This past weekend began the new year – 2005. With a new year comes new promises. Promises that this year will be better than last year, so we make a long list of things that we plan on doing differently than the year before. I plan on making resolutions for 2004, just as I did last year, but before I do I thought it might behoove me to take a look back and see how I did with my 2004 resolutions.
Resolution #1: I Will Face Life Head On
Wow, was this broad enough? I didn’t go into a lot of detail in describing this in the weblog, but it was something that was very personal to me. I can’t say that I completed this resolution perfectly, but I’d say that 75% of the time, I did take the “bull by the horns” when it came to my life.
The biggest result of this resolution is that I made some pretty big changes with some of the projects that I was involved in. In that regard I was really successful. Some of the highlights include the following: InterPUG was all but shut down. NPUG now has an active Leadership Council and I’m now a co-host on the Computer Outlook radio show.
Resolution #2: I Will Be Active
I did pretty good with this one. I did the South Beach diet for almost half the year and lost a LOT of inches. I didn’t get in a bicycle tour with Mike Rohde like I had hoped, but I did participate in BRAT and did an “out-and-back” with my buddy Dan Westman. I was active at the gym for the first quarter, then began cycling a lot for the 2nd and 3rd quarters. The last quarter of the year I began doing The Power Of 10 at the gym and have seen great results with this method of workout. Suffice to say, I think I did good on this one.
I didn’t lose all the weight that I wanted to, but I definitely did more exercise than I’ve done in since I was in high school. All told, I cycled over 1200 miles, which is nothing to sneeze at and the exercise programs I participated in were really good and I stuck with them which is to be commended. I’m proud of what I accomplished and I think I can do even better next year.
Resolution #3: I Will Learn A New Language
This one almost happened, but it just didn’t come together. Originally Holly and I decided that we were going to learn French. We both love the language and since we’re from Louisiana, it seemed only natural. However, there’s a larger Spanish community here in Nashville and there’s even a Spanish television station.
Although I finally decided on Spanish in my resolution, we continued to flip-flop back and forth throughout the year. We checked out some Audio CD’s from the Nashville Public Library and tried learning French that way, but then we went to Rivera Maya and decided that we had to learn Spanish. Holly looked into some classes, but we didn’t get much further than that. Then, when we were in New York for Holly’s birthday, we went to the Paris Theatre to see “A Very Long Engagement and after that experience we flip flopped back to wanting to learn French.
In the end we didn’t make any real progress into learning another language. Of all my resolutions, this one was left uncompleted. Some steps were made, which is much better than previous years, but you know what they say – the road to hell…
Taking A Tally
All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with how things went this year. Of course I’m not exactly happy where I am right now, (who is?), but I feel like a lot of groundwork has been laid and 2005 could be a higher springboard than last year was.
This year’s resolutions are also different. This year Holly and I are doing them together. We sat down for several hours yesterday and although we have a few more hours left before we’re done, I really like the direction we’re going. To put it simply, 2004 was a good year and it looks like 2005 could be a great year.
Happy New Year Everyone! 😀