Having said that I wasn’t going to review my year in a serious manner, I have been unable to resist the temptation to look up my new year’s resolutions and find out what they actually were. The result does not make pretty reading

1. Learn French

Epic fail. That is to say, I haven’t failed to learn French in the sense of trying to learn it and not succeeding, I simply haven’t tried. At least, not very hard. I could invent a good justification for this along the lines that work frequently makes me so depressed that I can’t motivate myself to have much interest in other areas of life, but it is still ultimately my fault. I could have tried harder.

2. Lose weight

Erm, the least we say about this one the better. I’ve managed to put weight on, so will be readopting this resolution as soon as I get home from the IS because my mother keeps tumble-drying my jeans so that the waist gets smaller and smaller. I do appreciate the benefits of tumble-drying, but it is actually getting to the stage where I will need to either buy the next size up, or shrink.

3. Learn to drive

This was actually number 4 but I’ve swapped it with number 3 so that the post can end on a high. I didn’t achieve this one ever, mainly through fear. I will definitely, definitely, definitely book a driving lesson in 2009, else I give Babel permission to beat me.

4. Save money

Yay!!!!! I achieved a resolution! This one didn’t get off to a good start in January when I had to pay out over £3k for an exceptional circumstance. Over the following months, however, I managed to put aside at least £500 a month, first rebuilding and then exceeding my original savings, which in my Lloyds TSB account have now reached the heady heights of £8k I feel proud, I have achieved 25% of my resolutions and am thus not a complete failure.

I hasten to add that I also made some progress with respect to some of my more minor resolutions. Honesty with my parents is something which has had a rather dramatic overhaul in the past 12 months, although I hasten to add that this is not due to any virtue on my part, rather the opposite. I had also resolved to work harder at auditing; following an auditing disaster in February, I have certainly been making a big effort and although my heart is still very far from in it, I am putting in a lot more hours than I ever intended to.

So, my resolutions for 2009? In no particular order:

1. Learn French. Really, no excuses this time: I have as many French learning materials as one person could possibly need.

2. Learn a little bit of Czech. This was something I started years ago and want to take up again before I go to the IJK in July. There isn’t time to make amazing progress between now and then, but if I can learn to make myself understood in shops that will be a bonus.

3. Book a driving lesson. I think most of the problem with me not learning to drive is that I’m not motivated enough to book the first lesson because I’m too scared. I reckon that once I get over the psychological hurdle and book that lesson, everything will be okay.

4. Eat less unhealthy food. The past year I’ve been eating just because I’m lonely and unhappy. It’s less to do with losing weight and more to do with that not being a good mental attitude to get into the habit of.

5. Continue to save money. I’m earning quite a bit more now than I was this time last year, so I ought to be saving more than £500 a month for the remaining time I’m living at home.

6. Find a new job. I can’t stay here more than 12 months, credit crunch or no credit crunch. I have at least taken a positive step in this direction by registering with Hayes.

7. Shake myself out of the depressed sort of apathy I’ve spent far too many months wallowing in and which means that I don’t do anything with my spare time. I don’t even read any more, I just seem to work, eat, stare blankly at the TV for a while, mess about on the internet and sleep. What Damon’s doing with his creative writing blog is both inspiring and depressing at the same time. Inspiring to see how much motivation he has and how much progress he seems to be making, depressing because I can remember when I used to spend hours every week being creative too, and now I just feel sort of blank and dead. Hopefully the time in Germany over New Year will refresh me, and I’ll come back feeling more like a human being.

8. Buy a laptop. I’ve been meaning to do this for ages, since last New Year in fact, but haven’t because I couldn’t think of a way to explain to my parents why I wanted such a thing. I’m still not sure how I would explain it to them; they don’t know I have a blog, they don’t know about the JEB forums, they don’t even know I have a second phone for replying to my email on. But my own laptop would make life so much easier, and it seems a shame not to buy one when all the shops are having such spectacular sales, so I think I will try to take the plunge regardless.

There are other things I want to achieve during the year, but I’m not going to list them as resolutions. I want to move in with Babel, for example, but that’s not a resolution because it’s something which will happen when it happens. I would like to become more less scared, but that’s also something that will evolve over time on it’s own. I think I already have too many resolutions as it is, so I’m unlikely to achieve all of them, but I would like to do slightly better than 2008.

If anyone else has any other resolutions they would like to propose for me, feel free. Otherwise, I probably won’t post again for the foreseeable future, because I will be busy having Christmas and then I shall be going to Biedenkopf for the IS. I’m half looking forward to it, and half not exactly. That is to say, I am looking forward to it but on the other hand, the time after Christmas is normally a time I spend exclusively with my family and so I feel a tiny bit guilty and also worried that I’ll just be really lonely in Germany and miss them. I mean, I don’t suppose I shall see much of Babel at all because he’ll be so busy with all his important commitments. But I’m consoling myself with the fact that at least I will be in Germany, so I won’t have any problems communicating if I want to buy food and drink, and if I get really bored of Esperantists I’m going to go on an adventure to Marburg because I’ve always wanted to go to Marburg and it’s not very far away.

Have a good Christmas, all

Tags: new year resolutions

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Random rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.