Administrative

Personal

My New Year's Resolutions for 2014

For me, 2013 was a year of figuring out how I was going to fulfill a bunch of pre-existing commitments. As I noted to a few friends on New Year’s Eve, my theme song for the first half of the year was The Mountain Goats’s “This Year,” and it was nice to be able to sit down and realize that, as a matter of fact, I had made it through the year, and it hadn’t killed me. But that was then.

Over the past few months, I’ve felt like I was able to get my feet under me in a few key ways, and I really want to take a more proactive, less reactive approach to the coming year. I have some more personal goals that I’m going to keep to myself, but there are a few projects that I want to share with the big bad world out there, in part because I know that sharing with you means that I’m going to have some modicum of responsibility for making those things happen.

So, here are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2014:

1. Publish 52 exposures in 2014.

After I saw that Rachel was working on a 365 day photo project, I knew that I wanted to do something similar with my own photography. However, the usual “one photo every day” project just has never worked for me in the past.

Still, I want to do more work on my photography this year than I did in the last, and actually forcing myself to produce some form of content seems like a good starting place. So I’ve decided that my resolution for this year is going to be to produce and publish 52 exposures in 2014, which then can be elegantly shortened to the marvelously hashtaggable 52x14. Roughly speaking, I’m going to work on publishing one image every week, though I might skip some and double-up on others if things work out that way.

If you want to keep up with my project, follow me on Instagram, or check out the 52x14 album on my Flickr page.

2. In a similar vein, write 12 blog posts in 2014.

This blog has been neglected for far too long. Part of that is just because I’ve been caught up in my day job, and actually convincing myself to sit down and write after a long day of writing can be something of a challenge. So, much like my photography project, I’ll be trying to coerce myself to do something about it.

Here are the rules I’ll be following:

  • Write and post at least one blog post per month.
  • That post can’t say “Hey, no post this month,” barring some serious difficulties.
  • Other than that, everything’s in-bounds when it comes to topic: gaming, tech, writing, social justice issues, whatever. You could see a post on my work setup one month, and Hearthstone the next. My life is a grab-bag, and I fully expect this blog to reflect that.

I’ll be going against basically all of the advice from people who talk about starting a blog, and I won’t be posting regularly. That’s because that I fully intend for the stuff that I write to be based on whatever I’m feeling like writing a blog post. To keep up with my posting, you can follow this blog's RSS feed (you're welcome, Dave Winer).

If you’re looking for more me, you can find my writing on GeekWire or follow me on Twitter @belril.

3. Code an iOS app that I actually want to use in my daily life.

I now feel like I have a space in my life to actually take a crack at iOS development. That means that I want to build something that’s more than just the moral equivalent of writing a “Hello World!” program. It’s worth noting that I have no idea what shape that will take yet, and I probably won’t actually decide to release it on the App Store.

So, in sum, a new year means more photos, more blog posts, and a new iOS app that you will probably never see.

I don’t enable comments, because I fundamentally disagree with the idea that every blog must have a space for other people to post things about what I’m saying. Still, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to tweet at me or shoot me an email, and I’ll happily get back to you.