Resolutions

I’m a type A – goal oriented person, which basically means I set a goal every year to make New Years resolutions, and I have to create a list so I can check them off.

Here are mine for 2010

1. Get an agent.  I don’t know that I’ll get published this year, but by the end of the year, I want to be working with a good agent to develop the plan to get my books into the marketplace.  I can control the work I put into getting an agent.  I can’t do much about getting a publisher to publish my stuff, besides, of course, writing better stuff.
2. Be more social.  I’ve been a bit of a social recluse the last three years as the focus has been on the kids and on my job.  But now that my job is stable, and the kids are not quite so demanding, I’d like to get out more and enjoy time with friends and do more adult things.
3. Furnish the house.  We’ve very slowly added a few items of furniture over the past few years, but we’ve always had higher priorities or sudden unexpected expenses that prevent us from turning the place from somewhere we live, to somewhere we LIVE. All signs point to this being the year we finish the big furniture pieces, paint some walls, and find something to put up so the place doesn’t look like a beige mausoleum.
4. Blog more consistently.  For me, blogging is a way to keep the family informed of what is going on, and a way of creating a record so we can look back on these years and remember what was going on during each period of time.  When I go such long times between blog entries, I know I really am going to miss out on things, and the years will go by so fast with no record.  The only problem with this resolution is that blogging is the first thing to get dropped when I am writing or working a lot, so something else has to go.  For me, my hope is that I watch less TV.
5. Get my legs back in shape.  For those of you who don’t know, I used to be a long distance cyclist.  In 1996-1997, I could cycle a hundred miles in a day, and frequently did two hundred and fifty miles a week.  Now, I doubt if i could make it twenty.  I’ve been exercising my upper body as rehab on my shoulders, but my legs have really suffered, and I miss the power I used to be able to generate there, and the thrill of a long downhill ride.

Those are the top five new things for 2010.  4 out of the 5 things require more time, but to me, that’s just a matter of being more efficient with the time I waste on other things, and making sure that I spend less time at home working.  That’s a hard thing to do, especially for the type of work I do.  But it is a choice I can make, and I have the power to help instantiate change at my work.

I also am looking for the little things in my life that take up time that can be automate, or outsourced.  Not sure what they are, because I think I already run a pretty tight time ship.  But there has to be something.  Maybe I can get someone else to eat for me….