Things I need to do in 2010

Here's the beginning of the year post most of you have probably not even started to read, being as you are a bit burned out by 'end of year' and 'end of decade' retrospectives. If you missed those, the consensus seems to be that the 00's really sucked, although I completely disagree as my daughter was born in the last decade, and this was a decidedly good thing.

New Year's resolutions are somewhat trite and often fail, but there's nothing wrong with the idea of assessing oneself and trying to better yourself in general, so here goes...

1) Get out of the I.T. ghetto

This one is my 'get in shape', the resolution I've made pretty much every year since 1999. Usually all I accomplish is pissing off people in IT who actually enjoy devoting their lives to installing and then upgrading software written by other people, people who may or may not have had serious substance abuse and personality problems when they wrote said software. There is no shortage of really interesting things in the world, and eventually most people get shoved out of IT as they age whether they want that or not, so I'm as hopeful as ever that this will be my year as far as this resolution goes.

2) Write more

I don't think writing is my ticket out of the IT ghetto. It is something I do genuinely enjoy doing when I can motivate myself to do it, so I believe this would be a worthy goal. There's also that whole thing that even if 95% of everything is crap, 5% of 200 posts is twice as much non-crap as 5% of 100 posts. I found this post from 'The Last Psychiatrist' (one of the better blogs I've discovered in the past year) particularly inspiring.

3) Find someplace other than Soma to hang out

I did manage to get a lot of the writing I actually did in 2009 there, and I witnessed or overheard things said by hipsters and/or douchebags that made for some nice tweets there. A couple of days ago I had a really great cappuccino there in a huge bowl of a coffee cup that made me regret and feel embarrassed that I'd ever had a cappuccino in a cardboard cup with a plastic lid on it. I have nothing against the place, it's just that I need to shake up the routine a bit and see if there are other spaces in town which are not geared toward getting some money out of me and then shoving me out the door so more people can come in and spend money.

4) Go to Disney World

I am not a 'Cats in The Cradle' dad. I spend a lot of time with my daughter and enjoy it and appreciate that such time is finite, but on that note, she's not going to be a little kid forever and is probably at prime Disney World age this year.

5) Learn more about electronics

I've had a lot of fun playing with my Arduino last year, but while my programming knowledge is reasonably good, I'm not so strong on the hardware and electronics side.

6) Call in to The Best Show on WFMU.

I need to face my fear of the heave-ho. Also I think Tom is looking for some new blood, so it's a prime time to be a new caller.

7) learn to 'hover' on the unicycle.

I think that's what it calls when you stay in one place. I'm good if I keep moving, but as with the other items, here's another plateau I need to get over.