a new year began last week sometime....

[concertinette]

I've been kind of mellowly going about work and laundry and re-starting life for 2009, but simmering on the back burner, a few thoughts about life and everything.  It's kind of funny that January 1 is the time for contemplation, because mid-winter is sure not when I'm at my most optimistic, or determined to stick with a goal.  I do like that even in America, the land of "sure, whatever" there's a time set aside when thinking is encouraged.

2008 was good, with a couple of "could've been better".

• I did a job search, found something I liked, moved across the country, and have made a pretty good start at a community of friends here. It's been really great to be back in touch with poeple I knew on the east coast, and making new friends, but I'm a total goober when it comes to keeping in touch with people I no longer see regularly.  Chicago friends, I apologize.
• Dirk and I are cozily married and supporting a very needy cat, starting to mesh our time and hobbies and friends a bit more than we had in Chicago.  We did some major financial planning and long-term thinking, and have good ideas, but no house yet.
• Made a token effort at physical fitness, but don't bike or go to the gym with enough regularity for it to be particularly healthful.  I did up my maximum number of pushups from 15 to 22, but the 100-pushups plan crashed around week 3.
• Learned... umm... some stuff about plasma arcs... how to make a good Lemon Drop... a bit of German (thanks to German parent company)... oh, and some new GUI tricks in Matlab.  On consideration, I'm probably a better musician than I was a year ago, but I have no proof and I didn't really work on it much, so that only marginally counts.
• Elected awesome president, with the help of a few million like-minded citizens.

When I start to write it down, everything I'm hoping to pay attention to for 2009 falls into a few categories.  I'm staying away from the specifics here, as that's a bit too revealing.  My bottom line goals for the year?

1. Keep my job and survive the economy - better focus, more on-time-ness.
2. Buy a house and take care of it - keep up the planning and budgeting, learn the maintenance skills, make it liveable, throw parties.
3. Pay genuine attention to people, including the husband, the new friends, and the old friends.  Assume that people will like it when I call them.  Less internetting and more going out.
4. Personal growth, primarily physical fitness (nothing new) and skill-building (mostly music and house-related)