Monday, January 17, 2011

Un-resolutions

January is properly underway now. Sometime in the next couple of days if it hasn't happened already there will be a rash of discussions about the most depressing day of the year. This will be today, tomorrow or the day after depending on which PR driven piece of non-research is driving it. I'm not going to bother to look for it or link to it because it is the same story every year.

As are resolutions. Every year we promise ourselves to be thinner, happier, richer, less single, healthier. Then a year goes by and we do it again.

But I am not mocking new year's resolutions. Although many of them fail to survive until February, it is not the failures that matter. It is the starts. The beginnings. Whether purposeful or accidental.

You must at least do something...

Don't wait for another big milestone, new year or another birthday to begin something. Find small milestones.

So today, which is the day after my daughter's birthday (she is six now if you're interested) I am going to start a few more things:
1. I shall be more positive - 2011 has been pretty good thus far
2. I am going to look into Sharepoint (I am hearing more and more about it and I am completely ignorant of it's capability)
3. I shall unplug myself a little more often and read a few more books (you know the things with pages)
4. I shall finish the decorating in my house by the February half term
5. I shall start Lent early (not in the religious sense but in the eating and drinking slightly less sense)

That's enough for one day. I think.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hugh,

Happy new year, and happy birthday to your daughter. Six is a marvellous age- the world above shop counters still remains an elusive mystery not to be discovered for another year.

You post made me think about my two major discoveries of 2010: Soren Kierkegaard (Camus's favourite) and Martin Heiddeger. High voltage Christian Existentialism. On the latter, his translator was a Scottish Theologian and Presbyterian Minister - something I shall myself be when I finish my training in a few years! (Non-dom btw)

In terms of reading material, may I suggest: 'The Essential Kierkegaard'; 'Being and Time'; 'Girlfriend in Coma'; 'The Screwtape Letters'; 'Atlas Shrugged' and '1984'. One of my resolutions this year is a fiction book a week from the Top 100 lists.

On the software side, I have actually fulfilled a resolution: I write to you from a laptop whose hard drive was erased and now runs the latest version of Ubuntu Linux and Open Office. I cannot commend these highly enough. The German Government and French Gendermarie have switched over in the last few years.

I am also applying for an MSc Philosophy at Edinburgh for 2012, getting my swim speed up to 200L in 1 hour and getting quasi-fluent in French.

Hope 2011 continues to be a good one.

Gordon