My 2015 New Year's Resolutions

Every year I make the effort to come up with resolutions for myself and ways in which I can meet them.  2014 was a good year for my resolutions and I made progress in all of them, check my last post for my review.  I tried last year to use my calendar to remind me to check my resolutions once a month; however, I failed to do this carefully, so I will try a new way to do this using the site futureme that allows you to send an email to yourself in the future - https://www.futureme.org.  Try it out, cool stuff!  Now, to my resolutions!

#1 - Try to Keep Anxiety and Stress in Check - If you know me, you know that sometimes I can be a little high strung, stressed out, and worry about everything.  I would like to look for ways to self regulate my stress.   Not sure the solution, but probably monitoring when I am stressed would help, trying some yoga, and other stress relief exercises.  My goal is to have less "stress" days each month, which I will monitor on my calendar.

#2 - Compete in one bike race event in 2015 - Six marathons and many more sprint triathlons have given me the "competitive" bug.  After my knee surgery in July, my running days have come to an end; however, I have taken up biking!  So, I have the goal to race in at least one event this year or maybe participate in one of the half-century or century rides around the island.

#3 - Beach time - we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, yet, life gets the best of us and many times we don't get to the beach on a regular basis.  My resolution is to go to the beach at least three times a month.  I am hoping for more, but I will set the goal low and adjust as needed.

This year, I have decided to focus on my personal life, I have professional goals for the new year as well, but I am not going to list those here.  I am going to look for ways to have technology help me achieve all my goals.

I wish all of you the best in your own new year's resolutions.  If nothing else, it is an opportunity to take a look at your life and reflect.


Happy New Year!
-Mike :-)

2014 Resolutions in review.

The annual time in my life when I review my resolutions and create new ones.  Let's look back:

My Resolutions for 2014:

#1 - Become more organized - At work and at home, I let the piles of paperwork and other unnecessary things gather around me.  Instead of putting things aside to do later, my resolution is to try and deal with it at the moment.  In this way, I will cut down on the clutter around me and leave a cleaner life!  (I never said my resolutions were easy!) ----  Not bad on this one, I did plan time at least once a month to go through the clutter.  And, I have tried to make more things electronic so that I can organize them that way.

#2 - Re-Invent my exercise life - As many of you know, massive knee injuries in 2013 left me with the reality that after 3,700 miles of running, I will have to find a new way to exercise or I will end up using a cane for the rest of my life.  I know that I enjoy biking, weight lifting, and surfing, but I must add in other non-impact exercises like swimming into my routine.  ---- I had knee surgery in July and I was back to exercising soon after that.  I have been biking a lot as a replacement to the running and have made the switch, putting in more than 100 miles on the bike in November.  While I still miss running desperately, I am trying to make the change.

#3 - Focus on professional growth - I was elected as President of HSTE (Hawaii Society of Technology in Education) and I will be traveling to two conferences this year as part of this leadership.  I need to spend some time focusing on my growth as a technology leader and helping to grow my organization.  --- This was a great year for the HSTE organization and I am proud of the work I accomplished in leading it.  There is still more for me to do in this organization, but I am glad it went well and I survived. 

#4 - Family time - This one is a carry over from 2013 and it is still so important to me.  My daughters are growing up fast and I need to find time and ways to enjoy spending time with them and Suzy.  It will be tougher this year with being gone to conferences off-island, but it can be as easy as shutting the laptop and playing Wii with them. ----- Success on this one as well, returning to the classroom in the fall, I found I had a little more time in the evenings to spend with family.  I still want to continue with this one, but overall it was an improvement!

It seems this year, my resolutions are not as measurable as in previous years.  It will be tough to figure out if I actually have "met" them at the end of 2014; however, they are what I need at this time as I look to the new year!