I genuinely love New Year’s Day. I find that it is a good time to think about the upcoming year and decide what I want to do with it. I’m not talking about resolutions, as you might suppose. I think the concept of New Year’s resolutions is silly because everyone understands that resolutions are just a thing that you do until you get tired of it in the beginning of February. I like to set goals and make plans at the beginning of the year because it gives me something to focus on. Last year some of my goals changed—I had a goal of riding my bike 1,000 miles, for example, but got into running once spring came around. So, my plan changed. That kind of thing may happen this year, too, but it’s good to at least have a plan. Without further ado, here are my 2014 goals.
- Books: Read at least 52 books. I only got to 46 last year, but since I’m done with grad school, I should be able to get in a book every week.
- Writing: Write one book review every month and start working on researching/writing a book.
- Career: Get a library job (I’m actually feeling somewhat optimistic about this at the moment), go to the ALA conference, and build more relevant skills. I’m already signed up for a MOOC (massive open online course) called “Introduction to Databases,” offered by Stanford; it starts next week.
- Activities: Do things. Go outside and do all manner of things. This includes general stuff like exercising, but is broad enough to include basically anything outside of my apartment. I plan to work out (gym, run, etc.) twice a week at minimum, but I also want to get into more hiking and camping and I am thinking about doing swing dance (I was considering roller derby, but since I don’t have health insurance … ) and I found Midtown Stomp, which does a Friday swing lesson followed by dancing. I think that sounds dandy.
- Food: It seems like everyone has a food-based New Year’s plan, so it seems cliché to say anything about it, but consuming food is a major component of being alive, so I might as well deal with it. I want to cook and eat a lot more vegetables and proteins. I’m planning to start going to the Midtown Farmers Market on Saturdays because I think that will be fun and be a good way to get local, tasty food.
There you have it. What are you planning to do this year?
