Now that life is returning to normal after the Holidays, I’ve had a chance to sit down and start thinking about the upcoming year. Over the years, I’ve found that I tend to overstretch in my goal setting, or set goals that are more “resolutioney”. With the past year, I’ve become far more aware of the limits of hours in the day to accomplish things. So, this year, I’m going to prioritize my goals and try to introduce some realism in them.

1. Knock out 2 more grad classes. Looking forward to keeping grad school going. I’ve been learning a lot and it feels good to get my brain active again.
2. Complete a hackaday worthy project. I could go for something professionally or personally here – I’m not sure which. But really, I’d like to build a project worthy of showing off to a wider audience – maybe even write a paper or similar. Last year, I feel that some of my class projects came near this bar – so, I’m hoping this one won’t be too difficult to pull off.
3. Reorganize and reevaluate IT setup. I’ve been putting this off for a bit, but I’d like to get my IT infrastructure a bit better moving. This means getting backups going, setting up all the PC stuff that needs done, and getting the home LAN to be a bit more solid.
4. Obtain HAM license. This one I plan on hitting harder this year and likely doing as part of our IT infrastructure setup. Maybe I’ll find some use for the extraordinary amount of coax around this place.
5. Compose and/or record some music. This is a recurring yearly goal, and something that I’ve let lapse. This year, I’m hoping the new house and some things ‘calming down’ will let me accomplish this.
6. Blog on a regular basis and find new / interesting news and blog sources to follow. I’m hoping this gets me a bit more off rest of the very toxic social media world. I’m also considering doing some podcasting / vlogging – and maybe doing stuff on other social media platforms besides Facebook. We’ll see.
7. Make some soap and/or beer. I’ve been wanting to get involved in homebrew for a while and I previously enjoyed doing the whole soap thing. Time to get back to it.
8. Complete a writing project draft. With multiple unfinished writing projects floating around over the years, I’d like to actually get something to the point that I can look at self publishing costs or at least have the knowledge that I tried.
9. Get involved in some local social groups. The reality here is I’ve drifted or been forcibly separated from many friends over the years. This year, I need to start putting myself out there a bit more and work at expanding my social group.
10. Get onboard the prepper train. I’ve been listening to a couple gardening / permaculture sorta podcasts over the years – but it’s amazing that I’ve done nothing personally to advance that in my life. This year, I’m going to see if I can start integrating some of that in a meaningful way.

So yeah, still a bit resolutioney this year after all… As I found last year, time will move and force your life along – it’s up to you to direct it or just go with the flow. We’re almost a week into 2019 – hopefully it’s been a productive one for all.