Goals 2013 (Long Term)

I think I'm going to spend some time the rest of this week blogging about personal stuff related to 2012 and 2013--recaps and goals and such.  I usually don't seem to get to these posts until about the end of January every year, but I seem to have some free time on my hands right now.

I've written before about January as a time for looking forward and looking back.  I think I've also explained the way I feel about New Year's Resolutions, which are kind of like cultural cliches, and goals for the year, which to me implies targets that are reachable, but which require work throughout the year to make them.

When I used to keep a paper journal, I would leave a bookmark on the page where I wrote my year's goals, so I could look back on them from time to time and remind myself about the things I wanted to accomplish.  One thing I learned was to write every goal so that I would know for sure that I had met it.  There's no point in saying "I will be a better person in 2013." because you have no standard or way to measure it by.  If you can instead focus on actions that you want to take or habits that you want to eliminate, you'll know for sure that you made your goal.

I used to be absolutely horrible with my bank account--constantly overdrawn, bouncing checks, losing tons of money to fees.  Setting the goal of "being financially responsible" didn't seem to help.  What does that even mean for me?  It wasn't until I set the goal of not bouncing any checks for a year that I was able to get a handle on the issue.  In order to not bounce checks, I had to identify the things I needed to be doing to prevent that from happening.  It took a couple of years, but I did get that under control.

That's the way I approach it anyway.  I'm not a lifestyle expert and I've never been on Oprah or written a book, so take that as you will.  I'm just a babbly junker with a blog.

As for me and 2013, I've got several goals that I'd like to meet this year.  Several of them are a bit too personal for me to put up in a public forum like this.  Some of them are so boring that I cannot think that anyone would  have any interest in them at all.  There are, however,  a couple that I can share here.  If I remember, we'll look back on these and see how I did at the end of the year.

No pun intended, but my biggest issue right now is my weight.  I weighed in at the hospital at 264 pounds, which is the largest I have ever been.  I know it's the largest I have ever been, because every time I hit that number, I start working like nuts to get a few pounds off.  It's been probably more than five years since I've had any kind of regular fitness and diet thing going on--one designed to take weight out and help keep it off.

It will be a little while yet before I can really start doing anything about this, obviously, but once I've bounced back from the surgery, I'd like to really work on my weight.  My goal for this year is to drop 40 pounds by the end of the year.  We'll definitely drop back in on this one and see how it's going.

Meeting my blog goal for 2012 was a big deal for me.  I've not blogged that regularly for that long since I started this blog back in 2003.  (Is this my tenth anniversary year?  Oooooo!)  While I'm not sure that I've really added that much to the overall signal to noise ratio of the wider internet,  I'm kind of happy with myself for applying the necessary organization, planning, and discipline into practice to make 200 posts happen.  I definitely want to do that again.  Once again, I'm shooting for 200 posts this year, which will also propel me past two other goals.  I'm on the verge of 900 total posts now, so I should hit 1000 before the end of the year, if I can add 200 to that total.  1000 posts in my first ten years!  Insert sarcastic "woo hoo!" here.

Finally, a business goal.  Like a lot of junkers, I have succumbed to the temptation of buying too much stuff.  I've got way more in backlog than I absolutely need.  You simply don't make money on it when it sits and waits.  This is an extreme goal, but a necessary one.  By the end of the year, I will have all of my backlog stashes (there are three) cleared out and in the booths.

Okay, that's enough about me.  If you've read this far, you deserve a cookie or something.  What about you?  Did you set any goals for 2013?