found drama

Fifth year in a row. Here goes… At F_D, they’re not “New Year’s Resolutions”, they’re goals. Good old fashioned “smart” ¹ goals.

In the interest of continued personal growth, I’m going to continue this tradition. But after meditating a bit on last-year’s outcomes, it is probably best for my sanity if I focus these a bit.

1. Exercise at least four days each week. No cheating, but let’s not get too crazy either. Fifteen minutes on the treadmill? Qualifies. Brisk walk around the block? Probably not. Rock climbing? Skiing? Sledding? Yes, yes, and yes. But let’s not get psychotic about the rest of the specifics ².
2. Finish the “Orin” WordPress theme. Ortho (this blog’s current theme) is about three years old now. That doesn’t make it bad, but I’ve been hacking on Orin for a couple months now; it’s time to wrap up that puppy and get it deployed.
3. Get to know Groovy/Grails. I’ve recently added this to my arsenal at work. But it’s a pretty superficial understanding thus far, and I’m relying a lot on the expertise of others. And while I find it perfectly acceptable to collaborate in this way (to each their own focus and specialty), I have a ways to go still for true proficiency ³.
4. Photography: a 365 project. Dare I attempt this? I did a variation on this project when H. was born and managed to hit 365 of 366 photos. A worthy and appropriate challenge.
5. Reading: ≥36 books. A repeat of last year’s goal. I came up short in both 2009 and 2010 (25 and 35, respectively)–and I’m really not sure why ⁴. Mostly I’m just jealous of @fogus’ 77. Over the past two years I’ve also cited a list of twelve specific books to read. I don’t think I’ll do that this year–most of last year’s books aren’t at the library, and I’m too cheap to go out and buy them “just because”.
6. Writing: ≥ 2 hours per week. Last year’s call to arms was for three hours. I ought to be able to do that but since I came nowhere near that ⁵, it would probably best to scale it down a bit and lapse back to 2008’s goal. And to help along the way, set a couple of micro-projects:
   • Finish/revise the 2009 NaNoWriMo novel ⁶;
   • Finish the 2010 NaNoWriMo novel ⁷
   • Participate in 2011’s NaNoWriMo.

   Between these three items and the other miscellaneous ideas and projects, I ought to be able to get to this.

These ought to represent a good, focused batch of goals for 2011. Other than that, it’s the various sundry little details of life… following through on chores and house projects. And now to sail this ship we call 2011…

1. In case you don’t know what that means: Specific. Measurable. Attainable. Realistic. Time-bound.[↩]
2. Climbing at least four times a week? I’ll just have faith it’ll happen. Get my money’s worth at Bolton? No worries there.[↩]
3. Fortunately, I feel as though work leaves me with no choice but to conquer this one.[↩]
4. Does NaNoWriMo really disrupt that many goals that much?[↩]
5. In fact, scarcely wrote at all in 2010.[↩]
6. Which was fun to write and should be fun to re-visit.[↩]
7. Which I “finished” at 52,703 words but was far from having an ending.[↩]

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