{"id":70,"date":"2010-01-04T06:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T06:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/01\/2009-resolution-check-up.html"},"modified":"2010-01-04T06:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T06:05:00","slug":"2009-resolution-check-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/01\/2009-resolution-check-up.html","title":{"rendered":"2009 Resolution Check-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span>Happy New Year! <\/span>After a nice two-week break from pixels &#8212; other than those occurring in Nintendo Wii and DS games &#8212; I&#8217;m back and raring to go. Which leads to my first resolution of 2010: Never again describe myself as &#8220;raring&#8221; to do anything.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;width: 147px;height: 170px\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_HXZOhc9ASlo\/SWOV7_M6tKI\/AAAAAAAAAOU\/lAamHioq_Kk\/s200\/2009.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/>Before I post my resolutions for the coming year, I figured it would be a good idea to do a check-up of last year&#8217;s goals. Because what good is posting the resolutions if you don&#8217;t know whether or not I&#8217;ve met them?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.jasonboyett.com\/2009\/01\/resolutions-for-2009.html\">You can read the original post<\/a>, or you can just follow this abbreviated list:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">1. Sell lots of books. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>I did decent enough on this one. Most of this goal involved getting rid of the excess copies of the first edition of Pocket Guide to the Bible. I &#8220;sold&#8221; thousands of them in last July&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.jasonboyett.com\/2009\/07\/free-pocket-guide-to-bible.html\">big giveaway<\/a>. Didn&#8217;t make much money that way, but sold is sold. The new Pocket Guides released in August, and their sales have been steady. Not &#8220;lots&#8221; by any means, but OK.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">2. Read 12 books. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>One a month. Not too much of a challenge, but still something I have to be disciplined about since I don&#8217;t have too much free time. I didn&#8217;t make a list of all the books I ready this year, but I&#8217;m quite sure they totaled more than a dozen. Some notables include the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.jasonboyett.com\/2009\/03\/confessions-i-read-and-enjoyed-twilight.html\"><span style=\"font-style: italic\">Twilight <\/span><\/a>series (4 books!); <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0786838655?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jasoboye-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0786838655\"><span style=\"font-style: italic\">The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson &amp; the Olympians, Book 1)<\/span><\/a>; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0316017922?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jasoboye-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0316017922\"><span style=\"font-style: italic\">Outliers<\/span><\/a>; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0865477221?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jasoboye-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0865477221\"><span style=\"font-style: italic\">The Outlaw Sea;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0061173932?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jasoboye-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0061173932\"><span style=\"font-style: italic\">Jesus, Interrupted<\/span><\/a>; another book whose title slips my mind but was a scholarly look at the Bigfoot legend (I&#8217;m such a nerd), and a few more.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and since we&#8217;re on the subject? In most cases, when I link to a book on Amazon, I get a few cents if you follow that link and end up making a purchase. I&#8217;m telling you this in my first blog post of the year so the FCC doesn&#8217;t ship me off to Siberia or something.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">3. Exercise at least four times a week. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Done. I wasn&#8217;t overzealous about it or anything &#8212; there certainly were some weeks where I didn&#8217;t get three full exercise sessions in &#8212; but I bet if you averaged it I came pretty close. A good balance of strength training, running, biking, swimming, with a little CrossFit stuff thrown in for variety.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">4. Participate in three sprint triathlons. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Done. <span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Amarillo Chick-Fil-A Sprint<\/span> (June 20, and which ended up being a bikeless duathlon thanks to the rain), <span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Amarillo Town Club Sprint <\/span>(July 18, in which my whole family competed in some fashion), and the big <span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Tri to Make a Difference<\/span> (Sept. 12, in which a lot of you very <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.jasonboyett.com\/2009\/09\/2009-tri-to-make-difference.html\">graciously sponsored me)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">5. Participate in another single-category race\/competition. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Did two of these. One was a 5k leg in a 15k relay race in June. The other was a one-hour swim competition in February.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">6. Waste less. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sort of hard to quantify this one, but I did spend the year more cognizant of the amount of stuff I was using, from coffee cups to paper. I got set up with vermicomposting (composting with worms!) which was going well until most of my worms died in June. Total wormpocalypse. I&#8217;ve built the colony back up, though, and they&#8217;re currently enjoying my coffee grounds and table scraps.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">7. Finish four paintings.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Not so good. I only did one painting this year, and I didn&#8217;t start it until December. Boo!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">8. Limber up enough to be able to touch my toes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Fail. I spent a couple of months doing a daily stretching routine that was supposed to help me touch my toes, but I still could never do it. I must have some kind of super-tight ligament running through my body that keeps me from jack-knifing.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">9. Run a mile in less than 6:15. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Nope. Didn&#8217;t do this one either. Best time I got for a mile was 6:40, though admittedly I only timed myself on the local track 3 or 4 times. Once I started the triathlon training, this wasn&#8217;t a priority. Someday, though.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">10. Get a few more book-related speaking engagements. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>The speaking thing stayed pretty quiet this year, and I didn&#8217;t pursue it much. With <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0310289491?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jasoboye-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0310289491\"><span style=\"font-style: italic\">O Me of Little Faith<\/span><\/a> coming out in April, though &#8212; it&#8217;s a much more speaking-friendly book, if that makes sense &#8212; I&#8217;m going to be more intentional about this.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>6 out of 10. Not a great percentage, but I&#8217;m satisfied with it. I aimed high.<span style=\"font-weight: bold\"><br \/><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">What about you? <\/span>Tomorrow I&#8217;ll post my resolutions for 2010. Until then, what personal goals did you accomplish in 2009? Did any of you meet all your resolutions? A lot of people tend to go with broad resolutions like &#8220;Exercise more,&#8221; whereas mine get pretty specific Does anyone else do this? Do you think annual resolutions are stupid? Please share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy New Year! After a nice two-week break from pixels &#8212; other than those occurring in Nintendo Wii and DS games &#8212; I&#8217;m back and raring to go. Which leads to my first resolution of 2010: Never again describe myself as &#8220;raring&#8221; to do anything. Before I post my resolutions for the coming year, I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goals","category-lists"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>2009 Resolution Check-Up - O Me of Little Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/01\/2009-resolution-check-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2009 Resolution Check-Up - O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Happy New Year! After a nice two-week break from pixels &#8212; other than those occurring in Nintendo Wii and DS games &#8212; I&#8217;m back and raring to go. Which leads to my first resolution of 2010: Never again describe myself as &#8220;raring&#8221; to do anything. Before I post my resolutions for the coming year, I&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/01\/2009-resolution-check-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-01-04T06:05:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_HXZOhc9ASlo\/SWOV7_M6tKI\/AAAAAAAAAOU\/lAamHioq_Kk\/s200\/2009.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jason Boyett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"2009 Resolution Check-Up - O Me of Little Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/01\/2009-resolution-check-up.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"2009 Resolution Check-Up - O Me of Little Faith","og_description":"Happy New Year! After a nice two-week break from pixels &#8212; other than those occurring in Nintendo Wii and DS games &#8212; I&#8217;m back and raring to go. Which leads to my first resolution of 2010: Never again describe myself as &#8220;raring&#8221; to do anything. 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