New year, new goals

Posted by Emily Loewen on January 1, 2013 · 1 Comment 

The time has come once again to take stock of how well I did on my 2012 resolutions, and to set myself some new ones.

I don’t love the pressure often put on New Year’s Eve, the stress of finding something fun to do, the disappointment when it’s not as amazing as expected, or the tedium of explaining to people why you just felt like celebrating at home (this year I stayed in, watched the Godfather with my dad and I was perfectly happy about it).

I do, however, love the idea of a fresh start. I like the reminder to think about how my last year went, and how I can make the next one better. So to start, a brief report on how last year’s resolutions went.

1. Blog at least once a week. Well if you’ve been following my blog you know I didn’t quite keep this one up, especially in summer when I got busy with fun and a bit of travel. But I did write 40 posts last year, which is up from previous years. That’s actually a 77 per cent success rate, which is a B+ according to the UBC grading scheme, so I’m considering this a pass.
2. Floss everyday. It definitely didn’t happen everyday. Sometimes I ran out of floss. Sometimes I got lazy. But it happened a lot more than if I hadn’t made the resolution. Also when I went for a cleaning in December my dental hygienist said she could tell I flossed, so I’m just going to call this a win and try to keep it going.

All in all a successful year for resolutions. Which brings us to …

Goals for 2013

This year I’ve made a list of goals instead of resolutions. When I sat down to think about resolutions I might want to make I couldn’t think of any. Maybe it’s because I have very little idea of what the next year will bring so it’s hard to say what I want to change, or maybe it’s that resolutions are hard to actually accomplish. For the most part you can’t complete a resolution, you can only fail to live up to it. There’s no defined end point (except for the end of the year).

Goals on the other hand are something concrete you work towards, and then you can check them off your list. As someone who loves lists I find that idea much more satisfying. So here are some goals for the coming year (some of which are resolutions masquerading as accomplish-able tasks).

1. Travel To be honest I don’t really care where I go as long as it’s outside of North America. I’m not even terribly picky about how long, or when I go, but I am determined to make it happen. I’ve blogged about travel before, and the more I think about it the more I’m itching to go.
2. Write about every book I read Instead of giving myself a defined timeline or a number of blog posts to write I’m going to give myself a project to blog about. I’ve always loved reading and I’ve been doing more of it since I’ve graduated, so I think writing short posts about what books I’ve read will help me update more often. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of other posts as well.
3. Learn to code At this point my coding skills are limited to making things bold and italic, or creating lists. And even then sometimes Google has to help me out. I’d like to improve and customize my portfolio website, and in this day and age it seems like a useful skill for a journalist to have. Also I think it could be fun once I get the hang of it. I’m thinking I’ll check out Ladies Learning Code, I’ve heard great things about them and it seems like a non-intimidating place to start. Any other ideas or suggestions are welcome.
4. Pay off one of my student loans I don’t know if all provinces are this way, but somehow applying in Manitoba meant I ended up with both a Manitoba student loan and a Canada student loan. While my total debt is actually really low compared to the average Canadian student, having two outstanding loans makes me nervous and I’d like to eliminate at least one of them.

That’s it. Some of those are pretty big tasks, but I’m looking forward to the challenge of completing them. What are your goals or resolutions for 2013?

Filed under holidays, rando thoughts · Tagged with 2013, Books, code, Debt, Goals, html, Loans, new years, reading, resolutions, travel