New Years, etc
In many ways, the last year has been one of the worst. Fortunately, no-one died. Lots of upheaval, isolation, depression. In general, lots of change. But adversity brings growth, and I also feel like I/we have grown a lot too. For the most part, we've dealt with and adjusted to the challenges. I'm happy with the broad outlines of my life, and feel like I'm generally making progress. Except on the social front, my bad.
So, my 5 resolutions (for all of this, freely read I as we and vice versa):
1. Continue making incremental improvements.
This is kind of a broad catchall for keeping up on stuff that I think I've been generally doing good at. Getting to the gym (although I should focus more on weights and less on cardio,) getting work done, staying in touch, organizing the house, etc. I've been pretty happy with setting small goals, putting lots of reminders in place, and building on past successes (at least in my mind.) And I'd like to continue making progress in 2011.
2. Make more Deliberate use of our finances.
I've been kind of saving money on auto-pilot for all of my working life, with the vague assumption that I would make a down payment on a house at some point when I felt settled. Not that I lived frugally, I just never made big expenditures. Which is kind of odd, because I simultaneously believed that people should spend money more freely while they're young and able to take advantage of it. Shrug. With the housing bubble collapsing, it's getting close to the "right time" to buy a house. But it's also feeling less and less like an automatic good investment. This resolution is to think more clearly about what I want to spend money on, what I value experiences at, what specifically we're saving for, etc.
3. Incorporate more technology into my life.
I'm a bad geek, all in all. I'm more interested in the innards, how/why something works than actually using it to do something. I only really started using an RSS reader in the last 2 years, never really used twitter, skype, dropbox, foursquare and probably a half dozen other key tools. My calendars are spread out haphazardly and poorly synced, etc. My address book is all on Google, which is one tiny step in the right direction. With the current state of smart phones, it's becoming a detriment not have everything integrated. In the coming year, I will try to research and use technology more deliberately.
4. Explore Seattle and meet people.
This has probably been my biggest failing of the last 6 months. I really need to focus on just throwing out as many feelers as possible, digging up as many cool places to go, and just dive in. My natural laziness lets me too readily just get out once a week, maybe hit the mall for a movie, and otherwise be a homebody doing some work and consuming the internet to pass the time. T&D were here over the past week and we did more in the city than I'd done in the last few months.
5. Be productive on non-work stuff.
This is an eternal thorn in my side. The transition from consumptive to creative is a difficult one. I'm moderately good at coming up with interesting ideas/plans. But rarely flesh them out and follow through into something that might be useful, entertaining, or insightful for others. I need to do this more, and need to set up an incentive structure to nudge me into it.
So, my 5 resolutions (for all of this, freely read I as we and vice versa):
1. Continue making incremental improvements.
This is kind of a broad catchall for keeping up on stuff that I think I've been generally doing good at. Getting to the gym (although I should focus more on weights and less on cardio,) getting work done, staying in touch, organizing the house, etc. I've been pretty happy with setting small goals, putting lots of reminders in place, and building on past successes (at least in my mind.) And I'd like to continue making progress in 2011.
2. Make more Deliberate use of our finances.
I've been kind of saving money on auto-pilot for all of my working life, with the vague assumption that I would make a down payment on a house at some point when I felt settled. Not that I lived frugally, I just never made big expenditures. Which is kind of odd, because I simultaneously believed that people should spend money more freely while they're young and able to take advantage of it. Shrug. With the housing bubble collapsing, it's getting close to the "right time" to buy a house. But it's also feeling less and less like an automatic good investment. This resolution is to think more clearly about what I want to spend money on, what I value experiences at, what specifically we're saving for, etc.
3. Incorporate more technology into my life.
I'm a bad geek, all in all. I'm more interested in the innards, how/why something works than actually using it to do something. I only really started using an RSS reader in the last 2 years, never really used twitter, skype, dropbox, foursquare and probably a half dozen other key tools. My calendars are spread out haphazardly and poorly synced, etc. My address book is all on Google, which is one tiny step in the right direction. With the current state of smart phones, it's becoming a detriment not have everything integrated. In the coming year, I will try to research and use technology more deliberately.
4. Explore Seattle and meet people.
This has probably been my biggest failing of the last 6 months. I really need to focus on just throwing out as many feelers as possible, digging up as many cool places to go, and just dive in. My natural laziness lets me too readily just get out once a week, maybe hit the mall for a movie, and otherwise be a homebody doing some work and consuming the internet to pass the time. T&D were here over the past week and we did more in the city than I'd done in the last few months.
5. Be productive on non-work stuff.
This is an eternal thorn in my side. The transition from consumptive to creative is a difficult one. I'm moderately good at coming up with interesting ideas/plans. But rarely flesh them out and follow through into something that might be useful, entertaining, or insightful for others. I need to do this more, and need to set up an incentive structure to nudge me into it.