Blog | Rubyyot

2009 is shaping up to be a year as full of change as 2008 was, if not more so.  The primary difference is that this year I’m ready for it, or at least ready-er(?).  It’s mostly a state of mind that I’m working to maintain.  This year my mantra is:

Change is good, it brings opportunity.  Be ready for anything.

Being ready for anything is not as easy as it sounds when you have spent a good part of your last ten years trying to settle into a comfortable routine.  This plan has, by the way, failed me in each of the last ten years.  It simply isn’t maintainable.  Life has had a way of shaking me up when I get too settled in.  Either that or I have an evil twin that is working diligently to make sure that I am constantly struggling.  Personally, I prefer to believe the first option since it makes me feel a bit less like a paranoid psychotic.

In the midst of my readiness, I have set a number of goals for myself to achieve in 2009.  These are generally in the category or personal improvement and more specifically intended to keep me from becoming a big, fat, coughing wannabe programmer sitting around all day wondering why life is passing him by.

So without further introduction, here are my goals for 2009 and how I am doing with achieving them.

• Spend more family time - I’m continuing to fail here.  Need to improve quickly.
• Quit smoking - Funny that this goal was the one I thought that I would ignore throughout the year, but I’ve done it.  It’s been over a month since I quit smoking cold turkey.
• Continue learning in Ruby and .NET – While I went through a stretch of good growth here, the last week or two have brought a loss of momentum and motivation, hopefully this is a temporary bit of downtime.
• Learn Erlang Learn Ioke – While I would still like to learn Erlang, I’ve officially jumped ship to Ioke on this one.   I have the ‘S’ release installed on my new laptop and I just need to start using it.
• Exercise frequently – Quitting smoking has had me putting on the pounds, primarily because of energy drinks.  I’ve now switched to coffee and tea and, now that the weather is warming up a bit, I am walking on most days.
• Stop trying to organize, and start simplifying – Completely derailed on this after a minor victory involving a trip to storage and the goodwill donation station.
• Become financially stable – I’ve started an emergency fund, which is really not all that exciting.  Except for me, since I’ve never had one and in this case, my opinion is the one that counts.
• Contribute – No progress as of yet.
• Teach – No progress here either.
• Enjoy the journey- A mindset that I need to continue to nurture, because I haven’t really done this, at all.

Next month I’ll check back in an see how I’m doing with these goals.  Good luck with all of yours.

Tags: self-assesment

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