Resolutions for 2009 (part 2)

It was somewhat dispiriting to find that I had hardly managed 20% of my resolutions for 2008. (There’s still time, I tell myself, to crack on with 100 press ups before New Year’s Day, but that smells rather like self-delusion.) I did find several more things I’d listed in 2007 that I wanted to get done in the next 12 months:

Tromso marathon - nope

Croydon -> Brighton by night - nope

A week in the Alps - nope

Land's End to John o' Groats - nope

Shodan - nope

A trip to the Lakes - nope

Visit Vancouver – yes!

Revisit Nanzan University – yes!

and as nice to haves...

novel – sadly, the great Folkestone novel has still not begun

study - nope

new house – nope, but that’s a Good Thing

work in the US – nope, but HK has been much better

a second marathon - oops

Dusk till Dawn at Thetford – nope, but when you’ve ridden around a pine forest for going on 12 hours, do you really need to do so again?

So this didn’t make me feel much better. OK, I’d got up to 25% success rate with this second set of objectives. And ok, it’s in the nature of a nice-to-have that you generally don’t have it, but still, it’s not so wonderful. Ach.

So what to do for next year?

Let’s recapitulate:


2 marathons: Tokyo and Taipei/Seoul/somewhere. That means no drinking or mucking about for January to March. No flying off to Harbin to look at the ice. No other nonsense. It’ll be worth it when you’ve run lots and you’re fitter than the end of this year, wheezing to an unhealthy halt at the end of 3 months of near-constant boozing.
A photo every week: a really nice photo. Take something from the examples of digital composition in all those photography books you now own, and do something with it.
Meditate & stretch – can it be so hard to use up 10 minutes of every day in a productive way of doing nothing, rather than just playing Solitaire?
Write some more letters. 1 letter in 12 months is pretty rubbish.
Comedy – get into at least the finals of the HK festival in 2009. That’s something that’s not entirely in your power, but you can break it down into:
-Practice
-Write
-Perform
Sell 48 copies of Diet Croydon. Come on. If you can get each of your friends to buy a copy that’s going to be … er … at least one month’s worth. Get the website up, get the logo sorted out, get some stickers printed, and Bob’s your uncle. Maybe…
Stash some cash away; now you’re not spending all your time drunk, you should end up every month with more money in the bank than when you started. At least until you get back from Tokyo and the 6 months of drinking kicks back into gear.
Learn some Cantonese – and this should really be a bit higher up the list, shouldn’t it?
Learn to dance – you put down the waltz last year, didn’t make it. If you can just get yourself a tame Russian dancing teacher this year, that shouldn’t be so hard.
Play tennis.

Bosh. That’s ten things. It would be nice to get the novel in there, but it’s going to be hard to see how to. Probably better just to keep the diary every day and thus be practicing writing something. There’s some things to do every week, and some things to aim for: the marathons can be the doorstops at either end of the year, which gives a clear six months to play tennis, dance and travel round Asia in between. Then in 2010 you can go to Harbin as a special treat…