Goals for 2024

As I write this, we’re already a few days into 2024. I hope everyone had a happy, festive, and safe holiday — whatever holiday you celebrate — as well as an equally festive New Year’s celebration. For me, personally, New Year’s Eve was a quiet evening in my living room along with my wife, and New Year’s Day was spent attending a party at a friend’s house. Nothing big or exciting, just fairly low-key. The older I get, the more low-key celebrations tend to get, and this year was no different.

So how many of you have already broken your resolutions for 2024? I wrote a while back that we should make goals, not resolutions. With that, here are a few things that I hope to achieve in 2024.

Get more involved with my organizations

Why get involved with organizations? There are several reasons. For one thing, getting involved with groups is networking. They are opportunities to connect with people who have similar interests to me. They are opportunities for you to grow professionally. They offer programs, classes, and resources for you to tap if you want to expand your knowledge and skill sets. They are opportunities for you to get yourself out there and exposed, professionally. When you are involved with an organization, you build your own brand and reputation, assumedly one that grows your presence within a field in which you want to be involved. They are also opportunities to interact socially; my circles of friends have expanded tremendously as I’ve been involved with organizations.

I have been very active with PASS-related groups, especially my SQL user group, SQL Saturday, and PASS Data Community Summit, for several years. That hasn’t changed, and although I don’t use SQL Server in my job like I used to, I am still very much involved with these groups. Last year, I made it a point to get more involved with another group in which I’m closely associated, namely STC. I had the privilege of being selected to STC Summit last year, and I made it a point to get involved with STC activities whenever my schedule allowed it. I’m hoping to get selected for Summit again this year, but that remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I still intend to get more involved with STC this year. One thing I did when I renewed my membership this year was to sign up for a couple of regional special interest groups (SIGs): New York Metro and Central New York. (There used to be a regional SIG local to me when I first joined many moons ago, but unfortunately, that SIG is now defunct, so I joined ones that were geographically close to me.)

I’ve also been getting more involved with my fraternity. I’ve done a few things with my home chapter, and I’ve met many fraternity brothers in different places, but these interactions have always been informal. I’ve rarely, if ever, represented my fraternity in an “official” sense. Several years ago, I became a Life Member, which makes me eligible to attend various events, such as conferences and conventions, in an official capacity. This year, Northeast District Convention is being held in Poughkeepsie, NY, less than a couple of hours from my home and very easy for me to get to. I’m not yet sure what I’ll do with this event, but I’m going to look more into it and see how feasible it is for my schedule.

I was not selected to speak at WE Local this year. I had been selected to speak at the Northeast regional conferences for two straight years, but unfortunately, I couldn’t make it three straight. Because of my past involvement with this group, I automatically became a member. I’m not sure whether or not I will continue my membership; although I completely support what they do, I don’t feel a close association to SWE (maybe it’s because I am neither a woman nor an engineer). If they extend my complimentary membership, I will be happy to renew. I might even consider it if the dues are something reasonable. We’ll see what happens.

Get moving again

I was active in CrossFit for several years, but I let my membership lapse a couple of years ago. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to continue; on the contrary, I enjoyed CrossFit, and I absolutely wanted to keep doing it. But the reason why I slacked off can be summed up in a single word: age. For the past few years, I’ve been having issues with my joints, particularly in my knees and ankles; in fact, I’ve been dealing with arthritic knees for several years. They prevent me from performing certain activities — going up and down stairs and getting in and out of chairs are often issues for me — and are often very painful. It is not unusual for me to take stairs only one step at a time. I often tell people behind me to go ahead because I don’t want to slow them down. I actually love doing CrossFit, and I still encourage those who can handle it to go do it, but my body is increasingly telling me that I need to back off.

That said, I haven’t been very physically active lately, and that’s something I need to address. I’ll occasionally take walks to get lunch (there’s a shopping plaza — that includes restaurants — within easy walking distance of my office), but I realize that I need to get much more involved than that. There are a few things I’m considering. For one thing, through my job — which is associated with a university — I have access to the school’s on-campus gym. That’s a perk I’d like to take advantage of; my main stumbling block is that parking on-campus (my office is actually off-campus) is not free. I’m also considering resurrecting my Couch to 5K program that I’d started doing during the pandemic. Ironically, I stopped doing that for the same reason that I’ve stopped doing CrossFit; I started dealing with physical issues. However, walking on flat ground isn’t as stressful on my leg joints as jumping or stepping (which there’s a lot of in CrossFit) is.

I’m considering my options and am thinking of ways to get more active this year.

Get more into my music

Those of you who know me well know that I’ve been an active musician since childhood. Some of you may or may not know that I’m a songwriter, as well as a musician. I was a lot more active with my original music years ago, but the musicians that I worked with pretty much broke up (long story — I won’t get into it now) and went their separate ways. Alas, life happens. Many years have passed since I was seriously active with working on originals, but that’s something I want to change this year. The hard part has been finding other musicians — particularly singers — who are of the same mind. This is not the first time I’ve tried to resurrect my songwriting exploits in recent years, but it hasn’t borne much fruit. Hopefully that’ll change this year.

My songwriting isn’t the only musical endeavor that I’d like to pursue this year. I’ve been thinking about getting more into it as a side hustle. I used to be more active as a wedding pianist; that’s something I’ve been thinking about resurrecting this year. I’ve also been very active with a cover band that I’m in. They’re scheduling more gigs for this year, so I’ll be busy performing with them. We also recently cleared space in my own basement to utilize as a rehearsal space, so I’m looking forward to utilizing that as well.

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These are a few things that I hope to accomplish in 2024. Hopefully, they’ll come to fruition, but we’ll see how it goes.

What are your goals?