It's a high time I put my new years resolutions out there. Its become a tradition of mine that is better late then never I suppose. This year I tried to be a bit more thoughtful and perhaps realistic by setting goals that I could measure. I al took some advice I read and brought on an "advisor".
Looking back at 2005 it was another down year overall. My ego still hasn't made its way back home and worse it seems my self-esteem ran away with it. I'm getting used to them being gone though!
House renovations and trying to build a business from it have weighed heavy throughout. The death of my grandfather and the disasters in New Orleans region and Pakistan were all major bummers.
It wasn't all bad though. We welcomed our second child Teagan Cecelia in April. I'm enjoying fatherhood a lot more this second time around. My youngest brother Kevin got married taking any Appnel boys off the market for a good 15 years. I also got to a number of conference this year and got to meet a lot of interesting and intelligent people I'd mostly known online. I was honored to be one of the tools
to attend the year's O'Reilly Foo Camp. I also got to do some interesting work as interest in MT consulting clear grew through the year.
Looking back at last year's list though it was more misses then hits. I'm not sure if I'm setting my goals to high or need to set them so they are more easily measured. (I'm going for the later this year.)
A quick review of last year's list:
Take care of my health.
This one I did pretty well with. I got back to see a whole flotilla of medical professionals for different things. In many cases I had just stopped going for years. Where I failed is in exercising for both stress relief and doing something about my weight. Towards the end of the summer and early fall I got into running for a while. While I hate running in general it helped. With the cold weather and the holidays I've fell back off the wagon.
Balance coding and writing. (again)
Still having troubles with this one. I cranked out a lot of code last year. I also rewrote the Movable Type manual and partook in another cancelled book effort. That said I ended the year severely burned out when it came to writing anything of substance. It's still lingering.
Seek Stability.
Still having troubles here also. This is more of a career issue then anything. Having my own consultancy in a nascent market is like riding a roller coaster. Having pinned my success on a startup
struggling to get it together themselves -- well I wonder if I've just been plain stupid.
Relax. Be Human.
Did better here though more work is needed. Other then during the MT documentation work I did much better then the past year. Better work/life balance and a lot less working passed exhaustion.
Involvement.
Failed miserably here. The non-profit I was (trying to be) involved in essentially pushed me out. They're doing well though, but it was a major disappoint on the year. Trying to be human (see above), I just dropped that whole idea of involvement.
On to the new year!
So my advisor (wife) thinks this will be an up year. I hope her optimism rubs off and proves to be true. So I came up with a few realistic goals that would be a challenge. This year I tried to make them all measurable rather then the broad open-ended ones of years past.
Read some non-tech books.
This one keep appearing on my list and I keep failing. This year I'm going to list some specific ones. I want to read David Allen's Getting Things Done, Barry Sears' A Week In The Zone (from what I can tell an "abridged" version of The Zone) and at least two of Ian Fleming's Bond books that my dad lent me from his high school paperback collection. If I read these during the year I would have made a huge improvement over past years. The issue is finding time in my regular schedule -- without a commute and little business travel I've found that finding time to be the most difficult part.
Get in Shape.
Since I've be doing better seeing medical professionals I'll get more specific here. This year was pretty dismissal when it came to exercise. What I'm learning is that access and organization are keys factors to getting in regular workouts. You don't need a gym membership besides the drive (oh how I miss my in building gym of my city apartment!) wastes too much time. I got a pretty nice free-weights set and bench for my birthday. Big loser that I am I haven't used it because the space is all cluttered up from the current major renovation. Organization has a lot to do with work life balance and making lists -- hence GTD on my reading list. So loose 25 pounds and work out at least twice a week.
Get Hired.
I'm going to put this one on my list and see how the new year plays out. This is an the evolution of last year's "stability" goal that is more measurable. What I've learn from last year is the most difficult and turbulent parts of my life are directly tied to my work situation. While working for myself has its advantages, dealing with the stress, uncertainty and workload of running my own business has taken a lot out of me. Working for someone else would solve this, but doing what is an unanswered question we'll be looking at.
Writing More.
I'm going to put this one on again. It just would be good for me. 1 major business post a month and 4 to my personal weblog.
Coming Clean.
This is a personal one. Like getting hired, I'm not sure if I will do anything about this one either, but I want to put it out there to see what I do about it.
So here is to the new year!
