Flibbertigibbet

2006: The Year of Kicking Ass

Happy New Year, everyone!

Last night, I went to Atlanta and celebrated the new year with friends. It was great fun.

I'm not really one for New Year's Resolutions because I resolve to do things all the time and the psychological impact of the calendar change really doesn't do much for me. Actually, I don't think it has a big effect on many people and that's why they don't stick with these resolutions.

Well, this year, I decided to make one resolution. It's pretty minor and it's only a New Year's Resolution because the New Year coincides with when I wanted to start. I've just resolved that I'm going to pay more attention to what I eat and adopt a diet that supports my athletic goals. Basically, that means low fat, high protien.

I do really like the Ice Scribe's approach of setting a series of goals, though. What makes it work is that she actually keeps up with those things and most all of them relate to aspects of her life that are already in the forefront of her mind. They're also goals that do require year-long effort.

Another friend of mine has a great idea instead of New Year's Resolutions. He chooses a theme and then the whole year he tries to do things that work toward that theme. For example, he might choose something like, "Financial Stability" and then he tries to build habits like controlling spending and finding good investment opportunities. Or maybe he'll choose a theme like "Health" and then he works on his diet and exercise habits.

I think choosing a theme is more effective than making a resolution because the theme then acts as a guiding principle for any number of decisions. Resolutions by contrast are usually very limited like, "quit smoking" or "lose 20 pounds" and although those are good things, a lot more goes into a year and I think it's important to know what goal is up next.

I should mention that a theme should not be overly broad or too abstract, like "be a good person," and it should also apply to things that a person can actually control, so don't set a theme like "Peace in the Middle East."

2005 wasn't really a very great year for me on balance.

Some really awesome things happened. I met Ice Scribe. I renewed an old friendship. I've made a very promising new friendship. I started working out and saw some results.

But I spent way too long on things that did not make me happy at all. In general, all of the difficulties I had stemmed from not maintaining clarity around my values and even evading those facts to some extent.

So, I started in November 2005, but 2006 is going to be the year of kicking ass That's not really a good theme because it's too broad, but I started a couple of months ago re-establishing habits I had broken when I went to B-School and I've gotten back on track with lots of various things in my life.

If I had to break down ass kicking into areas of focus and goals, I would list the following:

Health and Fitness - Continue weight training, incorporate speed training for running, focus on maintaining a consistent diet that supports my goals.

Career - Get a new job in the area of sales engineering. This will give me sales, client, and travel experience.

Education - I'm going to start taking classes from the OAC in September when the new academic year begins for them. I'd also like to work on Spanish, German, and French this year. (I've already started on German, so I have to keep that going.) And, also, I'm WAY behind on my reading.

House - I have several projects in line around my house and yard, but I want to make sure that I only have one or two projects going at a time and that I finish one completely before starting another.

So, it's a happy new year and the goal is to keep going with that.