Categories and Goals
It's good to have goals. Even if you fail to meet them. Sometimes especially when you fail to meet them. It's quite widely publicised that at Google we're expected to score 0.7 (on a scale where 0 is a complete failure and 1 means all targets were met) when assessing our OKRs (objectives and key results). Generally this is good. It means you're always striving, always raising your eyes, hitting the top of the tree by aiming for the sky.
In my personal life, though, this probably isn't the best approach. Be that as it may, this year I have goals.
1. Get myself in shape.
Also known as: project "look good naked". There's a bit more to it than this, of course. There's also a bit of a story behind it, which I'll probably tell in a later post. I also have some ideas around this area which might turn into something else. If I'm going to set goals, I need a way to measure success, after all.
Talking about this here leaves me with a slightly odd problem, though. When I relaunched this blog I adjusted all of my category names to be descriptive nouns, which means a can auto-generate the part of the about text (on the right) which references them. I don't know what the appropriate noun is for someone who participates in and thinks about fitness related activities. This is a stupid problem to have, but it is a problem, nevertheless.
2. Get my House in order.
In the literal sense. One of the reasons things went dark on this blog last year is that I actually took the plunge and bought a flat. This ate a lot of my time and left my life in a bit of an inconsistent state for a month or so. Now I'm in, though, and having spent a winter in the place I've taken stock. It needs some work. It needs to be warmer when the weather is cold. It needs a bit more personality… and some of the really odd design decisions made by the previous owners need to be reversed.
It's also a whole new playground for me to seek adventures in. My Clockwork Aphid project was a casualty of the upheaval in my life last year and I'm not sure how much attention it'll get this year… because this year I'd also like to start playing with home automation. Nothing crazy. No robot butlers; but we'll see.
3. Read. Travel. Watch. Write.
This one is more straight forward. I'd like to start more closely measuring how much a read, travel, watch (mainly in terms of films) and write, on this blog an elsewhere.
Reading is straightforward, I think. I read a lot. On my way to work, before bed, in coffee shops at the weekend, But I'm curious to try and keep tabs on what I'm reading and how much. It frustrates the hell out of me that my kindle can't easily supply me with the information.
One of my friends has a goal for this year that she will get out of Edinburgh at least once every month. That's not a bad goal to have at all. For me, I'd just like to see and experience more of the wider world in general, but also the part of it which I inhabit.
As for watching films and keeping tabs on what I saw… well… I already have a place to keep tabs on that. Simple. This is mostly a matter of "keep it up".
Lastly: writing. Er… yes. I don't have such a great record with this one. Obviously I want to get back to posting regularly on this blog… but I'd also like to try and do something with the two screenplays I wrote during university (and the pile of partially developed ones). I used to regularly do some sort of creative writing and lately I'm starting to feel the lack of it in my life.