Sunday, January 07, 2007

Happy New Year!

Ok, I know I'm a wee bit late on that one! But, I'll save you the explanations and get on with the post.

I had mentioned earlier that I was going to post about my New Year's Resolutions a bit more in detail, so here's that post.

First of all, I take a look at the changing of the year as an opportunity to stop and spend some time reflecting about my life. Which direction do I want to be headed in? How can I bring myself closer to the things I want out of life? What did I set out to do in the past year that I haven't done, and what have I managed to spend a lot of time on? What also helps is that I've done up a list of things that I would like to accomplish in my life. I think the current total is somewhere between 115 and 130, but I can't be sure. A lot of my "New Year's Resolutions" come off of that list too. These are things I've generally put a lot of thought into and are things I think would make my life better or more interesting.

I'll tell you right now that I don't manage to keep all my resolutions. Some of them are things that I would like to constantly improve upon. Others are things that once I achieve them, they're done. If I don't manage to do something, it isn't the end of the world, because this is not the one time of year that I do any goal setting or life evaluation. It just happens to be a time when many people are thinking about it, so I join in with them and get a little benefit for myself out of it.

This year, my resolution list looks like this . . .

1) Finish my CAIB designation.

I've done CAIB 2 and 3 and I really should just finish numbers 1 and 4 and be done with it. It is boring and tedious, but finishing it will be nice on the resume. Plus, while Lance is doing CGA courses it's a good time for me to be studying too. The next test writes in February and I'll be there (so long as the textbook finally gets here!).

2) Get my full driver's license.

I think this one is more daunting than all the studying. However, I also haven't been driving as much lately since Lance's work schedule changed a little bit so that he starts and finishes earlier in the day.

3) Run the Sun Run in less than an hour.

Last year I surprised the heck out of myself by finishing in 1h 4m. I thought I would be a full 10 minutes slower at least! This year, I'm pretty sure if I train diligently, I should be able to finish in under an hour. I'm just not sure whether I'll be using this site, or this one for the training schedule.

4) NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

Every November a bunch of people as weird as I am set themselves the challenging task of writing a novel in one month. The goal is quantity and not quality. It builds up some writing skills and since writing is something I'd love to do professionally, I thought I'd give it a shot. I know it'll be crap, but at least it'll be a long piece of crap that I could improve upon.

5) Skydiving

Yes, I am going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane strapped to a person and a parachute. Lance even said that he would go skydiving with me, which is a big deal since the thought rather frightens him. The only thing that might interfere with this one is saving up the money for it since I'm also saving up for goal #6.

6) Buy a SmartPhone

I'd really like to upgrade my Palm Pilot. A cell phone makes sense for so many things in the future. So, it seems like it would be foolish not to get a combo deal. Only problem is that I'm not a phone person so I don't want a monthly contract. Besides, the monthly contract that I'd need to get in order to get the phone for cheap is insanely expensive because it's a voice and data plan. So, I have to save up for an $800 phone and then do the monthly pre-paid phone card thing. I think I'm going to go with Rogers because they have a $100 phone card that doesn't expire for a year. If I'm saving up $800, I may as well save an extra hundred for the phone card. Anyway, I have a savings plan in place so that I should be able to get it in the fall (or earlier depending on how quickly I save up those pennies, or how quickly the phone prices come down).

So there you have it. If you have some goals that you'd like to share, feel free to list them in the comments.

1 comment:

Kim said...

Good luck with all your resolutions, particularly numbers 5 and 6!