Happy New Year!

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, but I suppose if I write them down for all the world to see, I’d be more likely to follow through. Anyway, all of my resolutions are boring ones that one doesn’t have to (or shouldn’t) wait until New Year’s to make. Here goes, in no particular order:

• Spend online time more productively. I was going to say “spend less time online,” but the point is to be more efficient. Yes, I consider blogging to be a productive activity, but not aimless websurfing. It’s the latter I need to do less of. Then perhaps I might actually get stuff done at work.
• Watch my health. This encompasses a whole host of subresolutions. Every month I pay a hefty fee to Washington Sports Club, but do I ever go? Hardly. I should change that. And I need to get more sleep and eat healthy, i.e., more vegetables and so forth. A healthy Jeff is a happy one.
• Spend less money, a.k.a. Do I really need a new Palm Pilot? (I really do. Grr.) For me 2001 was a year of excesses (mostly rampant wanderlust), and in ’02 I was better about it, and now it’s time to really buckle down. One of my first acts will be to return the piano I’ve been renting for almost a year now. Yeah, I know, it’s a shame. (Sayang, as they say in Tagalog.) But I spend so little quality time actually playing it, that in the whole financial scheme of things, it’s becoming a bad investment. Also, I’m sure I have stuff I can hawk on eBay.

Yikes, these are kind of depressing. How about a couple of positive resolutions:

• Feed my brain. I’ll brush up on Spanish (review grammar, read more literature), and get back to French. And plain read, read, read.
• Meet people. I don’t mean in a solely relationship kind of way, but just people. Easier said than done. I moved here a little over two years ago, not knowing a soul in town, and I’ve found that outside of a school or workplace context, there are relatively few opportunities to make friends unless you go out and do so. They don’t just fall into your lap. (Well, at least not before a few drinks.) I need to interact: say, take a class, get involved in community theater, or do some volunteer or activist work. Something like that.

I’m sure I’ll think of more. Tonight I head back to the East Coast, and back to the workaday grind.