New Year's Resolutions

New Year's Resolutions
I don't like New Year's resolutions.

I've gone through the usual "Give up chocolate" variations when I was younger and for a couple of years stuck to the corny "I resolve to not make resolutions" in an effort to get out of it all but at heart I just don't like them.

Why should I suddenly decide to do or not-do something just because it's another year? Plus, they're always so negative, along the lines of "Lose weight" or "Give up ..." (fill in the blank with your favourite food/activity). I like to think I'm a positive person so I don't like to focus on a negative goal.

So this year I didn't make any and I nobody asked me what mine was so I didn't feel pressured into making one up on the spot - I guess we were all too busy keeping our neighbours awake with the late night (or early morning...) marathon session of Singstar that marked New Year 08/09 to be bothered with things like resolutions.  Phew.

Work
January is also renowned for being a difficult time at work.

You've hopefully just had a fun-filled December followed by some holiday leave, Christmas Day and a New Year's party so it's understandable that you start to feel a bit down in the cold, dark days that follow. It's made all the worse since a lot of tasks in December are tagged with a 'follow-up in the New Year' so suddenly you're back from your break with twice the work to do and no bank holidays in sight.

It's no surprise that more people hunt for new jobs in January than any other month but of course this year that's been tempered by the current economic climate - people are staying where they are since no-one wants to be part of the "last-in first-out" list of cash-strapped employers.

Resolving things
In an effort to snap out of the January blues I've done two things, stopped moaning to my long-suffering wife and instead shared some of my work concerns with colleagues (who turned out to be feeling the same so now we're all working to fix things rather than moaning about them privately) and realised that I've stopped doing a lot of the things that I used to do (or wanted to do) that I enjoyed.

I made a decision that I needed to have more fun, or if you like, I made some resolutions but instead of the usual negative ones mine are a bit more upbeat along the lines of "Get out and take more photos", "Be more creative" and "Go mountain-biking".

So far it's working well; in the last week or so I've been more positive at work again, I've combined two of the above and went out to take some creative photos which I'll put onto Flickr soon and also got thoroughly exhausted mountain biking on Sunday with Charlotte and some friends. It's all paying off and it's far easier being happy and relaxed again - maybe there's more to these resolutions than I'd realised.

I've also re-embraced my inner geek which used to be fairly present when I was younger and ran my own webdesign agency with a couple of mates but that side of me had recently been ignored apart from some fairly simple sites for friends and family. Hence my new iPhone and this blog - time to get back into the tech lane.