I’ve been writing and rewriting annual goals religiously since the ball dropped in 2000, back when I was a senior in college. I take them seriously. A decade later I’ve thrown raves (2001), gone vegetarian (2003), moved to San Francisco (also 2003), and have my own business (2008). Despite such achievements, every year has the same leftovers. Make more art. Exercise more. Spend less. Stay in better touch with family and friends.

A new strategy was called for. Despite Sarah’s success with intentions over resolutions, I have clung to my SMART goals like a wobbly buoy. Wildly successful at life-changing leaps, they admittedly leave behind daily behaviors. Now fully comfortable in my own life, I no longer need transformation. I need grace. I need focus. I need intention. And so my intentions for 2010 are “Less Waste, More Life”.

Less Waste

Worried that my intentions were ambiguous bordering on glib, I almost wrote this as, “Less Dicking Around on the Internet” but as I reread my Tao Te Ching…

So, as ever hidden, we should look at its inner essence:
As always manifest, we should look at its outer aspects.

…I decided that keeping the specifics unnamed might actually let them remain more specific.

Either way, “dicking around on the Internet” had to go. I unsubscribed from all the blogs that consisted entirely of crap entitled “10 Essential Mac Apps for Simplifying Your Workflow” or “25 Vital WordPress Plug-ins for Converting Traffic” or “[number] [superlative] [nouns] for [desirable outcome]“. Every single one made me mad to read, because I either already knew everything it mentioned or—worse—I didn’t… and then had to evaluate each hyperbolic claim as either worthy or worthless. All those feeds are gone. Bye.

Also, blogs written by Hipsters making fun of other Hipsters. Even ironically. Gone.

One step further, my laptop now lives at the office during the week. Yes, I will be sans computas post-six o’clock every day. It will still make it home on the weekends, for purposes of copying torrented content to our media server and whimsical side projects, but otherwise is 100% property of Diligent Creative (who owns it anyway, for legal reasons).

These behaviors have already demonstrated their potential. As Sarah returned from her haircut on Sunday, I sat in the kitchen making DIY moonjars while baking homemade bread (cracked pepper and Gruyere) with the old solar panel primed for installation on our new back porch. Solar projects (Less Wasted Energy!) and home baking (Less Wasted Money!) aside, moments where—merely a week before—I would be reading about things to do had become doing things. Gently setting down my 4-in-1 screwdriver, I looked up and said, “my life used to be like this all the time.”

More Life

It becomes an inevitability that the holes abandoned by retreating waste are filled by something. In my case, I’m resolving for that something to be life. I don’t mean this in the socially normative “Choose Life” sense, but in the literal sense. Plants. Animals. People. Life.

For someone with so many hobbies, I rarely enjoy them in the company of others. San Francisco has a fantastic electronic music scene, but I’ve sat on my ass as great artists have come and gone, weekly events went under for lack of attendance, and acquaintances that could’ve become fast friends have moved on to other cities.

Likewise, I hang out with only a handful of other web designers. Yes, we’re solitary creatures requiring only coffee and the warm glow of Apple logos for survival, but still… we could at least get coffee together. I’m talking the IRL meatspace.

Speaking of, I tried El Diablo at CoffeeBar today. Chipotle-chocolate cappucino. Would’ve loved a wing man.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the biggest example of “More Life” of all:

Sarah’s desire for the pitter-patter of little feet around the house.

By which I mean a kitten. What did you think I meant? Oh, the thumbnail for this post? That’s from the poster for “2010: The Year We Make Contact“. Not a science-fiction fan, I guess?

New Year’s Eve itself I spent mostly on a train. I finally got back to my house a little stinky from three days aboard the California Zephyr, so I hit the shower. At the stroke of midnight, I shared a Times Square moment with my cat and roommate, donning festive hats and whirling noisemakers for approximately 8 seconds before returning to what we were doing.

As the buzz of the New Year is coming to an end, the real work must begin in earnest. As I mentioned before, I normally actually do whatever it is that I resolve to do on New Year’s. In the past I have decided to go vegetarian, leave Indiana, and throw a rave. Done, done, and done.

My 2000 resolution, coming true.

Beginning with the standard resolutions, I resolve to better manage my time and money. I further resolve to do it using cool programs only available for the Mac so that 1) it doesn’t feel like work and 2) my PC friends are not only jealous of how well I manage my time and money but would be forced to buy a Mac in order to keep up. I am a Jones, afterall; keeping up with me is the Usonian way of life.

GTD is powerful enough, but MidnightBeep’s Inbox is taking my practice to that next level. It’s less lightweight than kGTD, which I had been using previously, but so far I’ve found the added rigamarole forces me to think my projects through a little more.

On the money front, I’m using IGG’s iBank. It has everything I was looking for (most notably a pie chart telling me how much I spend on Soy Mochas), but also gives me projections on how much I’ll be worth 5 years from now. It’s possible that I haven’t configured it properly yet, but otherwise I’ll be sitting on $65k. Ladies, that qualifies me as a “strong buy”. Plus, all of this money will be in the friendly and capable hands of San Francisco’s brand new New Resource Bank, so my money can be the root of rooftop solar home equity projects instead of, you know, evil.

My final New Year’s Resolution declared me instead of me declaring it (which sounds like one of those “In Soviet Russia…” jokes). I was hitting the snooze bar on my alarm clock—which I’ve done consistently since my mom stopped waking me up—and I noticed that my alarm clock didn’t have a snooze bar. It quite clearly has a “drowse” bar.

Sometimes we hit the ones we love.

This gave me great pause, as I’ve had this same alarm clock since high school. How could I have never, in 10 years not noticed that I had a drowse bar? Something must be done about this oversight. Thus, my final resolution is this, “to try to observe the world with new eyes each day, taking as little as possible for granted.”

So far, I’ve noticed some very interesting things. First, almost all of my pants are 2 inches too short. So it’s off to thrift stores with them. Second, dentists are a very strange cultural phenomenon. Why do we pay people to shove sharp metal objects in our mouth? Finally, Apple has some sort of cellphone now. How long have they had that?

I urge everyone to take a look at your world today and try to find something that surprises you. Post your findings below.