New Years Resolutions

I didn’t do very well (at all) following through with my 2010 new year’s resolutions — and I have no shortage of excuses why. Rather than lament over the past 12 months about things that didn’t get done, and/or why they didn’t get done, I’m just going to forge ahead and pen my resolutions for 2011. I’ll keep their scope somewhat smaller — this year penning just 11 goals (2011, 11 action items, I’m going with theme) — though challenging goals, to ensure they are actually realizable accomplishments and don’t end up as some pre-year-end tangential blog post.

For My Personal Development

1. (As always) Continue to work on my writing abilities. – Some days I really just love sitting down in from of a blank text document and seeing my thoughts appear all over the page. Sometimes their nonsensical, sometimes their ponderous, but I feel they are all worth writing. Communicating them effectively is key; and that’s what I don’t do very well and would like to do better.

2. More Reading! My goal for this year will be two books a month. And I’ll try to get through a novel or two. I don’t normally enjoy fiction writing — if I’m being honest, I’ve felt that 99.9% of the novels out there would be a waste of time to read — , but there are a few titles that I’m now curious about. (Mainly due to this guy’s ranting and raving about the books he’s been reading. He’s peaked my curiosity.)

3. Be the best gosh-darn-daddy I can possibly be to the best two gosh-darn-little guys a dad could ever ask for. This might seem like a a rather perspicuous objective, as this should be every father’s goal for every day of his life, but I really want to make it a point to be there for my troops in all the best ways that I can in the ways that they need me. If I’m being honest, so far I’ve making most of my fatherhood behavior up as I go along, so it’s all together appropriate for me to commit myself to the task.

Logan & Chase Christmas 2010

4. Love my wife better. I’m surrounded by crumbling relationships. Most of the married friends/acquaintances I’ve known through the years are falling off one by one — like our relationships are the kids touring Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. It isn’t easy to grasp how relationships that once burnt so bright fizzled out so fast, but at the same time given into account human nature and the inherit selfish behavior of people, it isn’t difficult to understand why. I don’t want this year to go by without my wife knowing, knowing, that I appreciate her and love her.

This is especially important now that our seventh anniversary is impending. We’re entering classic “seven year itch” territory.

5. Not To Be Such A Shut In. If I’m being honest my people skillz (yes, skillz with a “z”) have seriously diminished over the past few years. I can trace it’s roots back to becoming a daddy and the birth of my sons also being the death of disposable free time.

Although at first I found my diminished social life disconcerting, these feelings later evolved into a sense of routine to the point I’ve come to take solace in my reclusiveness. This can’t be healthy behavior, and if it can’t be healthy it most certainly can’t be beneficial. “Not to Forsake the fellowship of the brethren” will be an admirable goal. Now how to actually go about accomplishing it? Hmmm… I wonder if time spent on Xbox Live should count toward this?

For My Professional Development

6. Participate in Project 365. Project 365 is a gimmick that requires it’s participants to take, upload, and share a photo every day for one year. Though the concept seems irrelevant to potentially anything, it certainly is appealing. I’ve actually been wanting to do this for a while, but the feasibility escaped me. However now that I owe a phone with a camera (so I essentially always have a camera with me) I think I’ll give it a shot. (Pun intended)

7. Hone my .NET abilities. My work is slowing but surely becoming the house that Microsoft built — were moving away from Coldfusion as our primary developing language and replacing it with ASP.NET. Not that it’s too much to tackle at all, but there are worlds of differences between a primarily event driven language and a purely object oriented one. My goal for this year will to become a .Net, Rouge, Programming, Ninja, Code, Monkey. (Yes, they do exists.)

I work here

Just For Fun

8. 3 Posts a Week for PaulHobson.com. I honestly don’t know why so many of you people care, but my traffic stats for PaulHobson.com were through the roof in 2010. I thank you all for taking an interest in me and my favorite topics. Hopefully I’ll continue to inform and entertain and you’ll keep following me through this year.

9. Stay Off The Couch! I think I want to commit to my tumblr blog. It’s a fun little hobby, but I keep losing followers with my inconsistent posting schedule. I’d like to give this thing a fair shake and see how it ends up. I think I’ll commit to one-two posts a day to start with (just like I did during my I’m Not Allowed On The Couch Days, and see where things take me.

I'm Not Allowed On The Couch... What are you going to do about it?

10. Finish My Magical Music Pet Project. This is something I wanted to get dome last year but didn’t. I’m attempting to create an online archive of the musical selections used throughout the Walt Disney World Resort — both the parks and surrounding hotels. I’ve amassed quite the collection of audio tracking down all the specific tracks used throughout “The World”, but have only posted a handful online. It’s a fairly large task, and I’d like to finish it this year.

For My Spiritual Development

11. George MacDonald once wrote something so profound that it changed my life. I’ve posted it before, but it’s worth repeating here as this will be one of my goals for the New Year:

George Macdonald

Instead of so knowing Christ that they have Him in them saving them, they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the Atonement, whether they are truly sorry for their sins — the way to madness of the brain and despair of the heart… Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have, this day, done one thing because He said, Do it! or once abstained because He said, Do not do it! It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.

My goal this year is that everyday I would do something because Christ wants me to do it, abstain from something because Christ wouldn’t want me to do it, look for areas where I can be a blessing and every day cultivate the present strength required for the present trials. This is the most important thing.