New Year's resolutions ... in August

I’ve been on holidays, and I’ve had some spare time to stop and think.

Last couple of months have been special. Some events have affected profoundly.

One of those events has been the death of a collegue. Antonio was a young man. At least young for me, since he was in his early 40’s, only a few years older than me. Antonio was a nice guy. I remember him laughing a lot of times. Antonio was smart, talented, and on a technical level he always had a different perspective too. As it turns out, it wasn’t enough for him.

The second event was reading this inspiring post about how easy is to let your life flow. While reading that article I felt like as I was looking at my life. I work better under presure. I want to point a couple of examples. One, while studying International Baccalaureate. I worked a lot, learnt a lot and enjoy a lot. I felt alive. The other was while preparing the competitive examination to become a Civil Servant. My two daughters were one year old. My wife took care of them while I managed to study (a lot) after work, concentrating in the preparation while in the same house there were two little girls playing (and screaming ;D). But when there’s nothing challenging, life flows.

I have a wonderful family that gives me a reason to live. I love my wife. I love my daughters. I don’t feel depressed.

But I feel that, most of the time, life flows and I’m carried rather walking. And I want to be walking. And I need new challenges.

The start of a new scholar year is a good time to plan them. They won’t be huge challenges. But by writing them here I hope I can achieve them.

So here are they:

Books. I used to read a lot of books. I love reading. But I haven’t been doing recently. Today I’ve received a list of essential novels and I’ve discovered I haven’t read a lot of them. So I’m planning to read at least 20 books of that list I haven’t read yet until August 2010. That doesn’t look too much. But I want to set some number.
Blog. I like blogging, but I don’t think I have too many interesting things to say. However, I want to practice my English. And I think this is an excellent way to do it. That’s why I’m going to try to post once a week until August 2010.
Software developing. I like software development, but in my current position I do a more managerial work. So I’m going to develop at home. The problem with this resolution is that it’s not easy to quantify. Should I read new techniques?. I already do. Should I write X lines of code?. Oh c’mon. I’m not such a moron. So this resolution is to use three hours a week to develop something, probably some kind of web application to scratch a personal itch.

I’ll try to post my progress on these challenges in Twitter. Although the blog posting is easier to check here.