As the year rolls over, it’s once again time to reflect on the previous year’s resolutions and see how well I did, then state new resolutions for this year.
Eat right – Remember that life change I was talking about? I actually did pretty well this year. I did I bunch of research and learned a lot about what food to eat, how much to eat, when to eat it, and so on. I’ve changed my eating habits considerably, but I still have a long way to go. Morah and I still have the tendency to dine out more frequently than we should, although now, even when we eat at a restaurant, I’ll eat considerably less than I used to. Doing so has helped me lose a lot of weight. Not as much as I’d like, but that’s where the next resolution comes in.
Work out more frequently – By the end of the summer, I was working out as many mornings as I could muster (which was usually more like every other day, but when you consider how little exercise I was getting before that…). As the weather got colder, I stopped going as frequently. I recall one morning when it was raining outside and the temperature was really low. That’s the day I stopped going. I don’t know which month that was in, but I haven’t exercised in a while. That was the nice thing about having the elliptical machine in our flat; we didn’t have to go anywhere to work out. At any rate, I know it’s something I need to do more of, so something needs to be sorted out in the very near future. At the very least, I’ll go at it hardcore when the weather warms up, which won’t be for a while, so I need to find a solution in the meantime. Any ideas that don’t include joining a gym?
Floss my teeth – Yeah. I’m really quite bad at this one. At least I finally got around to visiting a dentist! Now my teeth are back in the shape they should be. I recall having a plan to brush my teeth earlier in the evening so that (A) I would eat less (because I wouldn’t eat after having brushed my teeth) and (B) so that I wouldn’t have the “I’m too tired” excuse for not flossing. I can set three alarms on my new mobile phone, so perhaps I’ll set one of them to remind me to brush =and floss= earlier in the evening.
Do my traction – My back has been slowly getting better. Even as I type this, I’m sitting on my wedge with my block behind my back. On the other hand, my back has been getting better slowly. Doing my traction would expedite the process and help to relieve the tension and aching in my back. On my old mobile phone, I had a daily alarm set to remind me to do my traction, but it eventually became the alarm that let us know it was time to feed the cat. I haven’t bothered to set the alarm again on my new phone, but perhaps I should. And this time, I’ll actually have to do my traction.
Save money – The primary purpose for saving all that money was to pay for our wedding, which we have, so I guess it worked. Now to save up for a car and a house.
Drink more water – I drink tons of water! I have a water bottle at work that I fill up everyday. Most days, I drink one and half to two liters of water at work alone. I drink a lot more water at home, as well. In fact, I drink water so regularly that I’m going to go ahead and say that this resolution can be removed from the list!
Use my electric toothbrush – Here’s another resolution that’s ready to come off the list. My plan of sticking my old manual toothbrush in a drawer worked. The only time I don’t use the electric toothbrush is when we travel (I have a tiny travel toothbrush for that), so I think it’s safe to say this one is complete!
Get caught up & stay caught up – I didn’t. Not at all. It just keeps mounting up. So what am I going to do about it? I’m cutting back on the amount of things to keep up on. Our subscriptions to Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and WIRED all end soon and I’m not going to renew them. As much as I enjoy those magazines (especially WIRED), I just can’t justify spending the money to continue receiving them if I’m not going to read them. I’ve also pretty much ceased listening to podcasts. They were easy to listen to when I was editing video, because I didn’t have to read anything and the work I was doing didn’t require much thought. Now that I spend most of my time writing code, I can’t read and write the code =and= listen to a podcast. The solution? Good-bye podcasts. I also never made a schedule outlining what I would do when, which may help. If, as soon as I get home from work, I want to read a magazine or a book for an hour instead of watch T.V., perhaps just having the little piece of paper tell me to do it will actually get me to do it. It’s worth a shot, anyway.
Build my business – If ever there were a time for me to get this going, now is the time. I have potential clients sitting out there like ducks, just ready to be… Shot? Wait, this isn’t a very good analogy. Anyway, you know what I mean. The point is, I’m very, very close to being ready to officially launch the business under the new name, so what’s holding me back? That’s what I need to address.
Work on my personal websites – Here’s a new one for this year. It’s been a tradition each year for me to unveil the new look of alifelessordinary.com on the site’s anniversary. For a number of reasons, I didn’t do that in 2006. I had hoped to launch v5 on 1 January, but I never found the time to finish the design before the big date. The same is true with thomasandmorah.com. Version 3 is on its way, but isn’t quite ready for public viewing. I’ve been neglecting my personal websites a lot, and, as weird as it seems, that means I’m letting people down. I have friends and family who visit the sites expecting updates that never seem to happen. It took me over 60 days after our wedding to pull thomasandmorah.com offline, and I still haven’t put anything up in its place. Here’s hoping 2007 will be a more productive year for personal web development.
You know the drill. Post your resolutions and check back in July for the update.
Recent Comments