On fresh starts

A lot of people seem to think that New Year’s resolutions are a waste of time. While I agree that any day is a good day to make changes, I also know that I like things in neat and tidy little parcels, and a year is a very nice little short- to medium-term period of time for setting goals, and revisiting them to see how you did.

I didn’t try anything like that for 2015. While I feel the year was pretty good on the whole, this year I’d like to make it a little more official, make some of those goals (and their results) public record here.

So, in no particular order, here are some goals for this year:

1. Post something here every Friday. I’m not setting any kind of length for now—it’ll be hard enough to get back into the habit of writing regularly.
2. Post to a journal at least once every day. Again, no stated length; even a sentence will do. Thankfully, DayOne makes this really easy.
3. Make real progress towards my Mac app. I’ve been kicking around an idea for years now, and by year end I’d really like to have at least a first beta available.
4. Contribute to open-source projects. Without setting a goal for a number or frequency of pull requests, I’d like to participate more in some OSS projects.
5. Get in better shape. I’m not overweight, I’m not underweight, and I’m generally in good shape, but there’s always room for improvement—in my case, that’ll come from discipline in getting to the gym. To that end, I’m really thinking about making some of my fitness-tracker profiles public.

This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, as I have some personal and private goals that I’d also like to aim for, but it’s a good start. I’ll revisit this list every quarter and see how I’m doing.

That said, I hope that the next 366 days are happy, healthy, and fruitful for you. On with the show.