Future Lincoln Faces The Future

Steampunk Lincoln
Originally uploaded by Blackwyr

2009, The Year of the (Not Being A Fat) Bastard

It's a new year, and it's time for the traditional list of resolutions. Here goes:

• Achieve some semblance of fitness. My luck with that hasn't been great this past year; travel is the biggest excuse, of course, but there have also been the nagging issues with my ankle, and with my back (courtesy of trying to move heavy video arcade games). But it is my lingering back pain that makes it all the more important to get some exercise. More on this as we go along this year.


• Increase my creative output. I feel as though I'm not really producing anything worthwhile lately, and I intend to correct that. I miss writing and drawing, and I also want to start doing more with photography than my usual scattershot traveloguing. Let's face it, most of my blog posts from 2008 were pretty dull, and there are so many things that I just ended up not writing about at all.


• Increase my Internet "footprint", as it were. I've shied away from things like Facebook and Twitter, but I'm beginning to feel obligated to at least give them a try. I've started updating my Flickr gallery again (see Mr. Lincoln there, for example) and, as mentioned above, I intend to do some more writing here as well. Moving the websites I'm interested in into an RSS aggregator (Google Reader, in this case) has been an incredible time-saver AND time-waster; now I can cram my brain with even more information!


• Reclaim some "old" interests. Things like chess, and astronomy. In my copious free time, of course.


• On the practical side of things: Finish getting out of debt. I don't feel as though my life will ever be my own until I stop owing money on credit cards. A bit hyperbolic? Perhaps, but that's how I feel about it. Most other material considerations are secondary to that.


• More--and more interesting--travel. If nothing else, the fellow I worked with down in St. Kitts keeps asking when my girlfriend and I are going to come back for a vacation. And hey, Delta does direct flights out of Atlanta on the weekends... Let's face it, most of what I do is "bungee travel"; I plunge in, work, take a quick look around, and am yanked back out in a matter of days or hours. That's no way to really get a feel for a place.

Wow, that's enough for a couple of years. I'm not sure how I feel yet about 2009. The best we can do is push forward and say, "Let's make it up as we go."