meanwhile, behind the façade of this innocent looking bookstore…

Early in December, I decided that this year I would take on some New Year’s Resolutions to finally take action on a few ideas that I’ve had, and I posted some initial thoughts on what they could be here.

I had two rules: the first rule was that they had to be resolutions with clear finished-states … none of the typical, arbitrary things that people pursue like “be more organized.” The second rule was that I had to post them publicly in order to generate some fear of consequence for not following through. It’s easy to rationalize not doing something if no one else is there to call you out on it.

So after much deliberation and procrastination, and taking into account feedback from comments and real live humans on my earlier post, here’s what I’ve decided on for my New Year’s Resolutions for 2010. None of it will be easy, but I think all of it will be interesting/useful/rewarding.

1. Finish the two drumming method books I bought last year – Drumming has always been my foremost talent and thing that I love to do, but for the past 10 years or so I haven’t been putting in the practice time that I should to be as good as I can be. Last year I bought two method books. One is called Extreme Interdependence. It was written to help develop coordination between the limbs, and it’s ridiculously difficult. I think I’m on page 3. The other is called The Drummer’s Bible: How to play every style of music, from Afro-Cuban to Zydeco. Originally I planned on practicing 15 minutes a day, but there will be days when that is impossible.
2. Write two blog posts per week – I once commented to a friend that nothing kills a planning blog faster than having a planning job. I’d like to get this thing back up to full speed this year because I like doing it, I feel guilty when I don’t do it, and it forces me to think about things that I otherwise wouldn’t. This was originally supposed to be one post a day, but I’m not sure that would be good for anyone.
3. Take a storytelling class – Most of my job really boils down to telling stories, as does most of the things that I enjoy doing. I want to get better at it. And it would be helpful for the next item on my list:
4. Write a novel – I’ve wanted to write a book for a long time, but I’ve never really had the time, and I’ve been kind of scared to start one. After I learned about NaNoWriMo from Claire, my perspective changed. Get over the fear of writing something terrible, and just write something at all.
5. Finish Learning Processing – I started this programming book a few months ago, but was sidetracked by some huge projects at work that required some late nights.
6. Take a web programming class – I want to continue to learn programming so that I might be able to make use of it one day. Maybe Ruby?  Not sure where to take a good class for this though.
7. Build one web thingy – Put that programming knowledge to good use by designing some kind of application for the Web.
8. Write a business plan – Mike K. has been stirring my desire to start something up since we were back at VCU Adcenter. I have some ideas, now lets see what one looks like on paper. Maybe it will pave the way for more?
9. Run a 5k – I need to be in better shape, and I think that training for a 5k could help me get there.
10. Become an early riser – I’ve made an allowance for the arbitrary here.  There’s so much more I could get done if I could drag myself out of bed at a decent hour regularly.

Tweet This Post