Be Excellent To Each Other

The new year approaches. Bugger this resolution nonsense. They seem to often be simplified and fundamental changes that are too silly to achieve generally, hence why so many forget them by February. I prefer to have objectives for the year ahead. Mine:

1) Get a new job as current one might kill me from boredom. One iron is in the fire for a total career change but if that fails to pan out I will settle for a less horrible IT job.
2) Run my half marathon in April in less than 2 hours (and thereby, train my nuts off for that in the run-up)
3) Get down to the weight that I was last at at the start 2004, being the lowest I've weighed since I've been an adult.

A list of 'stuff to do' is good at any time of year. Would like to hear yours please chaps and chapettes

Mine is stop smoking.
Pack it in,
Quit it,
and Nah man I don't smoke.

Probably will though but worth a try. Also want to get a decent bike and cycle to the moon like ET.

New job, definitely. And preferably a complete career change before retail management turns me into a deranged serial killer.

Explore. I received a nice, big atlas of Northwestern Ontario today, so I'm definitely going to try to go to at least one new place every couple of weeks. And take lots of photos. Operation "Get Off Your Lazy Arse and Fucking Do Something" was a definite success towards the end of last summer - now I just have to keep it up. Step one will be buying snowshoes this week and going out into the wilderness with my camera even in the winter.

Generally just try and have a better year, certainly than the last few. And I think that will partially be achieved by being a little more selfish and doing things for myself for a change.

1. By the end of the year, be pretty close to earning enough from SavyGamer to pack in other work if I want to (probably wouldn't want to though).
2. Get into shape (obv).
3. Meet a nice girl (obv).

2011 has been pretty amazing. Looking forward to moving to London in January very much.

I'm gonna try and stop using aerosol-based deodorants.

Roll on 2012!

Keep doing whatever it is I have been doing, as it seems to be working out pretty well so far...

My objectives are both to be completed by the end of March:

1. Get a job I enjoy. I love my profession, but this current job bores me to tears. I'm better than this.
2. Move out of this place and in with Miss Malabar. We've put a few grand away between us over the past few months, so it should be fairly easily doable. Fairly.

1: Try not to be teeth-grindingly jealous of Malc's amazing Ontario photo-adventure.
2: Learn banjo.
3: Get up earlier and write.

1: New job

That is all.

In no particular order:

- take more risks
- write more
- do more hiking

And probably some others

1) Sort work out. My job is pretty secure and well-paid and I've been told I'm getting a pay rise in the New Year. However, I don't enjoy working for the company at the moment so I need to decide whether to ride it out or start looking elsewhere. Stumbling block could be the three months notice I'd have to give.

2) Lose weight/Get fit. For the first six months of this year, it was going pretty well with regular workouts and not eating so much crap. That went out of the window for the second half of the year and I'm back where I started.

3) Reach a year without gambling and the ideally not gamble for the whole of 2012.

Tenner says you can't!

1. Get more organised.
2. Lose weight/get fit.
3. Find time to relax more
4. Get debt free

3 is related to 1, though.

4 - well I'm down to credit cards on that score, so should be done by July.

1- Keep up with the new running regime. It's going well and I'm starting to feel the benefits

2- get certified

3- be excellent

As a mental?

Fix my car.

Fix your own bloody car!

Starting new job on 16th Jan, so that's already sorted. I wouldn't mind losing a bit more weight and finishing off the kitchen and living room renovations.

Going to mastermind the Nottingham Rebels AA Championship season, of course.

I'd like to eat better, I've been eating a lot of junk and not eating enough fruit and veg. I don't think I'll ever really get fat, but I do worry that it could end up affecting my health.

I'd like to finish arranging my media collection (Photos will be a big task), but the music is all but done.

I'd like to get a bit fit for the start of our football in March. Last year I set myself the target of scoring a goal (I didn't, despite a couple of really good opportunities) so that still stands. I'd also like to play well enough to get at least one vote for the player's-player of the season (quite a big ask actually).

After having failed on most of my objectives, I am going to make my objective not to set myself objectives.

Oh, wait... FFS!

Official one (for when asked) is "continue being awesome" as I enjoy the vanity.

But really mine would be to:

1) Survive the work load I'm under till June (to finish a uni course I'm on whilst working full time).

2) be healthier. (this was going great until a complication from my leg burn means I'm not suppose to do any walking etc) and I dont have time to go swimming - which is about the only exercise open to me.

3) Write on the Internet again. Even once. Possibly under a new name. Or other science outreach stuff.

1 will prob make 2 & 3 hard to manage. But here's hoping.

1. Take life a bit easier and not get so stressed

2. Lose my excess weight

3. Cook lobster


All achievable apart from no.1!

1. Lose fat
2. Gain muscle
3. Buy house
4. Get girlfriend

Chicks dig a man with a six pack a third bedroom.

Say 'yes' more often.

MaliA, can I borrow ten grand? I'll pay it back in 2034, promise!

Things I want to do:

1.) Lose a bit of chub - I'm gaining a bit of a belly, and I want to nip that in the bud. I currently weigh in as a Light Heavyweight, and I'd like to get that down to Super Middleweight, ideally.

2.) Finish all the little bits about the house. The kitchen's drafty, the cupboard under the stairs needs more shelves, loft hatch is all wonky, back gate sticks and loads more. None of them would take me more than an afternoon to sort out.

3.) Make more of the nice countryside nearby - hopefully this will help with no. 1.

This year, I want to lose weight.
And some more private resolutions.

Well since some many other people decided to, I thought id join them in sympathy. It'd be mean not to

I want to
Take some nice pictures.
Get my knee mended such that I can go skateboarding again.
Try something new, paragliding or kitesurfing perhaps.
Clean the gutters.
Other stuff.

Sort out my finances and accounts
Do less work

...er that's it.

I tried to fix it today, and it got more broken

That's what you get for jumping the gun, I guess.

Also: stop slouching all the time.

This could be tricky unlearning 30 odd years of not using my back for support.

Do more Illustration/painting/photography in my free time. (Didn't do as much as I could have this year)

Update my CV and hassle folk for more moneys.

Buy some sweet speakers for my den.

Do as much as possible with wife and kids (did well this year with that so plan on doing the same in 2012).

Go to see more live music.

Lose gut.

You missed "spend more time with Mr Dave", fool.

Don't you already have one of those?

I don't know, I've never bummed myself.

Yeah, right.

1. Either

work harder at my current job and earn more, (i.e. I am paid a fee for every bit of work I do, plus mileage and travel time, but I need more work to keep me busy, but more work only pays more if I persuade more people to take part in the projects on which I am working). Maybe I need to improve my doorstep techniques.

OR

Get a better paying job, maybe one that's not entirely dependent on my own personal results.

2. Spend more time learning to use my camera properly.

3. Convert more of my vinyl to MP3.

4. Explore more previously unknown prog rock.

Eww, no. If I could convert my mp3s to vinyl, I would in a heartbeat.

I'm a big man, but I'm out of shape. As I reach the mid-point of my thirty second year on this Earth, I find I have acquired a Thomas Tumpkin. Otherwise pretty thin, the Tumkin look is not a good one. Also, I have always been quite 'rangy' and I want to know what it feels like to be strong. i really love smoking, and don't smoke often, but I know it has a negative effect in many respects. So that should go. Three of my mother's elder siblings have passed away in recent years and my only remaining grandparent died in August. One of my uncles died of cancer on Boxing Day.

Therefore, my New Year objective is to get fit (lose the Tumpkin and stop the smokes) and 'work out'. Gain some muscle. Be 'fit'. I often wonder what effect this would have in terms of the opposite sex. I do okay (I am single) but I often wonder how much better I would do if I wasmore of a beefcake. Shallow I know. But life is short - a fact brought home to me in recent times. Bulking up seems to be the male equivalent of getting a boob job! It's a bit cheaty.

Everything else is fine. I got a new, much better job just before Christmas at a new company, so it really is all about health this next year.

While I can appreciate how anyone would find someone morbidly obese less attractive than someone that isn't, at the same time I also think that any woman that wouldn't look at you because you were carrying a stone of extra weight wouldn't be worth it in the first place. Having physical preferences is fine but if you're that shallow, no thanks.

Much like job interviews, it's foot in the door stuff, isn't it?

Anyway, you're assuming he wants to meet Mrs Right, when most of the time it's really about Mrs Right Now.

*Shakes Warhead by his velvet lapels*
Good God man, what are you thinking?!

Spend more on Hi-Fi

(1) Carry on the exercise and run more 10ks - this will be harder now I can't go for a run at lunch time with the new job (as of next Tuesday), so will require a lot more effort to drag myself out in the evenings. Goal is a half marathon in October and negligible body fat.

(2) Not drink on school nights. This will help with (1), and conversely (1) will help with this, as I'll be exercising after dinner rather than having a glass of wine.

(3) Make a dent in the pile of GW figures and model aeroplanes that need making and painting. I can do this when I get back from doing (1).

(4) Draw and paint more. I recently did a drawing of the two boys as the first sketch I did in over a year, and it was actually quite good. If I practice more I could be pretty awesome.

(5) Get a bonus increase after one year in the job.

I like to think of it as a few stone of extra lovin'.

My objectives would be:

1) Start looking for a new job. I'm actually in no amazing rush to leave where I am, but it's dull as fuck most of the time and the absolute zero tolerance to personal web browsing is a pain in the arse - means I never get to see this place anymore and when there's generally nothing much to do in the office, it can be a nightmare of tedium. Plus I could do with being a bit more ambitious, and something better paid would help with:

2) Do more to sort my debt issues out... though I think I've done okay on this front this year, all considered.

3) Move in with the current Mrs Zio. We've just hit the 5 month point and have been talking recently about renting a place together, just to see how it goes (having both been in relationships that went badly wrong shortly after the 'moving in' stage, we're both a little cautious about this). Having less debt, or at least a more sensible attitude to spending would also help, of course.

4) Buy a (cheap) car.

5) Be a better and more attentive father to my amazing daughter.

Maybe I'm all old fashioned and shit, but five months sounds like quite a short amount of time to me.

This time round, I was engaged after 6 months.

Shit