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Goals, Reflections, & Social Media


I took November off from blogging so that I could participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I'm proud to say that after 8 years of participating, I am *finally* an official winner!  So, while I have gained wonderful things from each and every time I've participated, hitting that special 50,000-word mark has remained elusive until now.

I know exactly what made the difference, too.  I reviewed my 50 Before 50 list in my bullet journal and saw that this was a goal made over two years ago that hadn't yet been achieved. This year was my last opportunity to hit that 50 before 50 goal.  I felt an urgency this go-round because crossing this off my list truly meant something.

Since I even finished with NaNoWriMo a bit early, over Thanksgiving break I took the opportunity to participate in Dr. Laura Sheneman's Think Like a Social Media Superstar challenge. She runs a blog and a podcast called Librarian Influencers, so be sure to check her out if you haven't already. This was a fun challenge for me.  While I love social media and was a pretty early adopter of using Facebook to reach my parents and Twitter for PD, I really want to focus on building my library Instagram for my high school students. She had us analyze and think deeply about how to best use social media to meet the particular goals we set.

This has me really putting some thought into the power of not only using social media, and not only setting goals but the power of writing down those goals and of being a reflective practitioner throughout the process.  If we are so busy spinning round and round to achieve and we keep putting off the time to revisit our goals and to reset the charts as we move toward meeting them, then we are going into things already operating in deficit mode.

I'm grateful to have had the time to think and breathe and be reflective over the week-long holiday from work.  I feel renewed and ready to make these next 3 weeks. I'm going to spend this final evening doing some active reflecting in my library goal journal of November in the library, set some goals down on paper for December, and be intentional about how I use my social media for the library this month, taking special notice of what seems to work, and what falls a bit flat.

I hope your December is a great one. May we all have libraries and classrooms (and heck, office spaces, and homes, too) filled with joy.  May every day be filled with something to celebrate and something you are grateful for.  May we all set thoughtful goals, strive to reach them with intention and be kind to one another during this holiday season.
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