While normally I would keep my New Year’s resolutions to myself, blogging more is one of them. If I could control how this year will turn out for me I would summarise it in one word: growth. My aim this year is to extend myself in as many aspects as I can while ensuring lasting impact. As such, I have narrowed it down to five resolutions or goals.

Not all of these conform to the S.M.A.R.T principle of goal setting, but I don’t think resolutions have to be such hard goals. Regardless, they are as follows:

I had trouble deciding on which ones exactly to include here, but I think these represent things that I had always told myself I would get around to at some point. They represent deferred, delayed, and abandoned ideas/goals that I think make them prime candidates for this year.

Ultimately, the growth I seek is commitment: building on things that I believe will make me a better, more dedicated person while contributing to my community (online or otherwise).

For each of these, I have included a brief on how I imagined they would be accomplished or how I envisioned them.

Open source initiatives to contribute to include Wikipedia, and Rust-based projects for helping me learn the language.

Donating blood is pretty self-explanatory, I am ashamed to say I have never really done it before and it has always been a goal.

Becoming more flexible is a physical challenge I set myself since I recovered from my advanced shin splints. Lack of flexibility in my hamstrings was one of the leading factors to the development of what could have been a chronic injury.

Writing more involves building out this blog and taking the initiative to share my knowledge and personal discoveries with others. Blogs like Drew DeVault’s are a big source of inspiration for this one. I also have many other writing projects that have simply never been a priority.

Finally, I want to see a personal project through to completion. My project graveyard stretches across the horizon while my harvest remains empty. I hope to start adding to the archive and showcase of this blog at least one project.

If I were to challenge you — dear reader — to anything this year it would be this: find something you have always deferred and just start the work on it.