New Year's Resolutions for 2012

Revelers cheer behind police barricades In Times Square in New York on December 31, 2011.

YEAR OF 2012

Rich Geib's 2012 New Year's Resolutions!

What should I do? Where to go? How to live?

"Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed."
Cavett Robert

  • Do not mistake the forest for the trees!

    As the significant stress and pains of having younger children begin to recede, don't let this miasma of general stress and overwhelmedness obscure the significant specific joys of moment-to-moment happiness of father-daughter interactions. It will go quickly, never to return.

  • Undivided time and attention.

    Julia and Elizabeth Anne have never heard me say, "I can't! I have to grade papers!" Keep it that way: family first. Stay present ("mindful") of children and wife, Maria.

  • No more caffeine!

    Long overdue.

  • Transition year

    Get Julia comfortably into kindergarden and Elizabeth Anne into preschool.

  • PRC day care

    Elizabeth Anne needs to make her peace in being under the control of adults other than just her parents.

  • Continue significant gains in physical conditioning, without getting injured.

    In the last four months it seems as if you are just one step away from an injury, and you are not twenty years old anymore; so build patiently on last year's gains, while exercising as smart as you do hard. See the long view. Allow your body enough time for recovery, stretch always, and build, build, build! Listen to your body as you stress it. Listen! And then consolidate and move forward.

  • Get feet back under oneself!
    • Re-emerge from financially devastating years of ginormous child care costs.
  • Re-finance house
    • A no-brainer financially with these interest rates.
  • Make a will and advanced directive for medical care
    • You have the software and attempted to do this last year, but the very first question ("Do you wish to be buried? Or cremated?") nonplussed me to the point where I went no further. Finish the whole thing.
  • Eat smarter
    • With just a wee bit of better planning and a jot of research and thought, you could less often resort to eating meals you have already eaten far too often. And bring some of those meals to school for lunch! Involve Maria.

    Make some kind of dent in the "to read" book pile --

    Here is the lineup at this time:

    • "Beloved" by Toni Morrison
    • "Feel-Bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling" by Alfie Kohn
    • "Colonel Roosevelt" by Edmund Roosevelt
    • "Talking Points" by George W. Bush
    • "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling
    • "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte
    • "How to Tutor Your Own Child" by Marina Koestler Ruben
    • "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson
    • "The Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey
    • "Think to Win" by Allen Fox
    • "Hardcourt Confidential" byu Patrick McEnrore

      Make some kind of dent in the Netflix queue --

    • "Moneyball"
    • "Max Manus"
    • "The Debt"
    • "Young Adult"
    • "Melancholia"
    • "Drive"
    • " Martha Marcy May Marlene"
    • "Margin Call"
    • "The Ideas of March"
    • "Descendants"
    • "The Help"
    • "Rampart"
    • "My Perestroika"
    • "Like Crazy"

PAST YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS:

Year of 2012

Year of 2011

Year of 2010

Year of 2009

Year of 2008

Year of 2007

Year of 2006

Year of 2001

Year of 2000

Year of 1999

Year of 1996

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