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Wrapping up Q3 of ‘08¹…  The results are in for my personal goals for 2008: Read the rest of this entry »

1. See also: Q1 and Q2 results.[↩]

With the second quarter of ‘08 now closed, we should check in on our progress for those personal goals stated back in January.  At the end of Q1, we were doing pretty well with with writing, reading, and climbing even though walking/running were not up to par (and hiking hadn’t been touched at all).  Overall I think Q2 was better though still not hitting all our goals in all places…: Read the rest of this entry »

With the first quarter wrapped-up, we should check in and see where I have landed for our personal goals, eh? Back in January, I posted five personal goals to this site. With some varying degrees of success, I have been chipping away at these goals January through March. Let’s see how well I weigh in thus far: Read the rest of this entry »

Since last year’s resolutions goals were such a success, I figured that I would do it again this time. Turning these “New Year’s resolutions” into goals and then making them measurable seems to be the way to go. Plus, all that measurability really lets the Inner Geek shine through with all that obsessive tracking and all those pretty graphs. So here goes the list for 2008:

1. Write for at least 2 hours every week. Stick with writing; make it a priority; the #1 priority. I did alright in the writing department during 2007 but I feel like I could do better. This year I will take the focus off of the word count and put it on the number of hours dedicated to writing-type activities. Under this umbrella, it will be easier to include relevant activities like outlining, research & brainstorming, revising, proofreading, and (of course) “writing proper”. That said, I would still like to target an average of 2,000 words per week.
2. Run or walk at least 10 miles every week. In other words: “Keep it up.” We’ll see how this one pans out. If ‘08 is anything like ‘07, I’ll do real well in the summer but not so well in those cooler winter months. No shame in that though. Not really? If nothing else, I would like to at least have this goal “hit” a minimum of 6 of the 12 months — especially since I only hit it five times in 2007.
3. Hike 10 new trails. An echo from last year’s list. In ‘07, I was one shy of the full ten — bummer. I really think I can get in the full 10 during 2008. And to up the ante, I’ll add the following caveat: make at least two of those trails go up mountains that are over 4,000 feet.
4. Go climbing (or bouldering) at least once per week. I signed up for that rock gym membership; now to get my monthly EFT’s worth. I figure that I need to get over there at least three times per month to break even; fit in a few more visits to really make it worth my while. But it’s not about that; it’s about the exercise and the climbing.
5. Read at least 24 new books in 2008. I did so well on this one in 2007; “read 12 new books” was last year’s goal, which I managed to overshoot by more than double. So if “double” is our new baseline, let’s just come right out and start there — 24 new titles in 2008. But let’s add a twist. I tend to read fiction almost exclusively; so to get over that, in 2008 I will pledge to make at least 6 of those 24 target titles non-fiction of some kind.

There… Five goals seems about right. No use going crazy with it and over-committing or anything like that. Any other semi-arbitrary auxiliary or supplementary goals? Learn to brew my own beer? Try ten new restaurants? Limit myself to 2 hours per week of Civ IV? Get ambulothanatophobia formally¹ recognized?

1. Where by “formally”, I mean “not deleted from Wikipedia”.[↩]

Personal goals for 2007: after last quarter, let’s see where we landed for 2007 overall:

1. Write approx. 80,000 40,000 new words of fiction. This goal morphed so many times over the year. First it was focused on 80k words in my novel project; then it was 80k new words on any project; then 40k new words and even some alternate calculations based on “hours spent”… No matter how I twisted the specifics of it, the heart of the goal remained the same: I needed to get myself to adopt some better writing habits. And to some extent it worked; I had a few good runs of outline building, a few good runs of novel drafting, I cooked up some drafts of a couple short stories (and other “starters”) and I got involved in a writing group. Certainly this was more the case toward the end of the year than at the beginning. But I’m pleased with this year’s output overall — if not with respect to quantity then at least with respect to quality¹:
   
   Total words written: 56,119. Average words per month: 4,677. Fewest words written in a month: 0 (January²). Most words written in a month: 19,396 (October).
2. Run or walk at least 10 miles every week. In short? Did well in the warmer months and tended to flake out a bit during the colder months. And who was I kidding about running? I hate running. I did (however) discover that I enjoy rock climbing. So if the heart of the goal was to go for an increase in exercise then I hit that one. Overall:
   
   Total miles: 549.09 miles. Average miles per month: 45.17 miles. Fewest miles in a month: 19.4 miles (November). Most miles in a month: 80.65 miles (September).
3. Hike 10 new trails/mountains in 2007. One trail shy of the goal. Nine trails counted as “new” this year; some of them were pretty challenging, some were easy ones “snuck in” to get credit.
   
4. Mix at least 1 hour every week. Well… It was worth trying:
   
   I meant to mix more, I really did. There’s always next year?³
5. Read 12 new books this year. Perhaps I set the bar too low; 30 completed books:
   
   Enumerated: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon; three Dashiell Hammett mysteries⁴; Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners collection; David Brin’s The Postman; Siddhartha and Demian, both by Hermann Hesse; The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton; Peter Watts’ Blindsight; John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War; the Italo Calvino classic, Invisible Cities; River of Gods by Ian McDonald; Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake and Cat’s Eye; Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job; Year’s Best Science Fiction (17th edition), compiled and edited by Gardner Dozois; two Raymond Chandler mysteries⁵; a Douglas Coupland triple-threat consisting of Generation X, Microserfs, and All Families Are Psychotic; The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont; Davy Rothbart’s short story collection, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas; Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers; J. Kelly Beatty’s The Solar System (for National Geographic); Accelerando by Charlie Stross; Slant by Greg Bear; Warren Ellis’ twisted Crooked Little Vein; a Penguin collection of H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories; Rock Climbing by Don Mellor; and Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You). Plus a couple partials: Sussman, Fitzpatrick, & Pilato’s Version Control with Subversion; Shooting Digital by Mikkel Aaland; Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; and a collection of Hemingway short stories. And one (and only one) re-read: Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain.
6. Master CSS. Never was able to quantify this one. But I did devote quite a bit of fruitful energy to digging into some of its more esoteric subject matter. That was good enough for me.

Up next?  2008’s Resolutions Goals!

1. Not to mention some (shall we say?) risks taken.[↩]
2. Shame![↩]
3. There’s always admitting to yourself that you’re “just a casual DJ” as well.[↩]
4. In one binding, so we’ll count them as one book.[↩]
5. Another “bound as one so we’ll count as one” read.[↩]

Personal goals for 2007: let’s see where we are after Q3:

1. Write approx. 80,000 new words of fiction. …with at least 40,000 words of “totally new” fiction. As I updated this goal once already this year, I won’t bother updating it again. That would seem like cheating. That said, I think I may have picked the wrong scale for my measure. Counting words alone and I’ve hardly made any progress. But I put in dozens of hours of work this quarter on the outline for The Project, making significant headway toward revisions. So we’ll graph the hours instead of the words written (because how do you count “words written” for a story outline?):
   
2. Run or walk at least 10 miles every week. I continue to do well here; well ahead of pace:
   
3. Hike 10 new trails/mountains in 2007. Significant progress this quarter but still behind pace; as you can see, I’ve got three more to go:
   
4. Mix at least 1 hour every week. Nary a record remembered as mixed. I suck. Won’t even bother with the data visualization.
5. Read 12 new books this year. 24 new-to-me books¹ read since January. Reading FTW!
   
6. Lastly: Master CSS. Still don’t know how to quantify that one. But still reasonably satisfied with this one here.

1. The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Complete Dashiell Hammett (a five-in-one binding, three of which I read), Magic for Beginners, The Postman, Hesse’s Siddhartha and Demian, The No Asshole Rule, Blindsight, Old Man’s War, Invisible Cities, River of Gods, Oryx & Crake, A Dirty Job, 17th annual Year’s Best Science Fiction edited by Dozois, Cat’s Eye, a three-in-one binding of Raymond Chandler novels, a Coupland trifecta with Generation X and Microserfs and All Families Are Psychotic, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, The Lone Surfer of Montana Kansas, Galatea 2.2, a National Geographic book about the solar system, and most recently Accelerado. Not counting the technical text of Version Control With Subversion.[↩]

Personal goals for 2007: doing pretty well last quarter; let’s see where we are now:

1. Write approx. 80,000 new words of fiction. This is updated from “write another 80,000 word draft of my novel”. Good news, re-writing the goal helped me get motivated. As if to say “all of my writing counts”. Bad news, I’m still about 48% of the target pace:
   
2. Run or walk at least 10 miles every week. Though we were a little behind in the winter (i.e., not walking to work in 0 degree temps, thanks) we’re ahead of pace here in the spring:
   
   …at 233.19 miles total walked/ran thus far.
3. Hike 10 new trails/mountains in 2007. No new progress. Hopefully notch one today and add it on…
4. Mix at least 1 hour every week. Erm… My gig in April helped skew the average in my favor but overall this has not worked out to be a reality:
   
5. Read 12 new books this year. Let us enumerate them: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, three Dashiell Hammett mysteries (which we’ll count as one), Magic for Beginners, The Postman, Siddhartha & Demian, The No Asshole Rule, Blindsight, Old Man’s War, Invisible Cities, River of Goods, Oryx & Crake (which I had been convinced that I had previously read but upon reading discovered I had not), A Dirty Job, Year’s Best Science Fiction (17th edition), Cat’s Eye, and two Raymond Chandler mysteries (which we’ll count as one). My graph looks like this:
   
6. Master CSS. Uh… Still don’t know how to quantify that one. I feel pretty comfortable saying I’ve reasonably accomplished this. A satisfactory mastery, if you will.

Back in January, we put forth a few personal goals for 2007. Let’s see where we stand, eh?

1. Write another draft of my novel. We’d written this up as “another draft of at least 80,000 words with at least 40,000 words worth of new material.” To date, I’ve written 6,475 words. Maybe 3,500 of those are new. So the proportions are right. But I’m about 13,526 words behind pace:
   
2. Run or walk at least 10 miles every week. Mostly motivated by a desire to stay committed to my “walk to work and back”, I’d thrown this one on there. I’m surprised at how this hasn’t fully worked out thus far. I blame the cold for this one; it’s tough to get out there on foot when the air temperature is -3 (and feels like -17). The good news is that on days where I am walking, I’m averaging about 2.25 miles. The bad news is that I’m missing the overall mark:
   
3. Hike 10 new trails/mountains in 2007. Ahead of schedule here. Didn’t really expect to do any of these until the spring came. But we managed to hit Rattlesnake Point on snowshoes. We’ll take that for one:
   
4. Mix at least 1 hour every week. Dodgy, this one is. January was definitely on. February, not so much. March, we’re back for the month’s total — though that whole “every week” part may/not be wholly accurate:
   
5. Read 12 new books this year. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, 3 novels by Dashiell Hammett (bound as one, so we’ll count as one), Magic for Beginners, The Postman, Siddhartha, Demian, and The No Asshole Rule. Oh yeah:
   
6. Master CSS. Still vague and still unable to quantify. I suppose we could call Ortho the first real evidence that I’m working toward this. (Since rolling your own variation on Mike Davidson’s MySpace hack probably doesn’t count.)

Where to from here? We’ll have to see what happens with the novel-writing. Fitting all that in this year so far has been tough; priorities seem to be elsewhere and my heart hasn’t been fully in that story when I have sat down with it. So we’ll just have to see. Otherwise I feel on track. It’s getting warmer, so it’ll be easier to get my walking/running goals back on track and we’re doing fine with the “hiking new trails” bit thus far. Regardless of if it’s actually “1 hour every week” or not, I’m mixing more than I have in years. And did I mention I’m way ahead of pace for the reading goal?

Perhaps I should add in a new challenge or two…

Inspired by Mike’s post, I feel it appropriate to put my own resolutions goals up for 2007. I’ll stick with calling them “goals” because “resolutions” sounds so corny and uncommitted. Hopefully, we can even have these be measurable…

1. Write another draft of my novel. I’m shooting for another draft of at least 80,000 words with at least 40,000 words worth of new material. Complete overhaul. Progress so far? Well, I’ve got most of a revised outline as of 06-Jan…
2. Run or walk at least 10 miles every week. Considering it’s a mile walk to work and a mile walk home, I think that this is reasonable, suitable and proper. Just make good on my committment to walk to work every day. And treadmill it on the days when I do not. And to go along with that:
3. Hike 10 new trails/mountains in 2007. I did pretty good last spring and summer and probably hiked about 4 or 5 new trails (mostly mountains) — but I think that I can do much better. Not sure if I want to include the mileage from these in the #2 goal. That seems unfair.
4. Mix at least 1 hour every week. My old Numark mixer is dying; the crossfader is toast, the output from each channel is uneven and staticky, the monitor/cue control is touch-and-go… I want a new one. But I could hardly justify that if I’m not even mixing in my living room once in a while. After all, I had so much fun last week, didn’t I?
5. Read 12 new books this year. I re-read a lot of books. A. makes fun of me for it. And really, she’s right. I should expand my horizons. One a month seems reasonable. First stop? The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay…
6. And lastly… Master CSS. Maybe a bit of a long shot and certainly difficult to quantify. One of the least satisfying parts of my work right now is how “out” of the code I am from a day-to-day basis. It’s a bit stymieing, more than a bit frustrating, and sometimes out-and-out maddening. That said, if I content (to myself) that if I set my sights on CSS mastery, the rest will follow…

I don’t know if this has full-blown “meme” status but I tag… Pete?