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The clock is ticking. In couple of hours we’ll be in 2009. But another clock is also ticking. Life’s clock. 2008 has been a year filled with tons of things for me, successes, failures, meetings, revelations, fun times and less funny moments. Even some sad moments sometimes. And I’ve learned lots of things, on all levels, and in all I have a very positive feeling about it. But I have much more positive feelings about the years to come. My task in this post, will be to write down my resolutions for 2009 and share them with the world. These resolutions can be viewed as what I’ve learned so far in my almost 27 years of existence, what I got out of them, and what I must change in my life to make it better. I aim to improve as a person, and interact better with others. In a word get closer to nirvana, eternal happiness, übersanctity, whatever you wanna name it (the sense of life I would say).

Monkeys in Beppu, Japan. cc Vlad Trifa

1. Take care of my health shall be my main priority. Indeed, as can be seen in my Amazon wishlist I tend to love food a little too much. Way too much actually. But this has a counterpart: a growing belly. I don’t have eating disorders, but I came to realize that my alimentation is far from being equilibrated, and I generally eat too much. I want to learn to eat less, but better. Especially, I will stop eating processed foods, and crappy meats. I love meat, but I’d rather eat less of it but better one. I would rather eat once a week a good chicken (such as poulet de Bresse), rather than eating cheap chicken engineered on conveyor belts. I’ve learned to enjoy the purity of natural and healthy products (by being in the countryside in Romania), and I’m done putting crappy food in me. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not gonna become a bio-freak, vegetarian, of tofu hippie, but do my best to eat the most natural things out there, and stop eating stuff not made by me (or mom of course). I’ve been cooking a lot at home and enjoy it a lot, but I definitely think I could do much better when it comes to my alimentation. I’ve been reading a lot of great books and will keep learning things about food culture. Oh and also, I’m really looking forward to do lots of sports. Like swimming or running. I’ve never run in my life, but I’m sure I could do a routine out of it. Go run a 5 km at least 3 times a week, and 8 km on sunday morning (okay I stole this idea from Monocle). Now that I got an nike+ipod no more excuses. I’ll post a widget here so that I have more incentives to run often. Finally stop drinking beer and useless things like this (this doesn’t include the Youngs double chocolate), and only drink socially alcohol I really enjoy (fine liquors as scotch, cognac, and wine). Also, no more crappy juices (coke and the shit alike that) and less sweet things. I gave up smoking in August, so I’m fairly positive I can really improve my food habits in the near future.
2. Learn to organize and prioritize things. Especially the latter. Undoubtedly, my weakest personality trait, is that I’m way too open and curious. I mean it’s pathologic how much I love new things, and how I always have tons of ideas that pop out of my head, and I start things. I have new passion daily, but never do much about them given that it’s simply not possible. I have a huge amount of motivation recently and I feel I have already done lots of good things with it, but I have lots of focus and energy leaks on useless things, that are not really good for me, and this must change. So I need to select a few topics on which I’ll focus most of my energy, and unfortunately cut my time with least significant things. Stop getting involved in side activities and projects that are not my core work & interest, unless I get paid reasonably well for not much of my time & energy. These passions are (in no particular order):
   1. Media and culture, which I consider being cinema & music & opera & news & blogs & books & theatre & museums & stuff like that. Read more literature and history books.
   2. Art history and practice (architecture, design, new media, and especially do more photography).
   3. Blogs and all other things related to my work & PhD topics (conferences & papers & basically doing my work). This includes a big project that will be launched soon.
   4. Japanese sword practice & study, and go back to practicing martial arts and sports.
   5. Food culture, history, politics, gardening.
3. Learn, read, meet. The thing that I always enjoy the most is doing and learning new things. And even more I enjoy meeting new people all the time! I feel I really have lots of things I must improve when it comes to networking, such as keeping in touch and pinging all my friends and past colleagues. This is basically focus and improve everything related to my career.
4. Blog. REALLY blog. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, and I really notice that it can help me realize the two previous points. This is one of the things I will do in 2009. I wrote here hundreds of times that I will do it, and now I feel I really must and want to do it. Very soon, with a friend we’ll be launching a big blog (will be announced soon). I’ll blog a lot about my phd work, so I’m very positive that I’ll spend lots of good times blogging this year.
5. Respect myself and others more. I sometimes don’t finish things as good as I shall. I am aware that it is a weak point of mine, and even though I consider myself trustable usually, sometimes I fail to deliver on my promises sufficiently, especially when it comes to time. I often say: I’ll do that for friday, when it fact I get it done for monday. Even though this happens only for time-insensitive tasks (with soft deadlines), I should do much better on this point and really make sure that from now on, I’ll always deliver everything I promise myself and to others, even if it’s not important. More generally work on my image and how people perceive me, and how this relates to who I am. This implies to stop dressing like a hippie. Yeah, I’m not a teenager anymore, so I need to dress and appear as a real man should, and stop being a bum.
6. Obtain boat driving license. And car too. I might need that at some point. Especially the boat one. Will do both this summer.
7. Stop reacting without thinking. I really need to learn to control my impulsions, as sometimes I react too emotively… and might regret it later. Must be due to the fact that I don’t do enough sport. And yoga. This is something I really need to change, and I know that going back to martial arts will help me significantly improve this area of my life.
8. Spend more time with people I like and spend more time doing things I really enjoy. Learn to deal & collaborate more harmoniously with people I have lots of things to learn from. Stop spending time with übernegative people stop being in environments that drag me down and cut my motivation. Dead simple.
9. Learn to become much more financially aware. I live within my means, but I am also excellent at spending money without leaving much aside for the winter. I really need to stop spending money randomly for things I don’t really need. Also, I need to set up plans to make a little extra money, put it aside or invest it for my future.
10. Be happier, nicer to people, and learn to enjoy all the good moments life has to offer. You know, simply enjoy a walk in a forest with my camera and my dog. Well I don’t have a dog, but I have a camera. Keep collecting good jokes about French people, and write a book about my collection of jokes.

That’s it for a start. I feel good writing this down, and see it as a milestone in my life. I wrote it down and made it public with the hope that by having the world as a witness, I’ll really do everything I wrote here (and do what I say I want to do, c.f. point 5).