Looking Ahead into 2012

I tend to write this sort of post every year. It’s not real­ly a set of res­o­lu­tions, just goals. That is, I rarely say to myself “I will do this from now on.” but rather “This is what I’d like to try to accom­plish this year.” Small dif­fer­ence, but prob­a­bly worth noting.

So, in no par­tic­u­lar order (though num­bered anyway):

  1. Blog more about the kids

    They’re get­ting old­er and doing more. As Angela not­ed in her remark on Face­book about get­ting a mini­van, it’s just a mat­ter of time until we’re tak­ing them to soc­cer practice.

  2. Become more flu­ent in XML development

    I can still recall the day Jason John­son explained to me about what XML was. It seemed so sim­ple then… Now I’m writ­ing XSL trans­forms as part of my job and con­cerned with infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture. It’s been absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and a way to actu­al­ly do some pro­gram­ming with a real goal1.

  3. Vis­it more fam­i­ly & friends

    Despite every means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that mankind has ever con­ceived, we (our house­hold, that is) still some­how remain out-of-touch with so many of our rel­a­tives. As our kids are get­ting old­er2 we are at a point where we can just do it the old-fash­ioned way and vis­it (no let­ter writ­ing cam­paign just yet, though). We cer­tain­ly have some old­er mem­bers in the fam­i­ly and it would be a shame to some­day have to explain to the kids why they nev­er met.

  4. Cre­ate more

    Pho­tog­ra­phy, videos, writ­ing, draw­ing, and so on. Our daugh­ter has become very inter­est­ed in art and has shown a real cre­ative streak. I remem­ber when I used to just draw,write a short sto­ry, or make up a tune for fun and I need to get back there some­how. Will I end up with dozens of unfin­ished bits? Most assured­ly. How­ev­er, the point to this is enjoy­ing mak­ing some­thing; not nec­es­sar­i­ly the final product.

  5. Eat health­i­er

    Okay, so I have to admit that this is start­ing to sound like a clas­sic New Year’s res­o­lu­tion. Sure­ly, he’ll men­tion going to the gym more next, right? Of course, los­ing weight may be an added ben­e­fit, but I’m real­ly just inter­est­ed in try­ing out new foods. I’m mar­ried to a real food­ie and it’s real­ly some­thing she loves that I’d like to take a big­ger inter­est in. Cer­tain­ly, I’d like to add in things like fruits & veg­eta­bles that have nev­er real­ly been a sta­ple of my diet3. We’ve always tried out best to cook a lot at home and the kids are start­ing to even get involved. So, as much as it sounds like a sim­ple, shal­low New Year’s res­o­lu­tion, it’s a much a part of the pre­vi­ous goal as it is just try­ing to be healthy.

  6. Exer­cise

    Yes, yes. This guy just does­n’t want to admit he’s make res­o­lu­tions. But Angela real­ly inspired me this past year by set­ting out some goals, run­ning some big races, and doing real­ly well. So, I’ve already signed up for a big half-marathon this year and I’ll try to run at least a short race every month. 

So, it all looks a lot like most of my goals for pre­vi­ous years. That does­n’t mean that I nev­er accom­plished those goals; just that they were good ones and worth mov­ing the goal line to get more out of them.

  1. Aside from just learn­ing, which is a good-enough goal; just one that takes a lot more ded­i­ca­tion than I’m usu­al­ly will­ing to throw at it. []
  2. And, oh yeah, that insane­ly nice mini­van. []
  3. I recent­ly tried Brus­sels sprouts for the first time in my life and, man, are they good! []
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Categorized as Life

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

1 comment

  1. You should bring the kids and come vis­it us in Port­land some day! We can go to OMSI, the zoo, and oth­er fun things.

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