Happy New Year!

It’s time for the ubiquitous New Year’s resolutions post. I’m going to try to keep it realistic, short and sweet!

In no particular order of importance, I vow to:

• Blog at least once a day. Now, I know I’m already a day behind but a part of this blogging statement will be linked into the amount of posts I produce. I won’t beat myself up if I miss a day and I also will try to provide multiple posts when inspired. So in the end, I want to end up with at least 365 posts for 2009.
• Visit one place I’ve never been to. This doesn’t have to be some sort of grand trip to another country but it also can’t be a new town in New England.
• Be healthier. Who doesn’t want to be healthier? I need to stay committed to eating healthy and exercising more often (as it’s hard to stay motivated during the cold weather). I just need to keep in mind how good I feel about myself when I am healthy – it’s not about how much you weigh, but the fact that you feel energetic and positive about yourself.
• Learn to cook. I know the basic tenets of cooking and I obviously know how to follow a recipe due to all the baking I do. For some reason, I’m intimidated by cooking actual meals. I can never think of good meals to make. I will tie the specific action of cooking one new dish each month of 2009 to spur me into action.

In terms of more specific resolutions, I decided to pick a few little things to accomplish within a specific time frame:

• In One Day – Trek over to Target in Framingham (again!) to return the floodlight I bought last week and get it in the right size. And make sure Andrew installs it (heh, heh!) So think of this a joint endeavor. Poor guy tried to replace yesterday and was the one who found out that I bought it in the wrong size.
• In One Weekend – Organize my winter clothes in my closet by color and material weight. This makes it so much easier to pick an outfit for each day. In this process, I will also sort clothing that I no longer wear and donate it.
• In One Week – Cancel my TiVo service (my box is just too old and doesn’t work accurately anymore) and get a Comcast TiVo DVR. Anyone that knows me knows how much I hate having phone conversations with any type of service provider. I always feel frustrated and taken-advantage-of at the end. I can only cancel TiVo by phone and in the past, they’ve convinced me to stick with it by replacing my TiVo box with a refurbished box (actually, they promised me a new box and sent me a refurbished one instead, and I was too weary to argue this any further). Then I have to find time to trek to a Comcast distribution center and exchange my current cable box for a new one during business hours. Ugh, I’m already dreading this.
• In One Month – Organize my financial situation. I’ve already saving a decent amount to my 401(k), I’ve upped the amount I’m saving each month with automatic transfers from my checking account into my savings, and I’ve signed up for Mint, a free financial management service that tracks your spending and your financial worth. I just need to use some of this information to build concrete goals to be working towards and actually change my spending habits.
• In Six Months – Clean the attic. I literally haven’t been up there in a year. And I think there’s black dust everywhere from roofing work that was done in 2007. Yikes!

This is all that came to mind for the moment. I hope to be writing a post one year from now that catalogues my success with these goals.

What resolutions did you make for the New Year?