Success!

 
Do not let ambitions overshadow small success. - Fortune Cookie

I needed to see this fortune last year. Though perhaps I wouldn't have really received its meaning. I get it now.

With a job that has me running every which way just about every day, my own personal ambitions, the relationships with significant people in my life, and my daily duties to my pets and home, I have many busy days. I might watch twenty to forty minutes of Netflix during dinner (my dumb-down time, and time to laugh with my Lover), but then I begin thinking about how the rest of my night will play out - when to spend time on the interwebs reading blogs and articles, when to do some creative work, when to prep for my next day and when to go to bed after having some time for reading. Oh, but I also have to clean the dinner dishes!

So on occasion, I let a ball or two or a few drop in my routine and from my intentions. I am learning to be okay with this. I get a lot of things done. I have my small everyday successes. I forget that when I am zeroed in on the goals of my ambitions.

Today, I e-mailed a finished annual report to my boss while I fielded phone calls, payroll issues, and prepared ten binders of paperwork for the very first Peer Educator training. The Peer Educators program is what I was hired for, though I got handed an after-school program to manage as well. I am really excited about the Peer Educators. This group will complete twenty-five hours of training in the evidence-based human sexuality curriculum our Health Educators deliver to the local high schools. They are teenagers themselves, so the idea is that they will learn this information and pass it on to their peers. They will also plan and implement two entirely youth-led service-learning projects related to issues of teen pregnancy and HIV/STD prevention.

I love working with teenagers. Especially when it has to do with leadership and service-learning. There are very few things so rewarding as investing time in another person's learning and watching them develop into a stronger, more capable human being. Today's orientation went well - I heard one participant as she whispered to her friend "I am so excited about this!"

I know I will make a connection with these teens and build them up as best as I can. It makes me think of the Women Leaders Rising class I used to teach at my old after-school program - a female leadership and service-learning program for high school students. I am in my element.

Success. I also ate really, really healthy all day. No exercise. It's okay. Small successes.