brianfending.com

UPDATE: I've started crossing out various tasks as I move toward my resolutions. This post will be updated as I complete them!

I'm a firm believer in resolutions of the new year variety, and have been making them - and tracking progress on them - for fifteen years. There are always ten resolutions, and in a good year I fulfill seven of them. On average, I'm hitting about 60% the whole run. Not bad, perhaps. But conversation (of the New Year's Eve variety) with my wife Rachel made it evident that I've been padding my numbers, intentional or not, and have been conflating (1) very small, specific goals, (2) extremely subjective-as-to-whether-I-did-anything-about-them statements of intention, and (3) true, life-changing resolutions. Thinking about this, I've done a better job outlining worthy resolutions with goal-oriented subheads. Semantic difference? Well, considering that my new number 3 *was* four separate resolutions, I think putting all of those actionable steps into the framework of a larger goal/resolution is better for me. Is there more work to do as a result? Yes - but it feels like less because I can use GTD (which I adopted in part this year) to architect the Whens and Hows of fewer overarching goals.

In the spirit of Richard Wiseman's 59 seconds video (watch out, he's a hand talker…) and a lifehacker post from a year ago, I'm not keeping the resolutions to myself as in years past. They're out there, for better or worse, and I'm sticking to 'em. So far.

And now, here's the lot:

1. Work out regularly

Cliché? Perhaps. Perhaps. But since the birth of my second child (a boy this time: Liam), I've been losing form. And I'm pretty sure there's an all new staff at the gym, but I can't be sure… they may have just been changing hair color, and I'm not there nearly enough to be able to tell. (Yes, file under "all hot people look alike".) In particular, I need to lose about fifteen pounds and keep a good cardio routine so I can keep up with the rest of my family. What is regularly? Probably three to four times a week.

2. Make music

I hear 2010 is the Year of the Tiger on the Chinese calendar. Know what 2009 was for Brian Fending? The Year of Musical Atrophy. Yes, I had a full calendar year working home and traveling 3 days a month. Did I use that time to make more music? No, I used it to stop. Completely. "How does something like that happen?," one might ask of a man who used to make a meager living at it. Well, it happens by not making a living at it anymore. By canceling my membership in the last local in which I was a member by non-payment of dues in the middle of the year after not playing a single gig for the year prior. By not keeping in touch with people who I played with. And, lastly and most importantly, by saying "No" enough times in a row when called about gigs. Sad as it is, my son heard his first drum yesterday… and he's four months old next week.

I've screwed up this particular resolution in the past - and to the greatest degree in 2009, apparently - by setting huge goals. Did I say huge? Well, I meant HUGE. Nothing that had a clear path to success. That used to not matter - my love for the thing was all that was of consequence. But I have substantially less love to throw around these days - at least at cold calls and throw-away projects. So I'm going to finish two prior commitments and see what I can do about finding some folks to Musik with around here. And take some instrument with me when I travel, by all means, once I've undone some of that atrophy.

Subheads: finish Beelzebub Slept Here installation materials and find a performance outlet for it, finish recording my first long-distance collaboration with DJ Craque, make time in my week for practicing, find some people who like to play more than talk and make some music, and travel with instruments (NOTE: no longer relevant - not traveling for work anymore!).

3. Get organized

Like I mentioned above, I started using GTD in 2009. What I really need to do is apply it across my personal life, too, in more rigid ways. I use Mac- and web-based applications for GTD processes at work - Mail.app, iCal, Central Desktop, Billings (and now my iPhone) - but some of the obvious parallels in my life aren't so orderly. At home, I use google calendar (from iCal using a CalDAV account, so I can update google calendars from my desktop app), put *everything* I'm going to retain (household stuff, medical receipts, etc) in binders once processed, and an "inbox space" (I detest actual inboxes) on my desk, but lack a good task management system like I have implemented for work. And this really, really gets in the way when I'm balancing "do I overcommit and get this project done on the original timeline to make others happy, even though I didn't have the design deliverables until Friday and nobody's going to notice until the next project is late-starting?" versus "should I reset expectations because, well, I'm going be out of the office for a few days and dagnabbit I need those boxes out of my *&^%# office."

For instance, I started tearing up my new home office this Summer once Liam's room (my "old office") was done. Then his birth story happened… And I didn't have time to finish out the walls and built-ins I had designed for the "new office". And so, there I am - paint mostly peeled and stuff *not quite* where I want it because of Christmas decoration boxes piling up - and sitting every day in the middle of the biggest symbol of my personal life encroaching on the professional.

So subheads for this include: (1) institute a task management system (Things for iPhone, for instance) (NOTE: I am in fact now using Things for Mac+iPhone), (2) get my office the way I want it, (3) finish the family room, (4) make the garage/basement/attic useful again, (5) get seasonal chores on a schedule, (6) don't overcommit based on what's in the queue already, and - last but not least - (7) institute a file system in place of those awful breaking-at-the-seams binders.

4. Relaunch my professional life

This resolution has incarnated as "find a new job" or "stop buying & selling souls including yours for a living" in previous years. While I'm not necessarily up to the challenge of testing the strength of the economy vis-à-vis the job market, I have found my professional life a bit dead as of late. Bored? No - that's not it. Well, maybe. I'm developing applications using a 50% CMS, 50% Framework solution (Drupal), and I like to live on the latter half of things. Realistically, I'm doing more in the been-there-done-that former side, including a fair bit of work in the theme layer ("design" for you non-Drupallers out there). So I can spend time on yet another browser CSS hack, jquery plugin tweaks, and generally getting better at Nicing Things Up, I really don't find that rewarding. In the least. Am I rewarded with a paycheck regardless? Absolutely! I would be little more than a whining bitch if I didn't acknowledge how smart the people in my company are, and that it's awesome to be working with rock stars every day. But I'm a process-oriented guy. And my process includes frequent introspection and net-sum analyses. This is that. I'm not personal adding up to my 100% best, but the time invested is tipping the scale of work-life balance anyway. What else is there? Well, there's all of the analyst work I've done, enterprise-level project management, business process design, business intelligence architecture, and director-level presentations. To be honest, each of those things is of increasing fun to me, and my current work focus is a little further back on the scale.

[On a completely unrelated note, anyone who knows me knows that I like to keep my online life a pretty open book. I'm one guy, all the time, to all people. I don't candy-coat advice to peers, I *will* tweet what beer I'm drinking that evening right after high-fiving an industry analyst, I don't care how many friends and family are confused by Facebook status updates (fed automatically from twitter) that contain five acronyms and end in a hashtag, and my blog is a cross-section of all of it. That's all well & good until the last bit, when I have to start concerning myself with how complete strangers will take my professional opinion rendered in the form of a much-thought-out article.]

I've been approached about a few consulting projects, which I'm regularly following up on because they sound so darned interesting. I'm leery of establishing ongoing consulting relationships, though. (I fired a lot of clients in recent years, either for being deadbeats or a waste of time, since my day job has been fairly demanding and, well, I've known a lot of deadbeats, apparently.) I've done the full-blown DBA as a company-unto-myself before, and got burned by high-overhead engagements (see "deadbeats" above). "Keep it small," always seemed like a good maxim, so I'm going to have to take that advice if I'm going to do any new side projects. This, of course, is weighed alongside the Drupal module I did a draft of (and use on this site!) and need to do some revisions to for posting for the community at drupal.org, the podcast series I started recording last month after a lot of guest lineup (one in the can, two more scheduled!), and little business idea I've been kicking around with a former coworker for a few months now. Each and every one of those is a commitment to which I cannot easily back down, so I'm choosing carefully.

Another rabbit hole I've gone down before is "I need to get certifications!" or "I need to write an application in the new-fangled Jamiroquai language!" None of that this year, unless they come with other benefits that meet more of my resolutions. In and of themselves, they are not the useful endeavors I intend them to be.

So what does this all-too-vague heading weighted down with melodrama mean for this year? Well, (1) relaunch my personal blog (brianfending.com) as a personal blog (duh); (2) launch a new domain that houses all of my technical analyses, programming snippets, and OpEd's on things like database and application architecture; and (3) find a way get happy. Oh, wait… does number 3 not look specific enough? I mean to say: If I'm not totally enthralled with my day job, it's probably better for me and the company if I keep it to myself, do the work they need done, and get my info architecture jollies somewhere else… in the odd evening or weekend. You can only force this peg into a hole for so long.

5. Get out into the world

Partly as a function of working from home 90% of the time with no local coworkers, and in no small part because I value Family Time more than just about anything, I don't really get out much. That used to take the form of going out with coworkers, going to seminars and other local events, gigging a couple of nights a week, golfing with friends - the mechanism has varied through the years. Memberships to organizations are all good and well, but I really, really don't make time for anything of the in-person sort now. Perhaps that's because I'm so comfy at my connected desktop and there's no "as long as I'm out here" to coast on in attending things downtown. No matter.

I used to attend user group meetings and go to mixers just to network. Not really into that in 2009. I tried joining and then starting a more regional Drupal user group, but found the interest in *actually* meeting kind of lacking. I'm going to try again, I think, but I have enough virtual colleagues -- I need real ones.

My plan on this resolution is a bit more specific: Keep several calendars in my RSS aggregator and pick one or two things a month to go to. And when all else fails: Golf.

Summary

If you count the subheads/items under each heading, that is a lot of stuff. Some small stuff. Some bigger stuff with a lot of actionable, ordered tasks. Some leaps-of-faith (for me) stuff like getting social and putting on a suit every so often. But I really do think that it's all attainable in time that's not already devoted to work and family. It's that elusive Me Time that people rave about. And I'm going to have to find a ton of it fast. I'll keep you posted, since you read this far.