From past experience, when I make resolutions and then screw up, I feel really bad about it. Then, since I’m “off the wagon”, I struggle to muster up the motivation to get back on the wagon and that’s all she wrote.

Instead of resolutions, last year I set myself some goals. Admittedly, I didn’t get terribly far in achieving those goals, but there were some positive outcomes from the discipline of attempting to achieve them; I also gained some insight from looking back at where I failed. In particular, I found that I’d set the bar a little high in terms of the number of things I was trying to achieve. I just didn’t have the time. I also found that the further I got through the year, the harder it was to motivate myself to keep trying; the numbers just felt too big.

As part of that process and insight gained, once again I’m setting myself some new goals for 2011. Less and smaller numbers this year, but I’m hanging onto the 52 & 12.

Firstly, some of my goals for 2011.

• Learn how to make epic coffee. If not epic, at least “really good”.
• Write more. Both solo (like the blog) and with my writing partner. Linz and I have been kicking around some ideas for a while – I want to have something more than just some ideas by year end.
• Get rid of/throw/give stuff away. I’m somewhat of a hoarder. I’m going to keep a list of what I got rid of. Not sure if I’ll publish it yet.
• Clean out my backup drive. Seriously, I have a folder with 15 years worth of files dumped into it. It’s currently 107.77Gb in size. I figure I’ll take this one down a bite at a time. If it’s smaller than that by the end of the year, I’ll consider that a win.
• Clean out my garage. It’s a lot like my hard drive, except dustier and with spiders.
• Lose 26kg. Losing 52 kilograms was probably doable last year, but I failed miserably. The further I got into the year, the harder it got psychologically. I’ll be aiming to put the check-ins up weekly on the 52 Kilos page (which is still my ultimate goal at the moment).
• Read more books. I completed six books last year, all of which were in January. I find that embarrassing.
• Make a decision about the future of Geek Salad. I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing for too long. I keep getting asked about when I’m going to get back to it, and it does involve writing…
• Play my guitar & sing more often.
• Update my blog theme.
• Be a better husband and father. This one requires some more thought about exactly what that means to me and what I want to achieve. What does this look like if I succeed?
• Get to at least one live gig. I have several friends who are musicians and performers, and I didn’t get to a single one of their gigs last year. I will rectify that in 2011.
• Learn to appreciate wine & beer. I don’t know if I can physically do this, but I’d like to find out more about how to savour and taste different wines and beers.
• Cut down on my inputs. I’m collecting too many links and have too much information coming at me to process properly. I’m still not sure I’ll know if I’ve succeeded.
• Keep written track of the things I’ve completed. Reviewing my goals for last year made me realise that there were a lot of goals I didn’t achieve last year, but I have virtually no record of the things I did achieve. Since I’ve got a terrible memory, I’m going to write the stuff I do complete down so that I won’t have the same issue in 2012. If we’re still around…

52 Things:

52 Gym Visits: Get to the gym at least once a week. (Associated goal: Lose 26 kg)

52 Blog Posts: Blog at least once a week (Associated goal: Write more)

52 Meals: Cook for my family at least once a week. Not trying to achieve a new meal every time this year, but I do want to try and take some pressure off my wife’s shoulders (Associated goals: 52 Meals & be a better husband)

12 Things:

12 New Books: Like I said, I’ve cut down my reading goal this year; I’ve knocked one off already. (Associated goal: Read more.)

12 Old Books: However, I’ve got some older books that I want to re-read. This gives me a total of 24 books this year. (Associated goal: Read more.)

12 Date Nights: My wife will like this one. We can’t really afford a weekly date night at the moment, but I’ll make sure we get a date night at least once a month. (Associated goal: Be a better husband)

That’s about it so far, but I’m going to try and keep this post updated with new ideas as they arise.

So, what are your goals for 2011?

52 Things

52 Meals: I got to four. I did cook more often this year, but with two extremely fussy eaters, plus trying to track calories for myself, this goal proved much harder than I had anticipated. I did cook more in 2010, and will endeavour to do so again in 2011.

52 Songs: I didn’t even track this one. #Fail.

52 Movies: I didn’t get to 52, and I slipped up on tracking around the middle of the year. I had hit 27 by the time I stopped tracking, and I’ve seen at least ten more since then, which I’ve added to the 2010 list. My top movie of 2010, without a doubt, is Inception.

52 Books: I planned to read (and possibly review) 52 new books. I read 6 by the time I stopped tracking. I reviewed one. Book #3 stopped me in my tracks in terms of reviewing. There was no way I could review it impartially, and I couldn’t find anything positive to say about it. I’m pretty disappointed with the low number of books I read in 2010, and I’ll be revising the goal for 2011.

52 Kilos: I wanted to lose 52 kilos. I lost and gained weight throughout 2010, and ended the year 2.8kg heavier. Disappointing outcome.

52 Strips: I wanted to resurrect Geek Salad in 2010. It was a maybe, but it didn’t happen. I’ve been getting multiple people hassling me about getting back to it, but the events of the last two months pushed it onto the back burner again; this one is a ‘maybe’ again this year.

12 Things

12 Lives: I didn’t reach 12, but I did manage to achieve a couple of things. However, for the same reason I didn’t dedicate a page to those things, I’m not going to list them here. Mainly because it feels like I would be boasting, or sharing someone else’ stories. I’m going to try again in 2011, but this will probably be the last time I mention this idea.

12 Meals: I was disappointed in the outcome of this particular goal. While we did have friends over for dinner quite a few times, this goal proved harder to achieve than I’d anticipated.

12 Experiences: Well, I did have some new experiences in 2010. It’s just that not all of them were “good experiences”. I also didn’t keep track of them, something I’m going to try not to repeat in 2011.

12 Personal Goals: I failed to set the goals, and failed to find people to be accountable to. #Fail.

I have to face up to the fact that I didn’t even come close to achieving most of these goals. In hindsight, I think I was trying to fit way too much into my schedule, without actually working out where most of these things would actually fit. To lose 52 kilos, I need to go to the gym 2-3 times a week, every week, plus track all of my calories, and everything that goes with those things.

It takes a few hours to read a book, unless it’s a small one, which seems like a bit of a cheat. There’s a couple of hours a week for a movie. There’s two-to-three hours (at least) in drawing and publishing a comic strip. There’s a few hours in a solid blog post. Cooking a meal involves planning and preparation, as well as cooking and cleaning up time – and finding things that two spectrum kids will eat. There were also some big life events, as well as one major one.

The thing is, in spite of failing to achieve any of my goals, I still moved forward in 2010. I went into 2010 with some doubts hanging over my head about my ongoing employment, due to changes of direction in the company I work for; my job is now pretty solid, and I have some interesting new directions ahead of me in 2011. I made some new friends in 2010, and strengthened some old friendships too. In 2010, I also experienced far fewer depressive episodes, and they were much shorter.

In spite of the fact that based on the numbers, 2010 was a failure, I feel like I ended 2010 both stronger and more emotionally secure than I started.

I count that as a win.

I was given A Million Miles in a Thousand Years for Christmas, not really knowing what it was about. I started reading it yesterday, and finished it today. I could barely put it down.

At the heart of it, it’s a book about “story”, and seeing our lives as story. See, no matter what we do, we live. As we live, we create stories. Stories about ourselves, and stories that other people tell about us. For many of us, our lives would make pretty boring books; there are high points, and low points, but mostly our lives are pretty boring, and not the stuff of a page-turner.

But there are people whose lives make a positive impact; some on the people around them, some on the world. Their stories are bigger, and some are downright epic.

Good stories are intentional. If we see our lives as stories, and our stories as part of a greater narrative, then we can choose to just exist, and let the story pass us by, or we can choose to live our lives with intentionality, and choose the story rather than just letting it happen.

Given my decision to set goals this year, and live with some intentionality, couldn’t have been better timing.

I want to live a better story.