2009 Guidelines

I’ve decided to make some personal guidelines for 2009. The nice thing about these is that they are small changes to my existing habits or routines and therefore appear both reasonable and achievable. They are, in no particular order:

Stop collecting receipts

For years I’ve kept every receipt and invoice someone handled me, even when I had the option of not doing so. They sit in my desk drawer until January of the following year when I bundle them up, put a rubber band around them, and stash them in my filing cabinet. Then after 7 years they go in the shredder. This year I’m going to decline every opportunity to obtain a receipt (with reasonable exceptions of items that might need to be returned/exchanged). This should reduce busywork for me without negatively impacting my records given that I have PDFs of all my credit card statements.

Blog more

I blog in spurts but very few of my mental blog articles get written. This is due to the fact that I like to limit a single blog entry to a single topic and that I have a desire to spread the blog entries out instead of having 7 in one day and none for 7 days. This results in some mental blog entries never getting posted and many days of no entries at all. This year my intent is to write entries as they come to me to a document on my local computer and then post them roughly one a day. In addition I’m going to overcome my resistance to posting multiple blog entries a day for those articles that are more time-sensitive

Work against my hermit tendencies

I’ve noticed that more and more I resist going places and doing things. I mentally rationalize it as wanting to avoid driving the car for environmental reasons. And while that’s a great idea in practice, I shouldn’t sacrifice living my life to achieve it. This year I’m going to do better about where the line is drawn between being green and being a hermit.

Be craftier (aka develop hobbies outside of the computer)

As my previous post indicated, I’m working towards this one already with the crocheting. While I’d love to get back into pottery, there isn’t a studio around here and if I were to obtain a wheel for the garage I’d still need someplace to fire them so that one is right out. Instead I’ll focus on crocheting for a while and then maybe take up quilting. Both of these hobbies appeal to me because my Mom and grandmothers practiced these crafts and because they result in useful and practical products.

There are other things that I’d like to work on in 2009 but I think these are my core guidelines. Lets see how they go!