Traditionally the only resolutions that I make is the one to break my resolutions. Which is rather paradoxical in of itself and not all that helpful. However I’ve grown a bit and have decided that resolutions are something that are rather useful as they help provide a direction or benchmark which I most definitely make good use of.

And without further ado…

Move out of my parents’ home. This one is perhaps the most difficult of my goals. My parents have been most gracious to me and have gone beyond merely permitting me to stay with them in their residence provided that I continue with my education but have almost demanded me to. And the promise of such help is not something easily dismissed.

I have no strong social reason to leave. I’m not being driven out by the annoyances caused by my siblings or by my parents’ harsh rule or their demanding nature. Far from that! I love my siblings and I have no complaints whatsoever with my parents. My parents love me very much and have gone out of their way to help me on many occasion.

Nor am I compelled to leave because it’s socially unacceptable for me to remain with my parents at my age. At nineteen going on twenty, it is still acceptable for me to live in my parents home especially if I’m working on my degree, which I am. Even then, it’s becoming more and more acceptable for the children to remain in or return to their parents home even if they aren’t pursuing an educational goal due to the current economic conditions.

And speaking of economic conditions, living on my own, even if I were to find some people to share the burden of the cost of living with, is something that would be financially difficult to do to say the least. Not only will I have to be able to pull in enough income in order to offset those costs of living, I need to continue earning enough to pay for my tuition costs. And finishing up my bachelor’s degree is something that I am committed to. So it would be somewhat unwise financially to move out when my parents are more then willing to cover that cost.

So why would I bother to put myself through such an unnecessary hardship? For a couple reasons. First off, setting myself to establish my independence will help grow me quicker then staying here at home will. I fear a stagnant life. That I’ll stay at my current level and won’t mature and grow. Which I admit, I’m so easily prone into falling into as I’ve developed rather lazy habits.

Also, in order for me to achieve my long-term goals, I need to take this plunge sooner or later and my plans are more of a blitzkrieg as they involve taking advantage of my jumpstart with Running Start. Thankfully I’ve managed to find an excellent role model to set my eyes upon as a benchmark and goal. I fear merely living a good life when I know a great one is there for the taking and this path will help me with that. I am not going to be one of those people who stay with their parents all the way to their late twenties and beyond.

I am conspiring with my good friend Rabenstrange with this and, as a goal mark, set our time frame for moving out to be the end of January. I have this funny suspicion that won’t happen. Realistically, I’m not expecting to move out immediately as I need to set things up better before that but it is something that’s on my plate. In order to make this feasible I need to obtain a much higher paying job then I had previously (which I’ve already laid plans to do) and acquire scholarships to offset the cost of my rather hefty tuition.

Grow in my relationship with God. These past two years or so since I’ve started college, I have slowly drifted away from my Lord and my relationship with Him has been crumbling despite efforts to get back "on track." The many demands on my time and attention have caught me off guard and sidetracked me from keeping my main focus on what’s of the utmost importance.

My dear friend and fellow quiz coach, Evan, gave me a the One Year Bible which served me well last year. Reading my Bible daily was something that I struggled a lot with and having something that lays it all out for me takes a lot of the burden off. I wasn’t at all as faithful last year in my daily readings but I’m off to a good start now this year and have found myself a buddy to help keep me accountable.

Besides a daily Bible reading regiment, I’m also delving deeply into C.S. Lewis’ works. I’m currently reading Mere Christianity and Evan has been helping me expand my own personal library with further books as well as making his own library available.

I’m also trying out a new church (Mars Hill) that has strong Biblical sermons and hopefully will be able to connect with in the form of a small group. A small group is something that I firmly believe would help me in my personal walk with Christ. Being able to relate with others and have them hold me accountable… Most definitely a win there.

My close group of friends will also be forming our own Bible study after much delay. We’ve talked about it for a while and I’ve tried to get something together but have just been to busy to get things started. Thankfully Rabenstrange’s dad said he’d be willing to help spearhead that and help lead the group. I’ve been more then fortunate to find such a group of friends that I have who all are fellow brothers in Christ with whom I do everything with and it would be a shame not to expand our friendship in matter of faith as well.

Now I understand that all that doesn’t automatically improve things but it sure helps out. This’ll be something that I’m going to have to continuously strive at. I recognize that and am settling in for the long haul.

Reduce my gaming time. For the past year or so every night has become a mini-LAN party. I’d come home from work or school, grab some snacks, and play games with my friends. Now playing videos games in of itself is not something that I disapprove of but I’ve been doing so in such an excess that my own intellectual growth found in the area of books and the like has been rather lacking. The peak of this being when I was heavily involved in WoW. My gaming time has been declining since I quit and I rather love my new-found time for books (which life seems to make every effort to limit).

For my own sake, I’m limiting the times when I’ll allow myself to play computer games to Friday’s and Saturdays during the course of this year. And of course for special occasions such as LAN parties. Everything is permissible to me but not everything is beneficial and wasting every night on such frivolous things is not something that I can afford. Gaming will always be a part of me but it is something that I can put on the back burner in favor of more beneficial things.

This is something that I’ve realized and have made a conscious effort in doing. By reaffirming my decision to not let gaming get in the way of life in this particular way strengthens it and forces my hand. Next year round I’ll reevaluate and see how to go from there.

Increase my readings of more classical and thought-provoking literature. My love of reading tends to fall more so in the category of new fictional works which is great for the passing of time and does bring enjoyment but does little to help expand my way of thinking.

With my new found time made available by my decision to reduce my gaming time, I should be able to devote more time to strengthening my mind. My goal is to read four "wholesome" books a month. And by "wholesome" I mean books that are more of the non-fictional persuasion or older classical works, books that are more "nutrient rich" instead of the current "fast food" sci-fi that gets thrown at you these days. Not to say that there aren’t good books still being made, it’s just that the vast majority are more so for pure entertainment and have less long-term value. I hope that makes sense.

I didn’t quite explain that one very well and I s’pect I’ll be coming back to this topic at a later date.

Improve my academic success. It’s straight A’s or bust! I’m not at all pleased with how last quarter’s results turned out and I know I can do so much better then barely passing. Well perhaps barely passing is a slight exaggeration as surprisingly I did better then I had feared but my results were still abysmal and rather pathetic.

No, I’m not going to allow for a repeat of that.

I’m going to be ramping up my level of work that I put into my academic pursuit. I’m going to be increasing my level of commitment in class and exert more energy then I’ve previously done. I’m going to make sure that I speak up a lot more in class and expand my field of knowledge so that I’ll be able to contribute. Achieving that sort of recognition by teachers goes a long way and I need to capitalize on that. It’ll also have the nice secondary effect of improving my verbal skills, general knowledge, and grow me a bit more.

My notetaking style has some revisions that I’m going to be making to improve the value gained from that. I’m going to be keeping up on textbook readings and avoid "the last minute" approach to doing assignments like the plague.

The actual quality of my papers have a lot of room for improvement. They’ll benefit greatly from avoiding "the last minute" approach as I’ll actually be able to have the time to do multiple drafts.

Last quarter I also had a lot of problems staying awake in class due to work and my own foolishness. I’m not going to allow that happen again. Sleeping in class is a sure-fire way to fail a class and you’d think that I would’ve learned by now. Sadly, I didn’t. However I’m no longer going to be doing inventory at 4 in the morning and then rushing off to school so I won’t have much to fear there. Which brings me to my next and (so far) final resolution…

Achieve a solid sleep cycle. The month having returned from Japan has made me appreciate sleep. Appreciate being the keyword.. Me and sleep have a love-hate relationship. I hate that is necessary but I hate feeling like death walking even more so.

And not having sleep is very detrimental to your mental skills. And social ones. Having a shot short term memory makes sitting in class WORTHLESS.

Thus, I’m going to get into the habit of going to sleep and getting up at the same time each night/morning. And it’ll be in lines with a early schedule. Contrary to my previous night owl habits, I’ve rather taken to starting my day early. Which’ll inevitability fall more in line with my future work schedule anyway. A traditional 9-5 job would be ideal in the long run. Or even when I was pulling 6-2 shifts, I didn’t mind so much. It allowed me to end my work early and give me much more free time.

But I’ve gotten off track here…

And lastly… Take the next steps in prepping for my career. And by that I mean getting jobs or internships that’ll help push me closer to my end career. I’m actually in a rather neat situation in which I have two ways to go about that.

One is take management position and acquire a couple years of experience there while I finish up my bachelor’s at UWB. I have the opportunity to take the manager’s position at a Safeway Starbucks. That sort of management experience would look pretty good on my resume and would help push me forward after finishing my degree. But that would be a year or two commitment (which is how long it’ll take me to finish up anyways) and would prevent me from taking my other option which I’m rather leaning towards.

The other way is to take a couple internships with established companies that I would be likely to look into working for in a career role. There are a couple going on in the summer that I’m looking into so I’d have bide my time with some part-time work until then. I’m leaning more so towards that route as it’d be the quickest way to spearhead my career and speed up my plans if I can lay groundwork in such a company. Or so I’m thinking.

Either way, both will set me up better for the future and I can work with them.

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