01275: My Personal Goals for 2012

There's a fine line between resolutions and goals that people often miss. And I suppose given my generally work-oriented mind set, I'm really more for setting goals and targets as opposed to merely promising to try to change certain things about it. Goals just feel a lot more concrete, especially when it comes to really making progress in the long term.

So while trying to survive my first work shift of the year, I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to get done this year versus what absolutely has to get done. And while I won't take the time to differentiate one from the other in terms of the goals I'm going to outline here, I just wanted to put it out there sort of how I mapped this all out.

And that last sentence kind of got away from me. Sorry - I'm running a bit on empty right now. While thankfully it was a generally light work shift since apparently it was still a Federal holiday in the US, my body is still not quite there in terms of getting back into full night shift mode. But I still made it through the day okay, and that's what counts, although I couldn't help but think if it might have been a better idea to have included yesterday as part of my original vacation plans. Note to self - check US holiday schedule ahead of time when plotting long term vacations like this.

Anyway, as a means of tracking all these targets for myself and in the hopes of using public pressure to keep me on track in terms of these particular goals, I'm posting them on this blog to see if that helps any. Of course the state of affairs right now versus what things may be like few months down the line are free to shift wherever, may it be a good thing or a bad thing for the individuals concerned. But one can only hope to roll with the punches as best as possible and try to make it to the finish line.

Write a novel - Not the novel, but a novel. For years and years and years I've wanted to get published and yet like most writers, I can never seem to get myself to finish whatever I started. In fact, this is a goal that's leftover from last year that just disappeared amid the awesomeness of everything going on. So again I'm stepping up to the plate and promising myself that I'll get a book out, whether it's a pulp LGBT romance novel or a collection of short stories (assuming it becomes easier to write that as opposed to one big story). The Kindle Store and other online book markets are just waiting for me and so I really, really need to get myself out there.

Revise our wardrobe - As mentioned before, Tobie and I are idiots when it comes to shopping for clothes. We mostly rely on gifts from other people to build our wardrobe (as limited as it is) and otherwise continue to wear shirts that are more than 10 years old. I'm sure this is going to be a painful process that is going to take the better part of the year to gain traction on, but I think we can do it. But I know we're going to need help (paging my sister and Mahar). I hope this doesn't get too pricey though - I'm looking to expand my work-related attire and of course increase the geek cred of the rest of our stuff. Fun fun.

Resolve the housing question - Are we buying a new house this year? Are we going to renew the lease? Will the landlord even allow that? Are we going to settle for a condominium instead of holding out for a town home? There are quite a number of questions related to our domestic situation that have been dragging on for some time and I'd really like to get them out of the way. I know that Tobie and I are more than prepared to own property together (at least emotionally) and our finances are decently within range (although it's going to be a stretch to some extent) but the bigger challenge is finding a place. In more than two years of looking at houses together, we've yet to see a place that has excited us sufficiently enough to get us past the borders between consideration and purchasing.

Figure out storage at the Sietch - Somewhat related to the moving question is figuring out how to store all the stuff at the Sietch. Between my ever-growing collection of books, the ridiculous number of Transformers at the Sietch and all the other fun random stuff we pick up like board games, stuffed animals and lovely trade paperback compilations of great comic book stories. We really don't have enough space for everything in terms of existing storage solutions, but anything we do acquire will need to be something that can be moved in the event that we do find a new place to move into. This is not about getting rid of stuff. This is more about figuring out storage solutions that double as displays. We're always going to celebrate our geekery, even if it seems like so much clutter.

Those are the big ticket items for now, at least the ones that I can come up with at this point in time (and the ones I'm willing to commit to)/. I've love to round up the number to a full five, but there's little sense in trying to force things either. And besides, it's still rather early in the year and this leaves me with a lot of wiggle room to add in more goals as things progress. It's just nice to more or less plot things out at the start of the calendar year, since humans are a tad sentimental about following calendars, things that end in multiples of 10 and that sort of thing.

This blog entry would have been posted much sooner had I not needed to sleep immediately after work (there was a 5 hour gap between the time I started this entry and the time I finally started writing the actual goals. Plus I opted to load the season premiere episode of BBC's Sherlock and that totally distracted us from getting any work done. Fabulous series indeed.

Today's been a rainy day. Thus its comfortably cool and yet also at times a tad too chilly to keep things all easy breezy. Now that I've gotten all these goals set down on "paper", as it were, now comes the trickier job of trying to figure out where to begin.
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