Friday Five
Five resolutions for the New Year from five different facets of life.
-
Family
Confucius admonished that just doing the things one is supposed to do does not make one a good son (or husband or father or brother). Exceed expectations.
-
Martial Arts
I resolve to rededicate myself to training, and I let go of this resolution.
-
Coding
I will contribute meaningfully to at least one Free (as in freedom) Software project of infrastructure class: OS, language, widely-used library, etc.
-
Neighborhood
Make our properties assets to the neighborhood.
-
Planning
Expand knowledge; ask question; make choices for the future.
You Say You Want a Resolution
Before January actually ends, I feel like I should note the resolutions I've made for the upcoming year. There aren't too many, and they're probably boring to anyone but me.
-
Make a little bit of progress on the house each week.
I don't have the illusion that I will be able to, or will want to, work on our house project everyday. However, I think it's reasonable to think that I get something accomplished every week, whether it's painting a wall or stripping some woodwork or whatever.
-
Stay on top of household chores.
One of the excuses I've made for myself with regard to our queue of projects is that it's a full-time job keeping the house clean and tidy. I don't believe that's actually the case; by spreading the tasks out over a week, it should be possible to keep everything neat with an investment of less than an hour a day.
To this end, I need to revive my chart of chores to be done each day. It worked for me, even if it didn't have 100% buy-in from the other stakeholders. (ahem)
-
Shed stuff.
In my closet, in the basement, on virtually any free horizontal surface—we're collecting a lot of stuff. Things we don't need or care about are piling up. One can tell we don't need or care about them by the way they're stuck in boxes (or piles) in rooms we never go into.
I'm going to strive to take one box of stuff to Goodwill or to be recycled per week.
-
Work out a schedule that allows for aikido study.
This will be a little tough, because it might mean fighting my meat.
I usually get home from aikido practice at 10:30. After that I need to
come down
from the practice high and get ready for bed. I hope I can train my body and mind to go from total alertness and excitement to ready to sleep in about an hour, which means bedtime is 11:30. Likewise, I should establish a consistent waking time, and 6 AM seems like obvious choice.The immediate task, then, is to establish a ritual that puts me in bed—lights out, eyes closed—at 11:30.
When that's done, it's time to hit the mats again.
-
Study more Japanese. The details for how to accomplish this aren't clear yet, so that's the place to start. Answer this question: How?
Here's a quick answer: study kanji and write.
-
Continue practicing Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu. Attend a seminar again this year.
Get the manual. Get together the study group. Try not to whack the crap out of each other—any more than necessary.
-
Continue to work on assertiveness.
Be confrontational when it's appropriate instead of looking for a way out or just ignoring the situation.
-
Be cognizant of when I'm seeking entertainment for escape rather than edification.
-
Keep better track of personal email.
Mostly this is a matter of sorting and spam dectection, so examining my .procmailrc file and upgrading SpamAssassin will help.
When I've got searching working for my blog, which it is mostly, I should set it up for my email folders, too.
-
Figure out if I can do a better job of managing personal information, dates, contacts, etc.
I had been using an online calendar for managing appointments, but I broke that system when I upgraded firefox to a version that wasn't compatible with the calendar extension. I guess I should just download sunbird and call it done.
Finally, I should revisit this list regulary and, most importantly, in January 2007 to check my progress.