cymbalism

The college I attended didn’t work on grades. It worked on a contract system. The contract could say lots of things, but mainly it was you stating your goals for the coming semester. And the contract could be negotiated, but only after you’d made some sort of effort in the proper direction.

I’m out of college but I’ve kept up with the contract system. My friend and I generally write a contract at least once a year. It’s a good way to keep moving and not let yourself stagnate. You get to take some time and ask yourself, “What do I want to do with myself? What do I want to change?” And then you get to change it (or take steps to change it, or change it and then realize that it never needed changing in the first place and change it back).

So far I’ve come up with a few things for my first quarter contract:

-drink at least 8 glasses of water a day
-take the stairs instead of the elevator
-walk more
-eat a salad every day
-write to my grandmother every week
-plan more kayaking trips
-check out the local arts scene and look into shows to enter
-loose 10 lbs
-reorganize my closet, room, bathroom and garage

And to keep myself going, I’ll be recording my process on the Joe’s Goals website (www.joesgoals.com)

...is to plan out a bunch of possible kayaking trips and have all the relevent information written down so that whenever I get a chance, I can just get up and go without having to take time out and plan things. I figure this will make my everyday life more fun too as I can always be thinking about the fun stuff even if there isn’t any time to get up and go just at the moment.

And it can be really disolusioning. But all in all, I’ve really loved all the people I’ve met from online. (Especially my boyfriend… I really love him.)

But it’s not something I’d do lightly. And not something I’d do without taking proper precautions.