***Goals2005***

Goals. Projects. ToDo. The major focus for most Americans at the beginning of the year. The following are a few of my own:


Complete the first draft of my novel.
Any novel. I have at least three.


Reshape body
Bit more involved. Basically, I have to gain mass, definition, then lose enough weight to be "cut". One of my most fun goals (and, no, I'm not joking.)


Learn the business
We have a side business selling collectable used books on-line. The Spouse focused on the selling while I did the background stuff as the website, finances, etc. I wanted to change that this year becoming more involved with the preparation and selling of the stock.


Redo the house
As long time readers know, the floor in the kitchen was damaged last year. Instead of being sensible and just patching the wood, we decided not only redo the entire first level flooring, but remodel the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the rest of the house. This is a several year project: this year we're hitting the major infrastructure such as new cabinets, new tubs, and sound systems. Next year we'll start the wall-papering and paints while replacing the roof. In 2007, we start the really hard work: redecorating the house. Yikes! More stable marriages have been broken up by such a goal.


Reorganize the house
An positive side-effect from redoing the house is that we've been forced to inventory all our ju...er...stuff. Like the four complete sets of china. Numerous and unused pots and pans. Software (and their books!) for Windows 3.0. And piles of magazines on fitness, computers, wealth, medicine, and Pokemon. And don't even get me started about the 6k+ hardback books alone piled around the house.

The Spouse looked at all these (and the many more) piles, looked at me, blanched, and said, "uh, maybe we should clean this year."

YES!


Family and friends
We turned inward from both groups roughly three to four years ago. I can already see I'll be dragging the Spouse kicking and screaming to attend the various events. Kidding aside, the growth of our respective families with nieces and nephews, mortality, and the election of...him...made use keenly that the most important thing in the world are your family and friends (after spouses and books, of course.)


Finances

Another side-effect from our remodeling efforts is controlling our spending. We're in good places at the moment: our jobs are (fairly) stable and pay decent. We're steadily putting funds away into retirement (having no faith in Social Security to be around when we're ready to retire). I've put a lot of expenses--both fixed and variable--to be automatically paid to reduce time, paperwork, and get points for vacation.

But there's more we can do. We're already in discussion of what additional expenses can be put under control much of which is discretionary. I'm hoping for full control by mid-year.


Time alone

Not only for the both of us but for myself as well. I'm debating about implementing my sabbaticals again. We'll see.


That's it for right now. How I'm implementing all these (the detail stuff) is either private or in the works.