Seriously, I know I’m awful at consistently blogging. A lot of that is because it requires me to be in “public filter” mode, which is very time-consuming and stressful. But if you want to see consistent updates, then you should be following me on twitter.
But I’m going to take a stab at blogging again, anyway. I thought I’d lead in with my goals for a new year – I hate the term “resolution”.
- Get in a happy place work-wise. It’s been no real secret that I’ve not been happy professionally for a while; I’m working on addressing why that is. I can’t (obviously) say a whole lot more about it right now – but if you see me next year, and I’m still bitching about the same things, smack me. 🙂
- Dive more. It’s been hard for me to get out diving consistently ever since my main dive buddy Don had to stop diving for health reasons – he and I made such a great buddy team that my bar for a good buddy is very high. I’m rarely happier than when I’m diving, though; so I really need to make it happen. Unfortunately I caught a cold and had to bail out on last weekend’s dive boat, but I’m kicking that into gear with a trip to my favorite site on January 24th.
- Take more pictures. I love photography, and I especially love that feeling I get when I am happy with a picture I took. Other people may think it’s crap, of course. Maybe I should call this one “take more creative risks.”
- Be more open. This is hard (see above), but it can be easy to forget that those outside Microsoft have to (and do) make up their own stories (about actions and motivations) if those inside don’t share. I’m going to try to do better at this; for starters, I have a goal of writing a blog post here at least once every other week. (I’m hoping to do a lot better than that, but we’ll see.)
- Lose weight. You knew I’d have to throw in a standard NY Resolution sooner or later. Seriously, though – my weight is tied to my stress level, so this in some ways is a symptom rather than a cause.
Overall, I’m not writing this (publicly) because I like the attention – I’m writing it to reflect on it myself, and more importantly, to have it to look back on next year. A few weeks ago, I ran across a post I made back in May of 2006 (http://blogs.msdn.com/cwilso/archive/2006/05/11/595536.aspx), and it helped a few things click; I’d like to set myself up for another of those. So this is really functioning as my diary.
Hey! Stop reading my diary!
in progress 
Thanks for sharing; I have a similar post brewing; here’s hoping I manage to publish it.
On #5, I find walking surprisingly effective. I can sympathize on the relationship between stress and weight, though my body cooperates pretty quickly when I treat it right. Over the holidays, I was somewhat inspired by what Crockford said.
~ I’m writing it to reflect on it myself, and more importantly, to have it to look back on next year.~
Why deliberately impose the stress of a blog on yourself to do that? It’s not mandatory … and you know very well up front that you’ll get a lot more kicking than stroking, simply because of your current job. Stickies on the fridge are a lot less painful 🙂
Hi Chris,
If all goes well, IE8 should be out this year. This will be a massive stress release because although many folks like to bash MS/IE for “holding” back the web, the IE Team has done a tremendous job of pushing IE forward to fix all the non-standards issues of the past. I would like to believe that once IE8 is out, that the IE Team would be able to focus on new ideas/technology, while still spending some time fixing bugs/catching up. The good news is that for an IE9 release, I’m guessing this is more of an 80%/20% ratio than the 20%/80% ratio IE8 was.
PS glad to see you blogging again. 😉
And…it’s looking like we’re just a few hours away from it being 2 weeks since you wrote of your goal for a post “every other week.” I don’t want to ratchet up your stress/weight level, or anything. I’m just sayin’…