2010 – The Year in Review

First off, HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!  2010 – it was a good year.  A fun year.  A fast year.  At times, a stressful year.  I will avoid re-hashing in explicit detail, after all, that’s what this website is intended to do.  I wrote a bit more which I am finding I enjoy doing when I actually sit down and do it.  I feel like I worked more which in an odd way I think brought the overall quality of my work down from my standard.  We took some great vacations again this year (e.g. beach trips, hiking trip, etc.).  We spent quality time together as a family.  With each passing year I am more thankful for what I have.  With each passing year I feel like I am not doing enough for those who are less fortunate.  I still have a strong urge to one day run my own business.  The first step to setting my goals for the coming year is to first look back at my performance against my goals in the prior year (here’s where I stood at the midpoint of 2010).  Clearly some of my goals need to carry forward into 2011 as they are still works in progress.  Some, although not accomplished, will likely fall off as they aren’t as much of a priority.

2010 RESOLUTIONS

Marriage:

• Setup 1 date per month (continue to go on 2 dates per month). Honestly a fail for me.  I think I setup 2 all year.
• Enable all “Girls Nights” and “Girls Trips” for Cindy.  Achieved.
  
• Play together (e.g. cards, Wii, scrabble, etc.) 2x per month.  Partial credit for this one – while we did sit down and play games periodically it was typically either on Wii or iPhone/iPods.

Fatherhood:

• Be at home eating at the table for 2 weekday dinners.  Fail. I likely made 3 overall dinners a week but I needed 2 weekend nights.  Requires an earlier work arrival – I’ll keep pursuing this.
• Re-establish weekly family game night. Partial credit here.  We play lots of games as a family.  Could be more of a weekly “event” which I know the kids enjoy.
• Golf with the kids 1x per month. We did great here through August/September.  I blame the weather on the rough finish.
• Weekly bike rides with the kids (need a little help from Stewart here…) Yes – cold weather months aside.
• More laughter and less lecturing with my kids (2009 repeat – needs more work). Fail.  I need a lot of work here.  Any and all advice welcome.

Health and Fitness:

• Yoga 2x per week (2009 repeat).  I completely fell of the wagon in August.  Strangely coincides with my hiking trip where I talked a big game about how consistent I was.
• Eat less chicken – continue no red meat. Success!  If you meat and you are not shrimp or fish, you aren’t in my body.  I feel the difference.
• Run with Purpose – donate $1 per mile every mile run in 2010. Success! I will have run nearly 1200 miles in 2010 and donated accordingly with full corporate matching. Cool.
• Run 3:15.59 at the 2010 Thunder Road (Charlotte) Marathon. Success! Proof writing it down helps.  Ran 3:14.20, my PR by over 6 minutes and officially qualified for Boston!
• Run sub-30 hour BRR with 6-man team (run sub-8 min pace for my 6 legs). Partial credit. I averaged 7:50s for 44 miles.  We finished a few minutes above 30 hours.  Even more significant was watching Cindy kick arse on our team this year.

Personal Well-being:

• Say more with less – fewer words in professional settings both with writing and speaking. Success but can still improve.
• Start everyday at 5:30am (latest). Success – 5am is the new norm for me (vacations aside).
• Read 18 books (up from 14 read in 2009) and continue to document via blog. Fail. Read 15. Improvement over 2009 but not the goal.  Darn you “Atonement”!
• Work: lead more proactively;  Build framework for others to follow.  Honestly I am not sure where I fall here.  I always feel there is room for improvement at work.
• Learn “presentness” to help better engage with all people in my life (taking all tips/advice here).  Continues to need serious work.
• Develop better gift-giving habits – surprise people with small thought-filled gifts.  Wow I stink at this.  Needs serious work.

Overall not a terrible performance.  Of 19 goals I gave myself full or partial credit on 12 (ok, I grade with a curve).  There are some big areas needing continued focus and some new areas that I know I want to place focus in the coming year.  Stay tuned for a coming post in the next few days/weeks on what these will be (dum, dah, dum! Cliffhanger!).  Happy New Year everyone!

How I Roll, uh…Read

It all started a few years back.  My frugality, well, actually…my frugality started many more years than a few back.  Reading, which coincidentally also started many, many years back for me, became of significant interest to me a few years back.  Before this shift, reading was something I did to get specific information.  In and out.  Nothing very satisfying about it…certainly not something I looked to do to pass the time or entertain myself.  Here’s where the frugality comes in.  In late 2008, my employer was providing many reasons for many people to have many real concerns about job security.  This dialed up my frugality to new levels.  Levels that have yet to subside (yes, I am VERY proud of this).  But alas, this isn’t a story about my frugality.  Rather, my frugality led me to explore commuting alternatives ($4/gallon gas prices didn’t hurt either) which in turn directly influenced my new found love for reading.  How you say?  Glad you asked.  I landed on taking the train to work.  23 minutes of pure reading enjoyment one way.  Play my cards right and it is a guaranteed 46 minutes of reading per day 5 days a week.  Not too shabby, right?

Now let me tell you about how I was doing this reading.  At first it was books we had at the house – mainly books Cindy had already read and only the highly recommended ones at that.  Then it became about taking advantage of our local (as in 3/4 of a mile away in the neighborhood) library.  Then toting books became cumbersome – I like to travel in and out of work with just my laptop.  No laptop bag.  No notebook (love Microsoft’s OneNote!).  No paper if at all possible.  That left me with a laptop and at times an awkward book under it.  Outside of the weird fit in my hand, I didn’t like the potential implication it tagged me with…you know, the one that says “you’ve been reading at work, haven’t you?”  So I  got a Kindle, right?  In the famed words of Lee Corso: “Not so fast my friend!”  I took out my iPod Touch and downloaded the Kindle App for the iPod and then subsequently downloaded one of the biggest books I could find.  Stieg Larssen’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.”  And I read and swiped my thumb about 2,400 times.  But I finished it.  Being stubborn I read the next 2 in the trilogy that way as well.  And “Born to Run”.  And Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games.”  And then it happened…

A Kindle 3 with 3G arrived in my life unexpectedly.  My first reaction after the shock of this kind gift wore off was “will it fit in my suit jacket pocket?”  It did.  My next reaction was “will this kill the business case for the iPad that I secretly covet?”  The jury is still out here.  But 2 weeks and 2 books into it and I can easily say I love it!  I can’t imagine reading any other way.  The battery lasts for weeks (with 3G off) and for many days, like 4-6 days (with 3G on)!  The special ink they talk so much about is so very pleasing on my eyes.  Many font sizes, line spaces and other features to fit the device to an individual’s eye preference.  And easily, and most surprisingly one of my favorite features is the ready access dictionary.  Today I found out what ‘quixotic’ means.  Cool.

There’s a future post coming about whether there’s room in my life for an iPad or not.  Right now there is not.  It hurts me to say it because it is so darn beautiful to look at and seems to be the perfect way to get out of burying my head into our iMac in our office (off the beaten path at home).  Stay tuned…