident walking through those doors. Back then I wasn’t even sure I was ready to apply for the job. But I did it. And I’m glad I did.

I’m just glad my spring lasted for two years. Strong roots. Tall branches. I definitely grew.

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Five Years and Counting

January 7, 2013 at 2:34 pm (Uncategorized)

Those of you that know me outside of this blog probably know that I celebrated my fifth year wedding anniversary on Friday. In my head this feels like it should be some substantial milestone, but really, I mostly can’t believe I’ve been married to my partner for five years already. The years just seem to be going quicker with each passing one. Hopefully I can slow myself down enough to enjoy the next five. 

One of the things about being seven-ish years into a relationship and five years into a marriage, is the ability to look back and reflect. I can honestly see those points in our relationship where I did well and those that my partner had this overwhelming mercy and grace for me. We also both reflected on our pre-marriage relationship and what that was like. It’s interesting because I’ve always firmly believed that one person can’t change another, and I still believe that. However, for us, we both changed for the other person. Like we changed ourselves. And over our marriage, even more so. I believe that a person can’t go into a relationship thinking they can change their partner, however, a partner can change themselves so they’re a better fit. And perhaps not all things can be changed, but I still think a person can make strides to change themselves. And if people can’t change at all, then why bother with psychology or things like therapy?

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Going Home

January 2, 2013 at 7:59 pm (Homelessness, Philosophy, Rants, Research, Theory)

Homelessness.

It seems like a simple word with a very simple definition: the state of not having a home. But what does it mean to be without a home? And, conversely what does it mean to be with a home? I recognize this may seem like a redundant question and answer period, but I believe that perhaps the greatest barrier to resolving homelessness as a ‘problem’ (I will explain the quotations later) is a misunderstanding what a home actually is and what homelessness entails.

When we’re young our language appears as natural, an activity in socialization through games of wordplay, “Oh honey we’ll head home now,” “I’m coming home for Christmas,” “I had to put my mother in a home.” All of these sentences appear to refer some notion of home, yet when actually in context of a greater conversation the entire meaning of the word changes. The first likely refers to a physical locale in which an individual lives, the second a family’s residence, and the third an institutional locale. Between all three of these sentences, the word ‘home’ means something different. Yet each definition has some commonality: there is some notion of shelter. I think this is probably why so many solutions to homelessness revolve around shelter and providing affordable housing to low income people. But I also think this is a misnomer.

In my experience working with the homeless, reading about homelessness, and chatting with the homeless, I’ve come to recognize what many have proposed as a solution is merely a solution to houselessness. Have you ever gone on a business trip somewhere without your family? You spend a week (sometimes more) in a hotel that is apparently, for the span of a week, ‘home’. But I doubt many of us would really think of that as our home. Yes, the hotel operates as shelter and a place to sleep at night, but little more than that. I think most would agree that home, with all of its language ambiguities, has more to do with emotions, feelings, and some sense of attachment. A place of residence can be a shelter without ever being a home. I say this, of course, from my own experience.

Like many young adults, I left my city–the one that I grew up in–for a year of study elsewhere. I had an apartment. As a graduate student, I had an office. I made some friends. Yet at the end of the day this place never felt like home. My attachment to this place couldn’t compare to that which I had for that city in which I grew up. The emotions themselves were different. And every time I drove back to my hometown I had feelings of elation, comfort, care, and support. I was home.

I understand you might be reading this and thinking to yourself, “All she’s doing is arguing semantics,” and in some respects, I am, but at the same time, the semantics mean everything in this context. When trying to resolve homelessness, understanding what it means to have a home is entirely different than understanding what it means to have a house. At the end of the day, housing people solves only one facet of homelessness.

Affordable housing doesn’t a home make.

Instead, we, as the greater community, need to step up. People need support. I’m not suggesting that homeless (or formerly homeless) people need be infantalized, but that all people need support, and it’s that support that truly makes a home. My partner, my sister, and all my friends make this city my home.

What am I suggesting in all of this? People are people. At the end of the day our needs are similar. We need others. We need support. We need to feel needed, loved, and respected. It’s these feelings that make a place a home.

My point is, and by now I hope it’s clear, while systemic changes may dispel one particular lived experience of homelessness, only people can welcome other people into their communities.

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