Layered Thoughts

I’ve never really been one to have resolutions when it comes time for the new year.  But now as I am more independent and older and working to live on my own and put myself through school and eventually make a good living for myself, I think it’s a good time to put together a list of goals and get a little bit more disciplined. So here is the list I have come up with so far:

1. Read A Book A Month: To be fair, my goal is actually to read at least 12 books this year, as I’m sure some will be read much more quickly than others. I’ve realized that reading is much more important that I had previously thought.  I have been caught in the trap of only reading short articles online in the last year, which is good for quick information, but bad when trying to grasp larger concepts.  So I have decided to read as much as possible this year, basically filling in my gaps of free time with books.  I’ll stick mostly to non-fiction as I want to read to learn rather than read just for entertainment, though the first book I have chosen is the fiction novel The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (It was written to exemplify her philosophy though).  I’ll mostly be focusing on reading about philosophy and religion as that is what I enjoy reading the most, but I’m sure I’ll gather a few computer books along the way.  I’m hoping to add a page to this blog that lists all of the books that I have read or plan on reading along with my notes about each one.
2. Read The Bible: I’m an atheist.  That’s most likely never going to change.  But in order to further my study of religion and the philosophy of religion and the reasons why nearly everyone else is religious, I have decided that I need to read the Bible.  I have found what looks to be a great study Bible, the Holman CSB Student Bible, that is written in a more modernized English which should make things a little bit easier to follow.  I’m sure this reading will bring about a fair share of blog posts…
3. Do Better In School: This goes hand in hand with the reading goal.  What holds me back from getting straight A’s is my tendency to procrastinate.  So my goal is to eliminate that procrastination and get ahead of the game from now on in school and raise my GPA a bit.
4. Write On This Blog More: I have done pretty well so far (except for these last two weeks, but it was the holidays and I was on vacation) but I’m hoping to get at least 5 posts on here a week from now on.  I have about ten different post ideas with notes going already, and plan on continuing to use that system to brainstorm ideas, and then pick and choose ideas from that collection to officially post.  I’m hoping to keep a high level of quality and originality for each post and plan on focusing on computers/programming, philosophy, and religion as my topics.
5. Get Back In Shape: What kind of resolution list would this be without this one?  I used to be in pretty good shape.  I’m not in bad shape now, I’m just not in good shape any more.  So I’m going to be realistic and set my goal for the gym at at least 3 workouts a week, with an almost 100% focus on weight training.  I’m tempted to follow the system in this book, The New High Intensity Training: The Best Muscle-Building System You’ve Never Tried…
6. Go Camping: I do go camping a few times a year with a lot of my friends out at Lake Buenavista by Bakersfield and its a blast but it isn’t real camping.  I want to get into more wilderness type camping, and even more I want to get into backpacking and minimalist camping, including making shelters and eating wild plants and fishing/hunting for dinner.  I really like all of that stuff and have never really done it and want to get into it.  I have a trip planned with the girlfriend at the end of March but I’m sure she won’t be down with me not bringing a tent and sleeping in a cave so maybe after that one.
7. Start My Company: I have a business partner.  I have a well developed concept.  I have the knowledge to program the web app. I even have some seed funding.  I’m ready to start a company whose product is a web application.  I know it will succeed, it’s just a matter of doing it.  And what better time to start than the beginning of the year?

Seven goals.  I think it’s a pretty modest set of goals in reality and I think I can manage reaching all of them.  I’m hoping to post enough here to build up some pretty good traffic because that would be a huge motivator to keep posting frequently so I might experiment with some traffic building ideas.  But I don’t want traffic to become the main goal of the site so I won’t go too crazy with any of that. So we’ll see how everything goes.  I’m sure I’ll have a lot of updates on here about each of the goals listed above and how I’m doing with them.