Ahh, the notorious goals (or more colloquially known as resolutions). I will cover the usual three main areas of focus: Technical Skills, Reading Challenge, and Wellness. I’m hoping for a little more diligence on my part to really focus on all of these goals. I did pretty well last year but there were a couple of bumps along the way. So let’s set those 2024 goals, shall we?
Tag: new year resolutions Page 1 of 2
I can’t believe how fast this year is going. We are already in June, the halfway point of the year. That means it’s time for my 2022 intentions mid-year review (already!). I’ve had to make a few adjustments to accommodate for a few changes and I will discuss those when we get there. This post is a nice break from the plethora of Star Wars posts I’ve been making. To be fair, May is Star Wars month and there is a new series I’m excited to discuss.
Time to check in on the progress of my 2021 Intentions. Accountability is one of the best ways to motivate yourself to stick to your goals. So let’s review what I am hoping to accomplish this year. Starting with personal health goals, which are my main goals for the year. There are two areas of personal health I discussed in my new years intentions: physical and mental.
Mental Health
The coronavirus is almost behind us. The CDC is relaxing it’s policy on masks and many states (including my own) are beginning to lift all the health restrictions. Stadiums are slowly filling up again and stores are removing their “mask required” signs. These actions, alone, are already helping my mental health. I feel the stress and anxiety fading away. I think, in the weeks to come, it will all be gone (although I’m sure it will be replaced by something else, because anxiety is a bitch).
The “get organized” goal started out well, but kind of fell to the side. My technical projects suddenly took over (more on that later). I was doing well reducing how much I use Facebook and Twitter. I even gave them up for Lent this year. However it seems I’ve fallen back into old habits. Although, I haven’t seen too much whining and complaining. Twitter is easy for me to ignore when the butthurt gets too much. I think the fact that things in the US are starting to get back to normal has probably calmed the tits of most people on Facebook, which has made it more tolerable.
Physical Health
My running goal this year is to improve my daily running distance to 6+ miles; basically a 10k a day. I also want to improve my push distance to 9 miles. I have not reached these goals yet, however, I do have a strategy in mind for my 6+ mile daily run. Another fitness goal this year, although I didn’t say it in my intentions post, is to add a pre-workout to all my running workouts. Therefore three days a week I work on exercises for strengthening my core and the other two days (because I only work out 5 days a week) I work on strength training. This has become habit now, although I do have to skip them from time to time depending on my work schedule.
The past couple of weeks I realized I need to add something to my workout routine. Leg day. I’ve noticed my legs are getting sore and it’s affecting my endurance, which I need in order to improve to 6 miles a day. Therefore I will be adding exercises to my pre-workouts or I need to add a “leg day” workout. I may actually pick one of the days of the weekend to be leg day; most likely Saturday depending on the intensity of the workout. If you have some leg day workouts please send them my way.
Professional and Technical Development Goals
I have begun development of the new website. In the process of redesigning I am also learning a new website framework; I’m using React. There is still quite a bit of work left to do before the different components are fully functional. I have started researching new themes for the blog since I have to replace Suffusion. I haven’t picked anything yet nor have I found any themes I’m even considering. This one might take a while.
Development slowed down for a few weeks when my NAS machine died. Thankfully I didn’t lose anything, however I had to spend a bit of money to get it back up and running. We bought a system from TrueNAS (formally known as FreeNAS) as well as upgraded all the drives to 8 TB Seagate Ironwolf. When we finished the server is now running from an SSD (instead of a thumb drive) and now has 16 TB of mirrored space.
Reading Challenge Progress
The reading challenge is coming along all right. Last month I was 2 books behind but I recently finished a book and I’m already a quarter of the way through another book. Currently I am only 1 book behind; I expect to be on track before the end of this month. I am 13 books into the Dresden Files, I hope to be as close to “caught up” as I can be by the end of the year. The Dresden books are so much to read. In fact I’ve started collecting them all in print and I plan to start reading them again as soon as I’m caught up. I’m not sure if I will get to reading the Inheritance Series again. We will see how the rest of the year goes.
How are your New Years goals coming along?
I could accomplish so much more if I only had minions!
I’m a week late with this post but, as I said in my review, 2020 sucked so better late than never! As a result of the unusual circumstances and the shutdowns, the increased stress interfered a bit with my 2020 goals. While I know that merely changing years won’t eliminate the virus or the stress it causes, I’m hopeful that this year won’t be as awful as last year. We are ahead of the virus and there are at least two vaccines that are FDA approved (as of the time of this writing). I’m looking forward to getting back out to the zoo and the ballpark. Therefore the first of my 2021 New Years intentions is to remain hopeful and optimistic about this year.
Biggs Labs – Smart Home/Professional Development
This suffered the most from my mental state as a result of the shutdowns. I did not make a lot of progress on many of my technical goals. I didn’t touch the Smart Things and Raspberry Pi integration. Honestly, I don’t know if I will get to it this year or not. I have a higher priority to update the Gift List web application I wrote. While I didn’t make a lot of coding progress on the gift list revamp, I have spent a bit of time designing the changes and making a list of updates and new features. I hope to begin this development immediately.
This blog site will also get some love this year. Apparently I have to find a new theme. I have been using Suffusion for several years, however I recently found out WordPress is no longer approving the theme. Their reason is “it doesn’t meet requirements”; I’m very disappointed in WordPress. So I will be hunting for a new theme. If any of you are WordPress admins, shoot me your theme suggestions.
Finally, I need to find something new to learn. Some kind of coding language or library. I’m stuck in a rut and feeling bored with programming so I need something to restore my enthusiasm.
2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge
I’m setting my reading challenge goal to 15 with the hope that I will exceed it. Last year I was 40% away from finishing my 15th book so with a little more diligence I think I can easily meet the goal, and surpass it. The Dresden Files will, again, be the books that help me reach my goal. I’ve started book 11 so it’s possible I may catch up this year (there are now 18 books).
I’m thinking about reading The Inheritance Series again; I’m a big fan of Paolini’s work and I’m excited to read about Eragon again. I will cover the books I read for the 2020 Reaching Challenge in a separate post.
2021 New Years Health Goals
My health goals are going to look a little different this year. The effects of the stress and anxiety of 2020 still linger and, while I don’t expect things to magically improve in 2021, I can control how it affects me, mentally.
Physical Fitness Goals
In 2020 I was supposed to complete a 15K at the Flying Pig. Obviously that was cancelled but that didn’t stop me from setting some new goals. I tried to run as often as possible to keep in good health. The doctors were telling me that one of the best methods for staying healthy amid the virus was to keep exercising. I improved my daily running distance to 5+ miles a day. On my push days I am exceeding 8 miles but I have not reached 9 miles yet (a 15K is approximately 9.3 miles).
I don’t know what I will do this year in regards to the Flying Pig. Currently their website states you can sign up for a virtual run with the option to change to in-person if health officials allow large gatherings. My original plan was to run the half this year, but that was assuming I would have run a 15k in 2020. As of this writing my thoughts are that if I go virtual I will stick with the 15k plan; I would rather run the half marathon in person since that is my apex running goal.
Mental Health (aka Get Organized)
Everyone’s mental health suffered from 2020. Anyone that denies it is lying to themselves. It will be a few months before we start to see improvements in the current pandemic but we can begin to heal our mental health. The methods for doing this will be different for every person. Personally I am going to do it by getting organized. There have been studies that show getting organized has been known to improve sleep and reduce stress and anxiety.
When I was in college I was a bit of a clean freak; it seems now I’ve become to lazy to be that person but I can change that. I can let my OCD take over again and clean more often. There are places around the house that can use the “get organized” treatment. However, getting organized isn’t just a physical activity. I use my iPad to take a lot of notes (because my memory is garbage); those notes need to be re-organized for brevity and searchability. This will help me be better organized at work.
Finally I need to ignore or remove the toxicity and vitriolic abuse of social media. Everyone treats Facebook and Twitter like its their pulpit for political and controversial influence. The truth you’re not changing anybody’s mind because everyone is braver behind a keyboard. I’m tired of going to these places and getting angry because people spew nonsense so I will be frequenting Twitter less and blocking/hiding/muting posts/people on Facebook that say things with the clear intent of inciting violence or hate.
Again, this post grows most verbose so time to end it here.
/cheers
I could accomplish so much more if I only had minions!
We are not only starting a new year in 2020, we are starting a new decade. Nobody really makes decade resolutions and I’m certainly not going to make decade intentions. I’ll be turning 40 in this decade, which is hard to imagine and, be that as it may, I’m not intimidated. This isn’t a post about turning 40 (perhaps I will write one when we get closer to March). I am going to make the usual 2020 New Years Intentions; hopefully I will have better luck in a couple of the categories.
Biggs Labs – Smart Home/Professional Development
I didn’t make any progress on the Smart Home front. I did a little bit of research since Samsung kind of hamstrung me with the changes to the app. Hopefully I can still do what I hope to be able to do using Home Kit and Raspberry Pi. However that isn’t going to be my highest priority project.
I was supposed to revamp one of my project web sites in 2019, including the gift list. However I had a really busy summer at work and writing extra curricular code was not appealing. Therefore I have quite a list of updates I want to do to make this site a little more useful to other family members. In fact some of the development research I will do may also be applicable to things I’ll be doing at work.
2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge
I did well for my reading challenge in 2019. In fact I almost read more than I intended. In 2020 I think I’m still going to play it safe and set my reading challenge total to 15 again. I do have several more Dresden books to read which, again, should help my total. Unfortunately I read all my newer Star Wars books this year. I have a few older Star Wars books (now considered “Legends”) which I might dig into and some re-reading of some great books.
I’ll get into more details about my reading ambitions in another post. Keep an eye out because after I finish a book, sometimes I take the time to write up a review.
2020 New Years Health Goals
Year after year, this category continues to be where I am most successful. My goal was to complete a 10K in 2019 and that is exactly what I did. In fact, I ran the whole thing, thus resulting in a new personal best. In 2020 I feel running another 10K is the obvious decision, however I do need to challenge myself. Therefore I am going to try to complete a 10K and 5K back-to-back (at the Flying Pig). Essentially I will run a 15K, which is approximately 9.3 miles.
Mental health is just as important as physical health. I did not reduce my social media interaction as much as I said I would. Only recently did I step away from Twitter but I’m still getting on Facebook a little too obsessively. However I am taking extra steps to reduce the negativity on Facebook by leaving groups and muting or hiding posts that I find offensive and blasphemous. So far it’s working as I’ve felt less angry after scrolling through Facebook.
I might return to Twitter, but I think I am going to wait a few weeks. I don’t want to miss more of Mark Hamill’s brilliance. Regardless, I hope to make 2020 a little more positive especially since I am turning 40. Also, it’s probably time to overcome my subtle sociopathy.
What are your 2020 New Years resolutions?
Happy New Year!
I could accomplish so much more if I only had minions!
Time to make those conventional New Year intentions. I wasn’t very successful in 2018; while I did make an effort to fulfill my intentions, I fell short on a few. The Reading Challenge and Professional Skills Development is where I was really lacking. The important thing is I never gave up attempting to meet my intentions, many resolutions barely survive the third week. Be that as it may, here are my 2019 New Years intentions.
Biggs Labs – Smart Home
I actually made some strides in my home automation projects and I will go into detail of that in the upcoming “Year in Review” post. Just know that Samsung really handicapped me with the sudden change to the app. I’m not really sure what the goal will be for 2019 for any of my home automation endeavors (other than fixing the bugs and issues from 2018). I know we have a few more things we want to integrate, we just haven’t purchased them yet and I’m not entirely sure I’m done with the Raspberry Pi and home automation integration. Watch for a (long overdue) Biggs Lab post in 2019.
2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge
I really dropped the ball with my 2018 Reading Challenge. I set a reasonable goal of 12 books and only (just barely) finished 9. I’m resetting that goal to 12 books again for 2019 and I have a few Dresden books in mind to help me hit that goal. I also have some Star Wars books that are going to carry over from 2018 plus a couple more I’ve added to the list for this year.
As is always my style, when I complete a book I will post a corresponding book review that you will find both on Goodreads and on Amazon.
2019 Fitness and Health Goals
This category is going to be a big focus area for me this year. Of all the areas I’ve been making intentions, this is the one where I’m most successful. I will be kicking things up a notch in 2019. Now that I have two 5k races under my belt, I think it’s time to try for the 10k this year. Granted this isn’t necessarily just my choice; I’ve been encouraging friends to run more and they, in turn, are now challenging me to run a 10k. I will also be putting a heavier emphasis on additional fitness training (i.e. strength and core workouts).
Also, a few years ago I said that when I hit 40 I’m going to stop drinking so much soda. Therefore, since 2019 is the year before I turn 40 I am going to start by reducing the amount of pop I’m drinking on a daily basis. Hopefully, by the end of the year, I will have completely stopped. I’m also going to alter my diet a bit by more than just reducing portions. I’m going to watch what else is in my food before I eat it. No, I am NOT going vegan (I’d rather castrate myself with a broken coke bottle).
Mental health is just as important as physical health and I believe there is something very toxic to my mental health in my life. Social Media. The things I see on Facebook and Twitter sometime infuriate me to the point where I say and think things that are not very nice. I need to cleanse myself of that toxicity. Therefore, I will be greatly reducing my social media footprint in 2019. I’m going to reduce how much time I spend on Facebook and Twitter; hopefully down to maybe once or twice a week. I will find out what is going on the old fashioned way, talk to people. (I know, not very introverted of me).
I’m going to stop here. I don’t want to go into the Professional Skills Development this year as I don’t know what I’m going to do in that area. It’s so volatile that I cannot accurately decide on a skill set to focus on. So with that said …
Happy New Year!!
I could accomplish so much more if I only had minions!