Resolutions

I've never been one for making New Years resolutions, exactly. I've always seen them portrayed as things like giving up smoking or stopping beating your wife. For those of us who like smoking and beating our wives, what are we to do?

But I have, in recent years, used the New Year to focus and gauge progress on various projects. For example, I needed to improve my physical condition last year--a side effect to having a zillion sedentary hobbies along with a sedentary job--and while I did so, I think this year I need to get more structured about it so that I'm progressing rather than just treading water (metaphorically).

I also try to decide which projects to put up at the top of the list. Otherwise I end up working on everything and not getting done what I want.

This year I'm starting a business. That suggests that putting anything else on the list is probably folly. But I've decided to do a few things, anyway.

Reading a book a week is at the top of my list. This actually has a multi-purpose. It cleans up this ever-growing stack that I have. It gets me away from the computer (which is where I do the bulk of my reading these days). And, to the extent that I'm not reading technical stuff, may prevent some tunnelvision.

But this is stuff I'm already doing. Just not in a habitual manner.

Updating this blog and the associated websites is up there. The blog should be fed daily. The websites I'm more of a technical guy on. But I should feed my movie reviews over tp the Loaded Shelf. And I have a couple of multi-part articles that are better in a forum format than a blog format.

What I'd really like to do is write my own website software that could integrate stuff from different sources. Forums--which are far better for long-running discussions, conversation trees, tech support and the like--shouldn't be so distinct from blogs. They're sort of like open blogs, really.

I don't know. There's a synergy (forbidden word!) there to be exploited. That's probably not realistic, though.

Sometimes I pause and realize, if I didn't have to work for a living, I'd be doing much the same thing as I am, just on pet projects rather than things people pay for. This probably ranks me among the fortunate.

When you get down to it, I'm just not ready to make any resolutions yet. I've got too much to do.