Doing away with new year resolutions...

So 2010 is here and just like countless other blogs, it's time to throw out some thoughts on the year ahead and how this time I will be better/more improved than before.
Actually, I'm thinking of shaking it up, these collection of sunrises apparently hold more weight than the others, but honestly it's stupid to wait until this arbitrary date to make some changes, no matter how small.
What I'm thinking of doing instead is set month goals rather than crank out a list now which can seem so daunting that it's a guarantee that I would not succeed - or maybe that's the whole point and I've missed it and should give up and settle for my current self... nah.

To not go into too much detail, but the licence(s) for the software my workplace offers are set up on a 6 month rolling basis, and it's strange how much fear is shot into me when seeing a date 6 months into the future. It happened a while back, when I gave out the first expiry date of 2010, and it happened again today, the expiry date being my 25th birthday. I've always felt that age is just a number at the end of the day, but thinking of 25 and the visions of where I thought/hoped I would be and I can't help but feel I'm coming up short. Today, was also the first day back at work, it made me look back on the first days back at school, except this time there's no friends to catch up with *sob. Today brought into sharp focus that I need a change of job and badly and so let's have a look at my January goals, or what I may come to call Desired Changes of-the-month!

So, January will have a strong job focus. Next Monday in fact I have a appointment planned with a career adviser at good ol' Kidderminster Job Centre. I've been toying around with a few ideas, but I'm thinking a career change may be my best move as I've grown more and more apathetic to the IT support profession as a whole. Following Monday, I hope to get the ball rolling and refocusing to exactly what I want thanks to *hopefully* some excellent advice and a push in the right direction. Failing that there is a careers advice telephone line which I may fall back on.

A long wish of mine has been to move back towards Shropshire, and even if a new job/career doesn't work out, I'm going to start looking at some properties no matter what happens. There's no harm in at least checking out some places, especially now as I have the luxury of time - finding my place in Kidderminster was a crazy week as my good friend Wilson can testify to. My current place gets terribly cold in the winter months, so now seems as a good time to move as any (in fact a few months back would have been better). So in a perfect world my new place, will be of a similar size to my current place, have central heating + shower, be away from any main roads yet close enough to civilization for shops etc. I'm wondering about a location in and around Bridgnorth as a kind of mid point between my current location and work and Shrewsbury which would currently be my ideal. I think moving to Shrewsbury would mean just too much of a commute to be realistic. Also, if it's possible to get a place with rent cheaper than my current abode. Oh yeah, and a great Internet connection goes without saying.
Having a car means that where I end up isn't as crucial as being close to the public transport links so I'm fairly open - I don't have any baggage in Kidderminster to worry about losing, should I move elsewhere.

I have also been putting off inquiring about contact lens for what seems like ages now, so I'm hoping to get that sorted this month as well. When I last had my eyes tested, the optician said that my prescription would be well suited for contacts - both eyes are pretty similar. I know contacts may be fiddly, but I'm sure that will only be at first and will get used to it over time. I'm a little tired of people knocking my glasses off my face, plus glasses are a bit of a pain when it comes to gigs/theme parks etc.

Last, and not least, there's the obligatory increased gym attendance - one of last year's resolutions which I was very on/off all through the year. The extremely cold weather at the moment doesn't help with starting new habits like this, I'm thinking of starting up some jogging when the weather and light gets much better, so that's a desired change for a future month.

I think setting loose goals for each month could prove more manageable than what would normally turn out to be an insurmountable task. At the end of the month, I'll have a look back on how well I've done, and set some new changes for the month ahead - here's hoping that I will really try and make the change, and not have them repeating into the next month(s).