2009 resolutions – a year in review

As a whole 2009 was one of the most interesting years of my life. There were moments in years past that were more interesting (wedding, graduations, etc), but as a whole, I’d have to say that this year takes the cake. Going into the year I set more goals than I’ve ever done going into a new year and I’d say that played a big role in how this year played out. For 7 months I was all over most of the goals; really kicking butt. Unfortunately I then fell off the wagon and spent the next 5 months leveling things out, so to speak.

Below are my resolutions from last year. I’ve put the outcome next to each of the goals, as well as a brief synopsis of how things turned out in each category. I’ll be putting my goals for 2010 in another post to come later.

Physical resolutions
1. Run a 5k I ran the BE5k on February 24th and completed it in 27:33
2. Run a 10k I completed the UAB Dollars for Scholars 10k on April 24th in just over an hour.. narrowly missing my time goal
3. Run a half-marathon I did the Rock and Roll half-marathon in Chicago on August 2nd in 2:13:30… beating my time goal of 2:15
4. Eat fast food no more than once per week Stuck with this goal until July… then the wheels fell off… hard

Over the course of the year I did some great things physically and some very bad things. Running the half-marathon was like an out-of-body experience.  My dad and brother were rooting me on and Chicago is one of my favorite places in the world.  Unfortunately the half-marathon also marked the moment when my good physical actions turned bad. I quit exercising regularly and started eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Here’s the embarrassing part.. from January through July, I lost 20lbs…. from August until now I’ve gained 25lbs. That is just shameful.

Professional resolutions
1. Attend at least one major conference I went to Codestock in Knoxville, TN… unfortunately I missed the first day cause I had just started a new job
2. Attend at least two minor conferences I went to a few of these.. Alabama Code Camp, Bham Bar Camp, LINQ Boot Camp
3. Get involved in BSDA and Bug.Net I did go to quite a few meetings for both of these organizations and met some great people.
4. Read 12 professional development books (technical and nontechnical). Of course, that’s one per month. I read 5 books of this nature through July… then I slacked off here as well and haven’t read anything beyond blogs posts since August.

I’d say it was a pretty successful year on this front. Not only have I learned a bunch from my readings, I’ve also made some very good contacts in the Birmingham tech community. Definitely the most notable thing on the professional front to happen this year was landing a new job at Jack Henry and Associates. It’s a great job as a software engineer working on banking software products, rather than just in-house tools like I had been working on. There are many things that I would have liked to accomplish in this section, but I’d say it was a very good year regardless.

Personal resolutions
1. Find a church home After visiting for ~9 monthes, we joined Mountain Brook Community Church.. it’s a great fit for us
2. Read the bible all the way through I really did awful on this one… made it through about half of the old testament… not good
3. Save up a down payment for a house We did awesome on this one and bought a house this fall! A home run.
4. Find a relatively competitive basketball league to join I did play in a league this fall that was fun. Our team was a little too good though, undefeated champions.

All in all, 2009 was a fantastic year. I accomplished a lot of great things that I had hoped for. There were a lot of things that I had hoped to do that I didn’t get done though. This just tells me that 2010 can be an even better year! I’m going to try to evaluate what worked with my resolutions and what didn’t and make adjustments as needed for 2010. I’m very excited about getting things going in the right direction again. It doesn’t require a new year to set new goals, but it sure does make it fun!