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I posted my perennial New Year’s resolutions from the previous post at the NaNoWriMo Big, Fun, Scary Goal Center forum, and decided they were too vague, so I added some detail on some of them, and admitted that others were unrealistic (at least for this year!):

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Some of these require more specificity. I want to get my 5K time down below 20 minutes, which is not so terribly far from my PR in both 2006 and 2007 of 20:26, but will certainly take some concentrated effort.

Language skills. I have been teaching myself Spanish off and on for a couple of years, and plan to do a little more with that this year, but this is actually my lowest priority goal this year.

Go back to TKD: I just registered myself and my daughter for Family TKD at the Y, and I think my wife and son will end up joining the class, too. Perfect! Also, this helps with “spend more time with the kids.”

If we buy a piano this year, I will learn to play at least one Billy Joel song.

Writing: a couple of weeks ago, when I started my blog, I said that my writing goals for 2008 were: keep up with the blog, write one professional article and one short story before NaNoWriMo 2008, and win NaNo. I’m having to modify those goals slightly because I started hashing out a novel the other day. So now my new writing goals are: keep up with the blog, write one professional article and the first draft of my current novel before NaNoWriMo 2008, and win NaNo.

I will not grow taller.

Learn to draw: again, probably not this year.

Superpowers: I plan to go up at least one belt level in TKD this year — that and breaking 20 minutes for a 5K would be superpowers enough for 2008.
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So, yeah, I started work on a novel on January 2. I’m such an idiot. I don’t know what I was thinking — I had a plan, and the plan did not involve working on a novel until November, which was comfortably far off. But an idea I’ve been kicking around occasionally since I was in high school more than 20 years ago popped back into my head with a new angle that I couldn’t resist thinking through. That’s the problem with ideas — once you get one idea and start going in a new direction (such as, “I’m going to start writing fiction again”), you can’t help but get flooded with ideas related to it. This isn’t NaNo, though — I don’t have that kind of tight deadline, although I’d like to finish the first draft of this novel before I have to start a new one for NaNo.

I can’t say I’m sorry to see the end of 2007 — there weren’t any major problems at home or at work, but it was a stressful year and I’m glad it’s over.

We did have a very nice New Year’s Eve, including the countdown for the kids at about 10:15, outside in the snow. We told the old year not to let the door smack it on the ass on the way out, and now we’re ready for 2008. Today we met up with some friends and took the kids sledding, which in the flatlands here is a treat. They had a blast, which was fun.

Back to the office tomorrow. I’m feeling particularly unmotivated, but I expect that will change when I get back into the thick of it.

I’m not much for resolutions, but if I were going to make resolutions, they would be exactly same as they would have been for 2007 or any of the last 7 years:

Get my 5K time down.
Learn a new language, or an old language better.
Go back to Tae Kwon Do lessons.
Spend more time with the kids.
Take the Mrs. out more often.
Learn to play the piano.
Start writing again.
Grow taller.
Learn to draw something other than stick figures.
Obtain super powers.

The problem is not that I can’t achieve any of these things, the problem is choosing a manageable number of them to work on, while maintaining a full-time job where I am essentially paid by the hour.

This year, I plan to focus on the writing, through this blog, at least one professional article, at least one short story, and NaNoWriMo. We’ll see how that goes.