They said to be specific……
1) Read six novels in the next year (at least!)
I’ve always enjoyed reading but in the last couple of years I’ve struggled to finish books. Writing my novel has made me realize that I’ve not finished reading a book in a long long time. Most of my ideas came from material I read as a teenager. As a novelist, I think we get ideas from other people’s writing. We use those ideas as fuel for our own great ideas. I’m a little low on fuel right now. I’m going to start with novels that people have given me over the last couple of years that I’ve started but not really finished. I think I have 3 of them on my book shelf right now: The Sparrow, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age.
2) (Re)Watch three movies a month
All I can say is that I’m a great customer for netflix. I pay for their service but rarely watch the DVDs they send me.
3) Run the Portland marathon in October 2006
I need to do this and I need to start way earlier this time. I always have good momentum coming out of Summer. This year I want to be ready for a marathon at the end of September. Portland is ideally positioned for that and it’s not too far from where I live. Jan, Feb and Mar are pretty depressing months but it’s better I get my low mileage training done in those months and use the nicer spring and summer months for the mid to high mileage training.
3.1) Be doing 6 - 8 mile long runs by March. I’ll plan somemore after that.
4) Save $X
Be frugal is what all those books say. I need to be less haphazard about it.
5) Tithe $X
Life has been good to me. Time I start returning the favor.
There are a number of less specific things I want to explore. Economics, Game Theory and Personal Finance are three areas I want to learn more about.
Of course there is the novelling thing. Hopefully I can do and win NaNoEdMo 2006. The novel has potential but it needs a lot of cleaning up. I also want to do NaNoWriMo 2006. They say the sophomore effort is always the hardest.
On top of that I have my career development work. 2006 is going to be more focused. Less breadth but more depth. My main goal is to be a JavaScript wizard. The subgoals are to utilize AJAX techniques and GreaseMonkey. My secondary goal is to become a Ruby wizard. The subgoal is to use Watir more in my work.