It's Resolution Time! 2k8 Wrap Up

Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year everyone!

So time for my annual resolution wrap up. I had intended this to be a multi-part post, but seeing how I'm having trouble even getting one post out, here it is in one mega-post.

This year's grading system has three possible results: Pass, Fail, or Pending/incomplete.

First up, the resolutions/goals I set at the beginning of the year:

Be clean, all the time

So my goal was to keep my place clean, and I have to say this goal was a resounding success. Back in May, I instituted a clean 15 minutes every day system which has worked out way better than I ever imagined. According to my spreadsheet, since May I've had 77 cleaning week days (I don't track weekends in my spreadsheet) I think the year before I'd be lucky to have 20 all year. I'm not saying my place is always completely spotless, but I can say that my place is very rarely a disaster, which is a huge improvement over last year.

Verdict:



Blog more

For this, my goal was to blog once per week. I started off pretty well, blogging weekly for the first 5 months. But after that, things took a nose dive and never recovered. In that time period, I made a total 8 posts. Terrible! For the year, I made a total of 26 posts, half of the required 52 posts I should have made. Not good enough.

Verdict:



Lower debt

I aimed to lower my debt this year, and while there was a period were things weren't looking too well, I've lowered my debt by almost 40% (could have been lower if I didn't go to Vegas, but hey you only live once!)



Verdict:



Learn to play the guitar

This one requires a post of its down, too many details to go into here.

Verdict: Incomplete

Help the world

So my aim was to contribute time and effort to charitable organizations, but all I have to show for myself at the end of the year is one day for habitat for humanity. This is not just a fail, but an...

Verdict:



Finish Rockband on drums on Expert

Never got around to this, but I did finish guitar on Expert

Verdict: Pending


And now some unofficial/late resolutions:


Read more

This was a late resolution to read more. How did I fare?

Books read to completion:

Phil Gordon's Little Green Book
Practices of an Agile Developer
Personal Finance For Canadians for Dummies (just finished this one, only took me 9 months, laugh!)

Books at least 75% read through:

Professional XNA Game Programming
Tax Tips for Canadians for Dummies
DJing for Dummies

Plus a bunch of other books I've read good portions of.

According to my goal's spread sheet, I did 148 reading days. Sounds like reading more to me, no?

Verdict:



And finally on to my secret goal for the year:

Learn to DJ!

You may have caught DJing for dummies in the list of books above. Well back in May, I decided to pursue a long time dream of mine to become a DJ, so I bought myself a mixer and haven't looked back since. I've envisioned my path to becoming a DJ as a multi-stage process, with the goal for this year being gaining mixing skills. So I've been practicing for the last 6 months (73 practice days) and while the initial goings were pretty tough and frustrating, my skills have progressed far enough and last week I completed my first official mix. I'm still working on a website, but when its done I'll let you know.

Verdict:




Next post: Resolutions/goals for 2009