Giving back

I had a pretty exciting weekend this past weekend. I gave back to my community. A couple weeks ago there was supposed to be a community wide service project to clean up the Charles River. This is an annual event, but owing to shootings and what not it got pushed back a week. This was very fortunate for me because the delay made it so that I could go (my classes being over and such). My ward got up a group together and we were assigned a section of the river to clean up. We spent a couple hours and collected tons of trash. It was fun, and it felt good to do something to help my community.

And then on Sunday I was lucky enough to participate in a choral concert at Trinity Church. The music director at Trinity Church decided last week that he wanted to put together a community-wide concert to help bring peace back into our community after our recent tragedies. The concert was called "A Song of Peace" and featured about a dozen different choirs from around the area that each sang one or two pieces and then they all joined together to sing one piece at the end. It was cool. The ward choir for one of the other wards in my stake was invited to participate, and they extended the invitation to other members of the stake. We sang "Come, Come Ye Saints." It was really cool to sing in that church. The concert was wonderful and very much invited the Spirit. 

I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to give something back to my community this weekend. It was wonderful.

Life Plans

A little over a year ago my bishop gave a talk in sacrament meeting where he outlined for goals for our ward (congregation). One of those goals was for each of us to create a plan for ourselves. From what I remember he specifically talked about a one year plan. At the time I remember sitting down one day and establishing that one year from then I'd still be in school. In other words my plan was to keep doing what I was doing. Plan made? check. So I kind of checked that off my list and every time my bishop has mentioned making a plan since then I haven't paid too much attention, I mean I'd already done it.

A month or two ago I met with my bishop about something else and he asked me about my three year plan. I thought really hard, and decided that my three year plan was only as developed as my ability to do the math to add three to my age. He encouraged me to work on it. On my way home that day I was thinking "wait a minute, where did a three year plan come from? Last I remember it was a one year plan!" And then I realized that it didn't matter what he'd said back then, because either way I'd already lived out my one year plan.

So, now I'm working on a three year plan. Except, I can't even begin to fathom where I'll be in three years. I mean, I want to have gainful employment (read: a full time job), but I don't really know in what field of librarianship. And I don't really know where (read: where ever someone offers me said full-time job). This week I think my struggle is in trying to understand the difference between a plan and goals. I feel like making specific goals is dumb because a lot of what will impact my life three years from now is semi out of my control (I don't get to decide if/when I'll be offered a job). I think the other thing that worries me is that if I make specific goals then I feel like I'm limiting myself somehow--like if something totally different (and better) came along then I'd feel guilty to abandoning my goals or something. I don't know why this is such a struggle for me.

What do you think? Do you have three- or five- or ten- year plan for yourself? How did you go about making it?

National DEAR Day

Happy Drop Everything And Read Day.

http://www.dropeverythingandread.com/NationalDEARday.html

Go read something. :)