01732: Plans for 2014

To-do list book by Justin See

Today marks my first working day of the year given how I had plotted out my holiday leaves. And the start of the year is always a great time for making plans since we all seem to love following calendar years for such things. The term "resolution" is supposed to carry more weight than "plan" but of course given how New Year's Resolutions have become a bit of a joke over the years, I guess I'll stick with plans for now.

Here are a few things that I really need to happen this year:

Writing - I always have some sort of a resolution related to my creative writing efforts, but I haven't had much luck in this area in recent years. So I'll try breaking this goal down to a more specific level. So this year's writing goal is to write 12 solid short stories that I can considering putting together into a single anthology or maybe just sell individually as short stories. The Kindle marketplace is pretty diverse in that manner.

Health - So I finally hopped back on the scale today and I'm about 220 pounds now. That's...a lot. I don't foresee becoming a muscle man within the span of a year, but I do need to do something about my weight. So to keep my goal concrete, a good goal for 2014 would be to try and get back to at least 180 pounds. That's still overweight given my frame, but I think that's a more respectable weight range to live in. Whether I achieve this through exercise, better meal management or both will all depend on how the year progresses. At the very least I may consider bringing more comfortable shoes with me when heading to work and I can opt to walk more on the way home. A good walk may be getting off a station early at Santolan and make my way to Cubao on foot. Doing that on a daily basis should make serious dent on my current weight level.

House Hunting - Our current lease is good for pretty much another year. But beyond that point, we'll really need to consider our living arrangements. And we really haven't made any progress in this area, so I'll need to resume the search within this year. I don't think I need to start right away, but I do need to get the ball rolling by the 2nd half of the year.

Travel - Travel doesn't really seem like a major goal area for me, but I think it would be nice to travel a bit more at least for the experience. There are a lot of domestic options to consider like finally going to Baguio or Tagaytay together with Tobie or returning to beaches like Puerto Galera or Boracay. Singapore is always on the calendar but it doesn't "count"as travel since it's really more about visiting my sister. That's not a bad thing, but we've been to Singapore enough for it to no longer feel like all that new a place to experience. To make this goal concrete, let's target one domestic destination and at least one more trip to Singapore. I doubt we'll be limited to just one though.

Those are the four big goal areas for the year. I'd love to convert this into a list of five things since I like the number 5 more than 4, but nothing immediately comes to mind just yet. Then again, I may return to this list and change things up should I think of something.