Gooooooal(s)!
Posted by Mike
Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda
photo credit: carolyntiry
A lot of people don't like to make New Year's resolutions for a variety of reasons. I'd like to think that I've heard every excuse there is at this point but people continually find new ways to surprise me. The two most common (to date) that I've heard are:
- "Oh, I don't need a reason to make goals, I have them year-round."
- "People never stick to resolutions anyway so why bother."
There's a whole slew of ways to argue these points, but for me it just isn't worth it. While I agree with the first statement in principle, New Years and its associated traditions provide a logical, easily remembered point in time to set goals for yourself for the coming year. If you're committed enough to not need such a landmark date that's great, but I'll stick with what works for me.
In years past I never bothered setting goals for myself. Sometimes (infrequently) New Years was a good time to look over what happened to me in the last year and try to figure out what went wrong. The past two years were the first times I tried setting concrete goals for myself and it worked out pretty well. I think that where this practice fails for a lot of folks is that they don't set concrete enough goals. If you don't know your goal, how can you judge your progress or success / failure?
Now without further pontificating- my goals for 2010.
Fitness
- I want to maintain a 30-31 inch waist.
- Make it to the gym 4 days a week at least every other week, if not every week.
- Reduce my bodyfat. My scale currently says I'm at ~8-9%, but I wonder how accurate that is. That might be true overall, but most of my bodyfat is concentrated around the 'ole waistline. Needs to even out!
- Be able to squat 160lbs, bench press 180lbs, and do 100 pushups. Not necessarily all of these back to back
Hobbies
- Read at least 3 books a month (or 36 books for the year) with at least half being non-fiction. I'm great at tearing through fiction but I'm slow on the nonfic.
- Draw more. I haven't actively sketched anything in years, and the LA Ink marathon I watched while fighting off the deadly ninja sinus virus ..thing rekindled the creative urge in me. I haven't decided what I'm going to draw yet but I want to have at least four finished pieces by the end of the year.
- Photography. I definitely want to take more pictures, and I've started on that by joining the 365 Project. It's not a competition- you just take a picture every day and post it. I also want to enter at least two photo contests this year.
- San Diego Exploration. At least once a month, try something new around town. This includes hiking.
Self Improvement
- Learn a foreign language. This is one of my failed goals from last year, sadly. Logically enough I'm starting with Latin American Spanish since it's the second most popular language here. I'd also like to be able to talk to the nice smiling people who run the 24 hour burrito drive thru near my house.
- Add a new technical skill / certification. I'm leaning strongly toward PHP here due to my increasing WordPress involvement. Currently I'm more of a talented amateur hacker at it than anything else.
So thems my goals for the year. The fitness ones should be a breeze, the hobby ones a bit harder, and I think that the self improvement ones will be the hardest of all.
OMG hi 2 u!
Posted by Mike
Hey! It's been a while hasn't it?
I'm sorry I haven't posted more. Life in California is pretty busy, so I don't have a lot of free time to hang out on the internet. It's somewhat ironic to me that I feel busier here than I did in Alabama when by and large the culture here is far more laid back and relaxed. Work hours start later and are far more relaxed, holidays are longer and there are more of them, and no one really ever appears to be in a hurry. I don't know if this is true for most jobs here, just tech jobs, or just "game industry" jobs of which I'm on the very periphery of.
So what's keeping me so busy you ask? The biggest push for me personally has been re-furnishing my pad. When I left Alabama I threw out just about everything that I didn't personally pick out, or furniture that I didn't like. I took pictures of my old apartment right before I left of everything packed up. It's pretty drastic that when moving from a 989 sq foot, 2 bed/bath apartment to a 830 sq foot, 1 bed/bath apartment almost everything I moved fit in half my living room. I had 86 "items" for the movers to move. That's it. I threw away a lot both physically and mentally to make this move, and one of my first orders of business has been to get my sense of "home" re-established. It's still a work in progress, but I'm done enough to actually show it to people and not feel like I'm living in a dorm room. You can see the full album on my photos page. Here's a few samples:
Some of my free time has been devoted to working on my official blog of course (www.thefirestarter.org), working on my dad's photography site (www.thruthelenz.com), and I just finished a website for Dennis my old personal trainer (www.1on1personaltrainingnow.com). Website work is sort of hit or miss for me, I don't generally enjoy it and have to be "in the mood" to get anything done. I need to finish Thru the Lenz and one more site for a friend's computer consulting gig before I can quit for another year or two. Hopefully. What's left of my free time has been split between gym, various social events, reading, and a renewed interest in gaming. I'm still trying to find a good multiplayer (co-op) RPG, so if anyone has recommendations I'm all ears. Gym is indirectly taking up more time than I'm used to; eating 3000 (or more!) calories a day while trying to bulk is not as easy as I would hoped. There's food prep time, sleep time, longer gym sessions.. but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was worth it and didn't enjoy every minute of it.
The only thing I'd like to do more of that I haven't is hiking. I got to do a quick 2 hour trip to Torrey Pines a few weekends back (photos here), but I haven't done any real stuff yet. I'm trying to get a group together to do a hike at Volcan Mountain this weekend but those pesky social obligations I mentioned keep cropping up =). Along with the hiking comes photography of course, but that's still very much a shelved project until all my website work finishes up.
Next post will be sometime this week and will probably be a Rogaine update. Stay tuned!
The Weekly Roundup #1
Posted by Mike
My first full week in San Diego! It was lots of things, but most of all, it was normal. I don't think this is a bad thing by any stretch, in fact I find it reassuring that after picking up my life and shaking the dust out of it, I'm able to feel comfortable enough to be resume normality in my new environment. People who don't travel often may not understand this phenomenon, but after any move (even across town!) it normally takes me at least a month for the day to day stuff to settle back into a routine. My belongings were delivered last Saturday and the final box was put in the closet Friday night. I'm not saying I'm done unpacking, I'm just as done as I can get right this minute. I'm in a slightly smaller apartment and I'm lacking some storage I'm used to, so not everything fits yet. I also don't have some key furniture items (entertainment center, couch, TV) so there's that too. My relocation reimbursement can't get here soon enough.
So what have I been doing in this fine fine city you ask? Not a whole lot! I kid you not. Last weekend was a nice grownup (ie, there was wine and no IHOP involved) dinner and dessert with some friends, but other than I've been a real homebody. I'm still adjusting to my slightly different work schedule and my new daily commute routine. Unpacking has taken up quite a bit of time naturally, then there's gym time on top of that. In my free time after all that I've been sucked into a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon thanks to my buddy Rob, and THEN there's the Xbox. I'm pretty psyched about Dragon Age coming out in November from Bioware. Thankfully to help fill the time until then Brutal Legends launches in October. While normally the theme of the game and Jack Black's presence in it would be two strikes, the demo was unbelievably fun and somehow he wasn't that annoying. Probably because it was just his voice. I've made a promise to myself to finish both Afro Samurai and Castle Crashers before buying any more games. Tales of Vesperia? I'll get back to you. Fallout 3? Yeah.. uh, you're scheduled for a quick trip to Gamestop to trade-in. Sorry!
Before I forget, let's talk about the commute. Many people have scoffed at me for living 25 miles from work, especially when my gas mileage is between 15-19 mpg. To you people I say "THPBPBPBPB." I live two miles from the beach (but it's getting too chilly damnit) in a kickass city. Encinitas is just north of San Diego so you get all the convenience of living in American's 7th largest city while still maintaining a tiny beach-town atmosphere. The commute doesn't bother me either, in fact I've actually come to look forward to it. I just plug in my iPhone to the stereo and relax the entire way. How many people can say they take an hour out of their day to stop and just enjoy music? Lately I've been exploring classical more as it's cheap as hell on iTunes. There are tons of albums with 50-100 classic pieces for between $9-15, and so far the only downside is ending up with a few copies of the same song. I think I have at least 4 copies of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons". If you're like me and tend to drive to match your soundtrack, then it's doubly as awesome. So far the William Tell Overture is taking first place in my classical driving playlist, with the 1812 Overture a strong second. Strangely enough Ride of the Valkyries was not in my top five. The timing is just a bit off somehow.
That's it peeps! I realize there's a significant lack of anything even remotely exciting, but next weekend's roundup should be more interesting as I begin to explore my new home. I've also got another 2-3 posts written for this week, so I seem to be staying on top of this whole blogging thing.
About Me
Lackadaisical writer, amateur photographer, professional grump, and all around spiffy IT guy.
Popular Posts
- @markjholmes I personally like Wells Fargo but I don't think you guys have a branch there. Emailed ATM receipts and no envelopes either.