Goals Are Important to Have
I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s Resolutions (honestly, how can you improve upon perfection?), and only partly because I don’t feel like change is necessary just for change’s sake. While I agree that it is a good idea to take stock of yourself and how you are living your life, and then making the necessary changes for a better physical/mental/emotional life, why does it only happen once a year? Why wouldn’t it be a regular checkup, just like you do for your car? Every 3 months or 3000 miles, get an oil change and update your goals list to make sure that you remain on track and motivated. That sounds much better to me.
And that is also the reason that I like this site’s idea. Basically, instead of a New Year’s Resolution, you create an honest list of goals that you would like to achieve. And the list spans about 2 3/4 years, so you can add in goals that will take a little time to come to pass. Then every few months, you can update your list and see where you stand.
Probably the biggest issue for me is coming up with 101 goals that I actually want to accomplish. I know that they are out there, but coming up with them all at once is a little beyond me. Plus I feel like if you saddle yourself with a number (hmmm, “saddle yourself”…there’s something else I can add to the list), you’ll end up adding crap goals that are either too easy (wake up for work tomorrow morning), or so ambitious that you won’t be able to accomplish it even in the timespan (become President of the United States). So I’ll start simple, with this partial list:
- Go back to Mars (Best. Tournament. Ever.)
- Pay off credit card debt
- Get new computer/laptop
- Find a hotel and rent a room by the hour
- 15 hikes in the Cascades/Olympics (2 done already)
- Start yoga
- Start writing letters to Ty again
- Stay clean shaven for a month or more (started 1/20/08, finished 2/20/08)
- Frame my duck
- Go to more drive-in movies
- Redesign and get my tattoo redone
- Go see a live play, somewhere nice
- See an opera
- Defragment my laptop(did 2-3 times, computer is still slow)
- Update my “States Visited” list, and try to finish that
- No caffeine for 2 weeks
- No alcohol for 2 months
- Go to either Teatro Zinzani or Cirque de Soleil
- Learn how to snowboard
- Get a job I like and can grow with
- Fix/tune-up/get a new bike, and ride it more
- 100 push-ups in under 5 minutes
- 4:30 mile
- Get more flexible
- Visit an art gallery during an art opening
- Do the tourist things in Seattle that I’ve never done
- Complete 2 of the things from my idea notebook
- get 8 hours of sleep or more a night for a month
- See more Sounders games
- Take a boxing class/lesson
- Design, develop, and implement a website for myself
- Learn Javascipt/DHTML/AJAX
- Learn Coldfusion
- Deal with my crappy Wells Fargo IRA and retirement accounts
- Take a dance class
- Organize my music in iTunes
- Start and finish 2 woodworking projects
- Get laptop power supply checked out, then run sysclean
- Clean out garage, and make it usable
As you can see, I’ve got a pretty good list started already, and I’ve even got a start on a couple of them. As for the rest, well, hopefully I’ll be back to update this list with new info every couple of months. And yes, I’ll take pictures to post of the “dance class” I take, because it’s going to be pretty amusing. I already feel sorry for my instructor.