New year's resolutions

There are certainly plenty of ways that I might want to improve myself over the coming year, but right now I still feel rather overwhelmed by recovering from my financial problems of recent years as well as trying to come up to speed on my new job, too overwhelmed to feel comfortable making any further commitments other than to continue to get my financial house in order and get my career back on track.

That said, I can certainly list a number of areas where I would like to see improvement and where I will try to seek improvement, but only as I feel comfortable about the effort and won't feel over-committed:

• Better nutrition, live healthier
• Lose some weight -- and not gain it right back
• Do more writing, something a little more intensive than a few blog posts
• Do some more intensive reading, maybe in philosophy, history, politics, law, economics, psychology
• Learn more about the science (or lack thereof) behind the theory of global warming and climate change
• Find something non-work to focus on in 2007
• Relax more, try to be more effective but less intense

For 2007, my hard goals:

• Pay down remaining debt (back taxes)
• Save for retirement
• Save for my rainy day fund
• Put enough extra time and effort into my job to come up to speed more rapidly and become more effective so that my career future is assured
• Carve out enough non-work time to relax enough to assure that I can function effectively at work

My intention is that my entire first year at my new job will be dedicated to coming up to speed and finding the right "groove" to work effectively. After my first year or year and a half, then I can begin thinking about committing effort to non-work projects. In other words, sometime in the latter half of this year. Until then, any non-work projects will be halfhearted at best.

Happy New Year!

-- Jack Krupansky