TechgnosisWeb Prime

So, another year gone, and what do we have to show for it? More than we expected, I’d say, but the way we got here was particularly *un*expected. Lots of things happened: I’ve gone back to school, I’m single again, two of my best friends in the world got married (more on that later!), and a whole lot more.. no need to rehash most of it, you can just look back over the blog and get the gist of it all. But as my good friend and house mate Monster asked me the other night, what about the traditional New Year’s resolutions? It’s that time of year again, time to look back on the previous year’s resolutions, see how we did, and make new ones (or maybe renew some of the old ones). So, let’s start with last year’s resolutions:

• Get at least two more Microsoft certifications this year. - Change of plans, there. Due to breaking up with Natalie and a lot of soulsearching, I decided to start working towards getting the hell out of the tech-support industry. So, rather than focusing on the Microsoft certs, I enrolled in a distance-learning course for paralegal studies, step one in my plan to become a lawyer by the time I hit 35. So, if we take this particular resolution as a more general ‘continue my education’ resolution, I’d say I’ve done pretty well on it.
• Get weight back down to under 200 - Not quite there yet, but i’m doing my part. I enrolled in a gym late last year, and while I’ve been slacking off the past couple months, I’m gonna be hitting it hard again soon enough. I saw some pictures of myself from last X-mas, and then some pics of myself this X-mas, and I’ve gone down considerably. Time to keep working on that.
• Podcast at least once a month - Mixed bag. There were a couple of podcasts, yes, but for the most part I completely flaked out on continuing my own little shows. On the other hand, though, I also bought myself a little videocam and played around with posting up a few minor videoblog entries. And a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
• Spend more quality time with my girlfriend - Um.. yeah. Remember what I said about being single now? Enough said.
• Take better care of my health - Again, a mixed bag. I’ve gone several times to the doctor and had more studies done, but we’re still in the midst of doing more and more studies and nothing concrete has been done. Problems with my health plan in the last couple of months also did not help. I’m actually supposed to pick up the results of yet another study today and make an appointment with the doctor, so I’ll keep the lot of you updated.
• Write, goddamit - Yeah.. this one was a total bust. No writing got done (unless you count the thousands of paragraphs I wrote while mu*ing this last year.. what a waste.. more on that later..), but, on the plus side, I also stopped torturing myself and unsubscribed to the writing podcasts I had mentioned last year.
• Slap my finances back into shape - Mixed bag, but definitely more good than bad here. I am officially out of debt, and am managing to stash away a bit of cash on a monthly basis to try and prepare for when I start more formal studies later in the year. So, doing better than last year!
• Drink less soda, drink more.. other stuff - Mission pretty much accomplished here. I still will ocassionally have the odd can of Coke or Pepsi, but for the most part, I’ve knocked sodas off my diet. Of course, they’ve been replaced with Gatorade and the occasional beer or two, now.. but that’s still gotta be better than soda.
• Spend a little less time in front of the computer - Another mixed bag. I am spending less time in front of the computer.. but not by much. However, my time in front of the computer is now spent a lot more productively (especially since i stopped mu*ing again, possibly for good), and I do take time out to play board games (the San Juan card game with Monster and Hal last night was good stuff.. 28 VP vs. 21 for each of them! Suck it, Trebek!) and generally do other things with my time (even if those other things tend to involve a lot of time spent with my precious, precious Nintendo DS.. but there’s also a lot of studying and just spending quality time with people I care about).

So, that’s last year’s resolutions. Overall, better than I expected, and better than many people manage. Almost all of them were at least partially completed, and the ones that weren’t, I discarded as empty dreams and am moving on to bigger and better things. So, next post: new resolutions for a new year!