New Beginnings, Part Two
Of course, this being early January, everybody is talking about New Year’s resolutions. I’m going to come right out and say that, by and large, resolutions are silly. Nobody remembers them for long, and certainly nobody keeps up with what they pronounced they’d do in a drunken fit at 12:01 after the ball dropped.
So, that said, I’m going to hijack the idea anyway and codify my list of goals for the year. Some of these will probably take longer than a year, and some are open-ended ideas that can’t exactly be achieved in a definitive way.
(Yes, I’m aware those are basically resolutions. I’m also aware that they’re very likely to go unfulfilled. Such is life.)
First, I’ve become generally unhappy with the state of my health. There are quite a few basic and simple steps I can take to help this. As such:
- Be in bed by midnight every night.
- Take my vitamins every day.
- Work out at least three times a week. I was quite good with gym attendance over the summer, losing a little over 20 pounds leading up to the wedding. After we got back from the honeymoon, though, I never managed to get back into a regular routine—if I can’t do that now, it’s time to cancel the membership. But since work lets us take long lunch breaks to work out, I should be able to get back into the groove without too much trouble.
- See a doctor for a general physical (I’ve not done so since 2001).
- See an optician to have my eyes checked (my vision still seems to be fine, but better safe than sorry).
- See a dentist to get these last couple of cavities filled, and start a regular schedule of cleanings twice a year.
I feel like my photography has been being neglected, and I’m not happy with this. To that end, I’m not going to say something silly like “take more pictures”—that never works. Instead, my photographic goals are:
- Organize my digital photos, and burn backups to CD.
- Organize old negatives, and get hi-res scans done of those frames I’d like to work on.
- Have prints made to decorate the house and my office.
- Work through the color correction and retouching books I bought last year.
- Post galleries of my work on the web.
I only have two web-based goals for the year. I’ve got two already-planned-out web projects that are in the hopper. It’s time to get off my bum and get them online and rolling:
- The Coffee Faucet, a reader-submission e-zine.
- Not Quite Lost, a localized travel guide.
A co-worker has me interested in creating music again, instead of just consuming it. To that end, I’m going to start practicing my trumpet one hour a week. If I manage to keep up with this, I may re-start my learning of the harmonica in 2006, but one thing at a time.
In terms of entertainment, I have four specific projects in mind:
- Watch all of the movies on the AFI 100 list this year, including the ones I’ve already seen—it’s only two a week. I’ll post brief mini-reviews here, which will probably be more interesting to me as a log of what I’ve seen than to people interested in movie recommendations.
- Keep up with my magazine subscriptions. If I find that the next issue has arrived before I’ve finished with the previous issue, cancel the subscription.
- Go through my music collection, and delete any mp3s which I downloaded illegally. If I’m not willing to pay for the songs, I don’t need them clogging up my playlists. (This doesn’t count, obviously, songs offered for free by the artist or label.)
- Start a monthly board or card game night with our college friends in the area.
There’s a few other odds and ends to take care of, as well:
- Put myself on a stricter budget, including cutting down on eating lunch out at work.
- Respond to email promptly rather than waiting “until I have time”—it just goes unanswered that way.
- Take a couple of continuing education courses, including Spanish, a business course of some sort (preferably relating to freelancing/running one’s own business) and photo or design courses which I could apply towards an eventual MFA.
- Sell my car.
- Buy a house.
- Set up my 401k at work (I want to get this done by my next paycheck, in fact)
I suppose those last two aren’t “odds and ends,” but such is life.
— John D Yuda 1368 days ago #