Resolutions 2023
By popular demand, I am publishing my birthday resolutions.
I know there’s lots of advice about what makes for good goals, but I’m not so concerned with the quality of my goals.
My strategy is to imagine how I want my life to be next year, make it like that, and iterate.
Decide whether to go to grad school
At a New Years party, an old acquaintance at a party asked what I would do in an ideal world.
I said I wasn’t sure because I was drawn to writing, teaching, and cognitive science research, but they all had their pros and cons.
Almost immediately after I said it, it hit me that there’s a place where you do all of those things.
This year, I want to figure out whether that very large commitment is something I want to make or if it’s just something I say to acquaintances at parties.
I’m actually happy with my job right now which is why I feel like I have the luxury to spend a lot of time figuring out what I want to do next.
It’s not like I’m even in a position to apply to grad school on a whim.
General application strength aside, I don’t even have a research direction in mind.
I plan to throw a mini grad school for myself where I read lots of papers and do a small AI project or two.
Submit a short story or essay to a publication or contest
Ideally, this would just be “write a short story you’re personally proud of”, but the only way for me to do that is to submit it somewhere because that’s the type of person I am.
Read 20 books
It’s pretty stupid to keep track of this, but I’m a pretty stupid person.
Last year I read 25 books (one every two weeks on average minus 1 to make it a round number), but I tried to power through a few I should have abandoned.
For that and other reasons, I want to dial this back a bit.
Last year, I had a lot of time to read on the bus.
I don’t expect to have the same kind of dedicated time this year.
I’ve also been reading more blogs, articles, and cog sci papers.
And there are a one or two big project books I want to tackle this year.
Take an improv class
My sister took an improv class last year, and it changed her life, so I, also wanting to change my life, plan to take an improv class.
Host a dinner party
I got a 1-bedroom specifically so I could host people, so I have to do it at least once before my lease is up.
I also got Salt Fat Acid Heat for Christmas which is great and inspiring me to cook more, but some of the recipes are fancy and I’ll probably only cook them for other people.
Get a roommate
Maybe I’ve just been lucky so far, but I prefer living with roommates.
Blog weekly
Perhaps the main goal here should be to create a style guide.
I vacillate between being crippled by perfectionism and settling for mediocrity.
I know I’m bad at doing what I want, but I’m great at following rules, so my loophole is to make up rules that force me to do things I want to do and then follow them.
Having a style guide / rubric would be a similar way to measure success that falls somewhere between the most life-changing thing anyone’s ever read and self-indulgent junk.
Qualify for Boston
I’ve already written about this here.
I want to make my first attempt this Spring (I’ll have to find a race soon).
I’ll also be running a Fall marathon with a friend.
Ideally, I will already have qualified at this point, and this will be a fun victory lap (maybe in Hawaii), but it could also be a second shot at qualifying.
Travel
Originally, one of my goals was to go on a solo vacation, not to visit friends or family, just to go somewhere I want to see, but there are so many people I want to see.
I’ll take this as a win if I go to visit friends outside of any holiday or event.
Take PTO just to give myself a break and to see people I want to see.
Take cold showers
This is a joke.
It occurs to me that most resolutions have some moral undertones.
Like resolutions are supposed to make you a better person secularly by hitting the gym and quitting social media.
All of my resolutions are things that I just want to do.
I think it’s valuable to make and keep promises to yourself regardless, but it makes it harder to know where to draw the line.
I also want to run a triathlon and maintain friendships in 2023, but I’m reasonably confident that those things will happen regardless.