Does anyone here plan to make any or do you just break them? In a sense New Years is pretty arbitrary, yet humans are pattern seeking primates and we thrive on symbolism, so to me resolutions are still useful to focus the mind on what I want to achieve in the coming year. A few rough notions come to mind:
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Pull straight A’s this year. Laziness, a full time job and a new girlfriend conspired to torpedo my grades last semester. I still have a 3.0 but I can and should do better.
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Keep up my workouts at the Y. I hurt my back, then got the flu once my back got better, so I’ve been AWOL at the gym the last week. I’ll turn 40 next spring and I don’t want to be staring down the barrel of diabetes, heart disease, etc.
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Dedicate 1 hour a day minimum to reading something not related to school, and if possible one hour per day listening to music. Between required reading and working it’s hard to block off time for other reading, but doing so keeps me grounded.
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Here and at ILO, I want to reduce accusing others of being dogmatic by 50%.
Even when they really are, which is most of the time.
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I want to start thinking about whether I’ll get married again someday and have a family. I don’t plan on doing so while I’m in school, but I’m not the carefree kid I used to be (and sometimes try to be).
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I want to do a better job of connecting with the people in my life that I care about. By nature I’m insular and asocial; I’m aloof but warm to my friends. That said, this year I’ve really blown off my friends. My excuse has been that I’m busy but I think it’s just easier to use that excuse.
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One last thing I’d like to focus on is being open to the numinous. People often think atheists almost by definition aren’t spiritual, but that’s not true. The last year I haven’t really been as open to spirituality as I normally am; again, just wrapped up with trying to keep too many balls in the air. In '09 I’d like to focus on that part of myself again.
Those are just a few ideas I have, I’m sure I’ll come up with others.