2009 Year in Review: The Best Decade of My Life?
It only hit me just a couple weeks ago that, not only is the end of the year coming, so is the end of the decade! (modulo quibbling about how to count decades since there was no year zero). I started to hear a lot of "best of decade" lists, and retrospectives on "the last ten years". Most of them have been negative: starting off with the dot-com crash and the September 11th attacks, moving on to a disastrous war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and ending with a "Great Recession" and slogging through a war in Afghanistan. I've more than once seen writers ask for a "do-over" of the current decade. The only other common factor is that nobody has ever agreed upon a name for this decade. When VH1 does a "Remember the '00s" special some years down the road, how are they gonna pronounce it? We shall see... Personally, I prefer the "aughts". Who's with me?
But for me personally, this has probably been the best decade of my life. Admittedly, I don't have many to compare it to -- I didn't even experience all of the 1980s! -- but still, future decades will have a lot to beat. Let's see: I graduated valedictorian of my high school (June 2001); went to an awesome college (UMBC), where I met kick ass friends and my future wife; graduated with two interesting degrees (Computer Science AND Mathematics, May 2005); had a very cool first job at a small research & development company (May 2006); got married to the best woman in the world (April 2007); started a new job at a bigger research and development institution (friggin' JOHNS HOPKINS Applied Physics Lab, July 2009); and bought our first house (September 2009). Let's hope that the 2010s can match that! By the way, what are we gonna call this next decade? The teens?
Speaking of pronunciation, I'm pleased to hear more and more people refer to next year as "twenty-ten" instead of the less-pleasing "two thousand and ten". Hopefully, this practice will catch on further -- I much prefer the shorter pronunciation! I've even been known to refer to 200X as "twenty-oh-X", but I get funny looks when I say that so I try to keep it to myself. But I can be optimistic about the future!
This next year, 2010, will be kinda special too. If you're a numbers nerd, that is. I'll be turning 27, which is the first time since 1991 where my age will be a perfect cube, and the last time until 2047 when I turn 64. In fact, 27 is three cubed, or three to the third power, so I expect the number three to crop up in a number of places. I mean, 3 is a special number. In fact, I'm going to insert the number three myself, with the following.
First, some background: As some of my loyal readers may remember, in 2008 (twenty oh eight) I laid out a series of goals, and chronicled my achievement (or lack thereof) to those goals throughout the year. I didn't do that for 2009, and I felt the lack of that, so I decided to re-institute some goals for 2010. In the spirit of the number three, I will have three goals, each somehow dealing with the number three. Here they are:
1) Spend THREE hours per week on a personally fulfilling project. This includes a creative project where there is a physical product (for example, making my own board game), a software product (for example, writing applications to learn a new programming language), or a volunteer project (getting in some community service is VERY fulfilling, and something I haven't done in a while). This doesn't include browsing the internet, playing games, or spending time with friends & family (unless said time is directly involved with volunteering or developing my creative project). The thing is, in the last year or so, I've felt too much like just a consumer of Cool Stuff other people did, without producing any/enough of my own. Hopefully this will remedy that.
Three hours doesn't seem like a lot. But given how busy I often find myself, coupled with starting part-time graduate school in the Spring, hopefully I'll be able to manage at least three. This will probably require specifically scheduling time throughout the week to get this done. So if you hear me say "Sorry, I'm working on 'Project X' tonight," hopefully you'll understand.
2) Following the "producer, not a consumer" thread from above: Write THREE essay-sized LiveJournal entries a month. Essay sized will mean at least one page long, printed out. Working on these will not count towards my personally fulfilling projects goal. They should substantially be made up of original content (so no memes, re-posts, or excessive quoting of others), and hopefully make a good analysis of an issue, idea, event, etc.
Lately, I've relied too heavily on my Twitter feed and largely avoided writing in LiveJournal. It's been easier. Lazier. Not as fulfilling. Twitter is a great way to share links, but with little to no context or anlaysis. Maybe next time I see a REALLY good article, I'll link to it from LJ... and provide my own analysis of the subject. That's probably how I'll start off, at least.
As before, I'll try to have a once a month post on my progress towards these goals. That post will not count towards my three LJ essays.
3) Finally, one that I know will make anailia happy: lose THIRTY-THREE pounds this year. Is that possible? For me, I don't know. I've never really tried to systematically lose weight before. That's nearly 3 pounds a month (see? another three).
anailia and I got an exercise bike for ourselves for Christmas. Also, I figure I'll resurrect the Hacker's Diet exercise program and wearing my pedometer to ensure I get towards 10,000 steps a day. I'll also try to be more cognizant of what I eat, mostly trying to eat less, since I'm (fairly) content with what I eat. I also plan to see a doctor sometime early 2010 just for a general checkup/physical, and I'll see what else I can do. Since having graduated at college, I believe that my weight has held fairly constant (plus or minus about five pounds), so hopefully mostly upping my physical activity will jump-start some weight loss.
But for me personally, this has probably been the best decade of my life. Admittedly, I don't have many to compare it to -- I didn't even experience all of the 1980s! -- but still, future decades will have a lot to beat. Let's see: I graduated valedictorian of my high school (June 2001); went to an awesome college (UMBC), where I met kick ass friends and my future wife; graduated with two interesting degrees (Computer Science AND Mathematics, May 2005); had a very cool first job at a small research & development company (May 2006); got married to the best woman in the world (April 2007); started a new job at a bigger research and development institution (friggin' JOHNS HOPKINS Applied Physics Lab, July 2009); and bought our first house (September 2009). Let's hope that the 2010s can match that! By the way, what are we gonna call this next decade? The teens?
Speaking of pronunciation, I'm pleased to hear more and more people refer to next year as "twenty-ten" instead of the less-pleasing "two thousand and ten". Hopefully, this practice will catch on further -- I much prefer the shorter pronunciation! I've even been known to refer to 200X as "twenty-oh-X", but I get funny looks when I say that so I try to keep it to myself. But I can be optimistic about the future!
This next year, 2010, will be kinda special too. If you're a numbers nerd, that is. I'll be turning 27, which is the first time since 1991 where my age will be a perfect cube, and the last time until 2047 when I turn 64. In fact, 27 is three cubed, or three to the third power, so I expect the number three to crop up in a number of places. I mean, 3 is a special number. In fact, I'm going to insert the number three myself, with the following.
First, some background: As some of my loyal readers may remember, in 2008 (twenty oh eight) I laid out a series of goals, and chronicled my achievement (or lack thereof) to those goals throughout the year. I didn't do that for 2009, and I felt the lack of that, so I decided to re-institute some goals for 2010. In the spirit of the number three, I will have three goals, each somehow dealing with the number three. Here they are:
1) Spend THREE hours per week on a personally fulfilling project. This includes a creative project where there is a physical product (for example, making my own board game), a software product (for example, writing applications to learn a new programming language), or a volunteer project (getting in some community service is VERY fulfilling, and something I haven't done in a while). This doesn't include browsing the internet, playing games, or spending time with friends & family (unless said time is directly involved with volunteering or developing my creative project). The thing is, in the last year or so, I've felt too much like just a consumer of Cool Stuff other people did, without producing any/enough of my own. Hopefully this will remedy that.
Three hours doesn't seem like a lot. But given how busy I often find myself, coupled with starting part-time graduate school in the Spring, hopefully I'll be able to manage at least three. This will probably require specifically scheduling time throughout the week to get this done. So if you hear me say "Sorry, I'm working on 'Project X' tonight," hopefully you'll understand.
2) Following the "producer, not a consumer" thread from above: Write THREE essay-sized LiveJournal entries a month. Essay sized will mean at least one page long, printed out. Working on these will not count towards my personally fulfilling projects goal. They should substantially be made up of original content (so no memes, re-posts, or excessive quoting of others), and hopefully make a good analysis of an issue, idea, event, etc.
Lately, I've relied too heavily on my Twitter feed and largely avoided writing in LiveJournal. It's been easier. Lazier. Not as fulfilling. Twitter is a great way to share links, but with little to no context or anlaysis. Maybe next time I see a REALLY good article, I'll link to it from LJ... and provide my own analysis of the subject. That's probably how I'll start off, at least.
As before, I'll try to have a once a month post on my progress towards these goals. That post will not count towards my three LJ essays.
3) Finally, one that I know will make anailia happy: lose THIRTY-THREE pounds this year. Is that possible? For me, I don't know. I've never really tried to systematically lose weight before. That's nearly 3 pounds a month (see? another three).
anailia and I got an exercise bike for ourselves for Christmas. Also, I figure I'll resurrect the Hacker's Diet exercise program and wearing my pedometer to ensure I get towards 10,000 steps a day. I'll also try to be more cognizant of what I eat, mostly trying to eat less, since I'm (fairly) content with what I eat. I also plan to see a doctor sometime early 2010 just for a general checkup/physical, and I'll see what else I can do. Since having graduated at college, I believe that my weight has held fairly constant (plus or minus about five pounds), so hopefully mostly upping my physical activity will jump-start some weight loss.