resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions – 2009

Father Time Eight days into the new year, and I’m finally getting around to making some resolutions. So I’m already off to a great start! Woo Hoo! This should be great.

1) I need to get physically fit. I need to be stronger, more flexible and have better balance and stamina. The photography hobby I’ve taken up is making that really obvious, and I need to get serious about being healthier for my own sake, as well as for getting the photos I want to get.

2) Take photos every day. It’s the only way I’m going to get better.

3) Write every day. Either here on this blog, or on other projects; I have story ideas all the time that I end up seeing executed by someone else, and often not as well as I would have done.

4) Read every day. – Aside from the fact that reading has always be my “Go To” method of stress relief, there are also some books I want to plow through for because I have a story idea.

5) Turn off the TV. I waste way too much time on it. More important things to fit into the day. I think the Rachel Maddow show is the one thing I watch that is actually worthwhile; everything else can go away.

6) finish refinishing a couple piece of furniture that I have half started. Just for the sake of getting them done.

In the grand history of me making resolutions — I’ve never completed any of them. But I have made great strides in the direction I want to go, so they’re useful for me to clarify what’s important. I can see where I get derailed — I’m good through January and February, but it gets to be March and I start worrying about gardening, and April, May and June are all big social months where I pay attention to activities rather than goals. I’ll have to watch out for those things this year and fit the goals first, then the activities.

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Books, Books, Books

This past weekend, Stephanie and I went to my company’s warehouse employee book sale. This is where they lay out all the returned stock from bookstores and let us purchase it at a steep discount, which means that it doesn’t need to get recycled or trashed. It’s one of the great perks of my job for book lovers like us, and is a really great deal, money-wise. I was able to pick up many books that have been on my “to read” pile for a long time.

On the other hand… we came home with 160 books. 57 of them were mine, 30 of them are presents for family members, and 73 of them are Stephanie’s. So… yeah. We made great strides in reducing clutter this year in our house, then frakked it all up. Heh. Actually, the sheer volume of stuff we cleared out this year is quite a bit more than the books we acquired, so we’re not at all back where we started. But we have a lot of book storage to come up with.

And I have a LOT of books. Doing the math – I acquired more books at this sale than I read this year, easily, and I did the same thing last year. And I also bought quite a few new books this year, although one of my goals was not to do that. I feel guilty that there are so many wonderful books in my library that I simply haven’t read. And many of them have been sitting there for quite some time, while I go around willy-nilly, checking out new titles from the library and buying new books from the bookstore.

So… that leads me to my 2008 new year’s resolution(s), which I’m making a bit early:

In 2008, I will read only books that I already own, and read more of them than I have in the last few years. To accomplish that, my plans are:

  1. I will not buy ANY books in 2008, new or used, unless I have to for work, with one exception – next year’s year-end warehouse book sale, and that only if I accomplish my resolution, and I can only purchase as many books as I’ve read in 2008.
  2. If I need a book for book club, I’ll check it out from the library, or (worst case scenario) Stephanie will buy it.
  3. I will NOT check books out from the library this year, unless it’s for book club. (I know that seems strange, but the goal is not about saving money, it’s about focusing my attention on my own library.)
  4. Do a massive purge of my feed reader and severely reduce the number of blogs I read regularly.
  5. Carry my current read around with me everywhere, so that I focus on it, and not the magazines in the doctor’s waiting room, the internet while I’m waiting for gym class, etc.).

So there it is – my official 2008 New Year’s Resolution. Let’s see if I can stick to it.

2019 update: I did not succeed at this resolution. Not this year, or any other year that I made it.

2022-03-12 Update: And I haven’t since 2019, either.
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