Hopefully a week into the new year isn’t too late to get a list of pseudo resolutions in, but hey who am I kidding, I still have several things from 2011 I still want to talk about, so this won’t be the only late post. Also as you may have noticed I didn’t really post much in December. Two big reasons for that exist, the first being my move across town to the lovely neighborhood of Ballard and second being I was trying to get this new self-hosted blog up and running and didn’t want to confuse my transfer by posting in two places. This is the new site for now, however my plans are to keep tweaking this lay-out and hopefully eventually teaching myself enough coding to make my own template. But for now, I am just happy to have my own little corner of the internet to mess about with.
Create more
Write reviews – I consume a lot, primarily through my love of reading, which takes the form of many, many books, but also copious numbers of blogs, sites, and other forms of Internet writing. However in doing thinking about ways to turn what I like to do into what I need to do to earn money, I have been thinking about strengthening my writing muscles. Essentially my enjoyment of reading and learning do little good if they end with me. While the assumption that writing more book critiques, blog posts, maybe even jigsaw puzzle reviews will make the world a better place is definitely grandiose, it is a better plan that fervently hoping that one day someone will decide to pay me a modest income to just consume information.
Take a art related class – I tend to forget most of the time how good it feels to actually create something. A week or two before Christmas I decided that I wasn’t going to keep my lack of a real Christmas tree from letting me showcase my newly re-acquired box of ornaments and so I selected some of my favorite 2D ones and created a Christmas tree. In addition, I decided to wrap all of my Christmas presents in paper grocery bags and enjoyed the chance to incorporate interesting folding techniques to actually cover all the presents with my limited supply. While neither of these acts were huge works of art, they both reminded me how satisfying it is to use my creative muscle. One of my old post-grad school goals was to take a class for my own enjoyment. While I still have the goal of taking a foreign language class at some point, currently I would really like to take a basic sketching/painting/photography/graphic design course for no other reason than giving me an excuse to create.
Move more
I think sometimes my opinion of exercise gets too caught up into the general category of weight-loss as the key to society’s brainwashing in terms of thinness=only path to beauty. While I have my issues with the weight-loss industry, I have no argument with the theory that regular exercise increases energy, adds a sense of accomplishment, extends one’s years of active ability and generally improves mood: all of which are things I want more of. Unfortunately I also have a low tolerance for taking on activities that seem solely designed to bore me (running on a hamsteresque treadmill at the gym) and the huge lack of appeal of waking up an extra hour earlier to go for a jog, I still struggle to find a way to incorporate more movement into my all to sedentary life. So I actually don’t have a brilliant plan for this one, but hopefully continuing to have it as a goal will keep me moving in the right direction.
Sleep more
I don’t think I need to elaborate more than to say 8 hours of sleep makes me considerably more happy than 6-7 hours.
Spend less
I recently did the math and discovered to my complete surprise (sometimes I can be a bit dense to rather obvious things) that I am currently making $5.67 an hour. Considering this is probably the lowest hourly wage I have received since my work/study jobs at the college and close to a 75% pay cut, it is now much clearer to me why adjusting to my “subsistence allowance” has been a bit harder than I anticipated. While knowing that I make $5.67 an hour in my volunteer position, shouldn’t be anymore surprising than knowing all along that I would be making just under $1000 a month, it really is. All of a sudden the decision to get the fancy latte at Starbucks or eat at the local burger joint ($5 and $10, respectively) seems much more frivolous when I calculate that I spent an hour of time earning half of that delicious burger. So my goal of spending less (specifically in the areas of eating out, music, clothes, books, and generally non-required items) is even more imperative given my general life goals of always living within my means. I should also note that I knew going into this year that I would be accepting a paycut and given that the position has gotten me to Seattle, given me many good learning experiences and greatly extended my professional connections, I don’t consider that choice to be a bad one. It also helps remind me to look at my current position as less of a job and more of an act of service, which I think will help me with some of the difficulties in making peace with the differences between expectations and reality.
Become a better speller
I have never been an excellent speller. However in the world of luxurious auto spell-check I have noticed a definite decrease in my abilities. Therefore I will be attempting to not just right click on all those red underlined words, but instead attempt first to correct it myself before resorting to the spell-check suggestions.
So how about you all, do you make resolutions at the New Year? Do you have any for 2012?
However considering some of my goals for December, that might prove challenging: