I’ve always been of the opinion that people put too much stock into New Year resolutions – simply because they eventually fall by the wayside. My only resolution has always been that the new year be better than the one just gone.
When I was deciding whether to restart my blog, I considered if it would be a good idea to import the 2000 or so posts I accumulated in archive form from personal sites going back to 2003. Every year up until 2007, I’d do a post about what I want to achieve in the new year but then I realised the process was pointless: being the best you can be was more important. I also decided not to import the posts simply because they’re rubbish.
This year, I thought it’d be fun to write down some resolutions and see how they pan out.
Some of my favourite ones include:
- Attain my drivers licence
- Learn how to play the guitar
- Travel again, this time to Singapore, London and New York
- Run 12K in just under 1h 5m
- Deactivate my Facebook profile
Whoa… What was the last one? Deactivate my Facebook profile. Actually, I just ticked that one off the list.
There were a number of reasons why I decided to do this. Firstly, it was eating a massive chunk of my 150mb monthly data access on Vodafone. I’m looking at getting off Vodafone when my contract runs out and I don’t want upgrade and be locked in for another 24 months.
The second and perhaps more important reason is because I felt that over the last two years the human element of interactions I had with others – friends, family and acquaintances had completely diminished. No one ever bothered to ring me to invite me to an event; it was simply put up on Facebook, if something exciting happened I’d read about it on the wall, if I wanted to chat to someone it’d be easier to open the chat window rather than make a phone call or meet face to face. I was just as bad. It made me really, really lazy.
In the end, I felt like I was beholden to Facebook for everything.
As a web developer and social media junkie, it’s the hardest thing to do but after all Facebook is only one conduit for interacting with others. This year I decided I was going to make my relationships more meaningful. It means others are going to have to make the same effort in return.
Roll on 2012.