I’m not big into New Year’s resolutions, but there are a few things I want to start doing again. The first things I’m going to list won’t surprise anyone: I want to work less and spend more time on things I enjoy, and I want to be more physically active.

Over my life, especially the last 10 years or so, I stopped and then picked up jogging time and time again. The last time I picked it up was after I saw a cardiologist half a year ago. It’s nothing too bad; actually, it was better than I expected. But for me, a person who used to be more active, it was a reminder to work on my body and stay in shape.

I achieved my goal back then (running up the street without stopping), but I stopped soon after, for no particular reason. Winter came, and with it, the lack of motivation to be outside in sub-freezing temperatures. I used to run in this weather fine, and folks like Eric (who seemed to moved his blog? Hmm…) make me jealous, but in a good way. There’s also my partner River, who I affectionately call Gastone at times (they can eat six eggs in one breakfast, and it all seems to go directly to their biceps), who makes me feel guilty for not using my bedroom gym more often, again - in a good way.h

The other challenge I have is sleep. I’m a self-diagnosed chronic insomniac. I usually don’t sleep more than 6 hours, and I have two bad nights a week, averaging about 4 hours. While sleep hygiene and a consistent sleeping schedule are not as helpful to me as they would be to other folk, they do help. My goal is to be asleep on the same day I woke up - that is, not after midnight. I can sometimes fix sleep deprivation with naps, but work pressure keeps my brain occupied, even if they don’t message me with some new emergency. I think that if I manage to hold on for a week with the above condition, things will get back to normal-ish. Hopefully.

Another thing I want to do is to get more into music. I got a keyboard last month, and I want to learn how to use a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, aka the software musicians use to edit and create tracks) to start playing with things. I’m basically brand new to all of this, so I’m learning to read music sheets from scratch, and it’s slow, but it’s going.

Then finally - and this might sound weird - I want to see if I can reach out to younger folks and get them interested in non-cloud technology. This is vague, I know. I see how everyone is dependent on their phones and big tech companies, especially during the AI age we live in, and get lost in it, often spending an arm and a leg on services they don’t really need. I used to teach at some point in my life, and helping out with tech is something I enjoy, so there’s that. Again, not sure how to do that. It’s a big project, and I get a mad rash whenever I touch TikTok or whatever, so it’s challenging.