Late Resolutions

I’ve been thinking about goals lately, mainly because it’s a lot easier than trying to achieve them. I missed out on the whole New Years thing, being sans blog at the time, so I thought I’d make a few late (and admittedly slightly wimpy) resolutions for the remainder of the year. It might be fun to check in every now and then and see what progress I’ve made.

So at the end of 2011, I want to:

• Be 10 lbs lighter – I spent last spring mountain biking and being relatively fit, relative to previous years anyway. Since then, a combination of laziness and health issues (the health issues being more of an excuse for laziness than a real hinderance) have let all that slip away. I want to achieve this mainly through running, mountain biking, and healthier eating, but I have been contemplating a gym membership as well.
• Have written 24000 words of fiction – Whether this is mainly composed of short stories, flash fiction for online contests, or even the beginning of a manuscript doesn’t matter to me. Quality also doesn’t matter. This is just about getting some words on a page.
• Pay off $2000 of debt – This isn’t it all, but it’ll still be nice if I hit it. I’ve been hovering lately, and I’d like to focus on making some slight progress there.
• Stop buying books – According to my Goodreads account, I have 67 books lying around unread. There’s really no need to be buying anything new. So, excluding the occasional comic or graphic novel, I will not buy a single book this year. I’ll still be picking up audio books, though.
• Start learning piano – I’m not sure of a tangible goal I can set for this one. I could choose a song I’d like to master I suppose, but I know so little that I wouldn’t even be able to guess at a realistic goal. I bought a quite expensive keyboard a couple of years ago with the intention of becoming Tom Waits, and after two weeks of playing I basically abandoned the poor thing. I’d like to make some sort of effort to start practicing this year, whether that’s through lessons or self-learning. If I fail, I should probably get rid of the damn thing.

That’s probably enough goals for now. I don’t want to pull something.