The last day of 2008 and my 29th birthday mark a unique, and special year. I have had some really good times, some really bad times, and a whole lot of times in between. Rather than reiterate events or circumstances I thought that this year I would fill up some space with things that I have learned this year either by way of experience, reading, or second-hand. There is something to be said for a concise list, and so I have restricted my reflections to the top 4 tidbits that I would hope to carry forward.
4. Good Finances Require Planning and Delayed Gratification
This year (and the last too) marked the most dramatic shifts in my monthly salary going from development to teaching and back to development. Over the course of the year I really had some tough times financially where I had to put off doing or getting things that I really wanted. One great resource that I have actually started is the process outlined in Dave Ramsey‘s Financial Peace Revisited. It is just another method helping those like me with debt of making a plan to get out of debt. Additionally, I have tried to take more charge of my accounts and tracking my expenses by using the great tools and community at Wesabe.com (which is just one such site out of many that do a fantastic job with financial tracking).
My goal for the coming year is bold, given the current state of global financial systems, but I would like to set the goal to reduce my ‘bad’ debt (pretty much every debt except school loans) by 85-90% over the course of the next 12 months. This means I need to have a budget, and stick to it. I have tried and failed numerous times to sustain a budget, but I know that the common points of failure in doing so have come from bad expenses. Reducing the amount spent on food is probably the single most important thing that I can do to improve my spending goals. Given the current state of my life there has been a need to eat out more often, and cook at home less, and this has to be done with more concern for money than it has in the past. Additionally, there is no replacement for a well planned meal when it comes to efficient use of money (given the availability of leftovers to continue feeding me for more meals).
Finally, I have resolved to make sure that I have the ability to accommodate for any dramatic life-changes that might come my way. The most important thing is being flexible financially and to not let my life be driven by my finances. An abundance of money is just as bad as a lack of it if you are not in control of it and instead let it control you.
3. Good Relationships Require Planning and Communication
I haven’t been the best, but at the very least I haven’t been the worst at sustaining good relationships with those I love, and those with whom I am merely acquainted. I have learned some tough lessons this year about how bad I can get at staying in touch with those I truly care about. I have really appreciated the abundant crop of social networking websites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and even Classmates) for making the process of ‘keeping up’ with what is going on in the lives of others a little more automated.
The downside to having this ease of access to friends’ and family’s information is likely that I have actually stopped taking an honest interest in the people and more interest in the information. I have a tendency to be an information hound, and as the year comes to a close I am realizing that it is not my care or concern for others that draws me to the social networking sites, but really just a need-to-know attitude about gathering all the information I can. I am no longer surprised when someone seems taken aback that I am aware of their comings and goings when I haven’t spoken with them in ages. Others likely don’t have this exact problem, but obviously as a closet Luddite I have to see the human cost of my particular misuse of these information-rich tools.
Once again I come to a place I have been many times before, which is that I need to communicate better with those I care about. There are still spots in my life that are not well organized, and open lines of communication are definitely something that I always seem to lack any amount of discipline in keeping in order. One option I have is a free Highrise account, which is really oriented toward business communication, but I could see using it as a means of staying in touch and updated on my contacts and their information.
2. The solution for irresponsibility is taking responsibility
There have been a number of things that have happened in my life, including the last year, where I have found myself to be irresponsible with the expectations or requirements for which I was responsible. Over the course of time I have tried many different ways to make up for or at the very least move past my instances of irresponsibility. Taking a look at the bulk of what I would call ‘successful’ solutions has revealed that the best thing to do in the face of your own irresponsibility is to accept the responsibility anew, and do the right thing.
Many times in the past I have made the wrong decision in dealing with my own lack of judgment or inability to act, and ended up doing one of the following: getting defensive or disregarding any responsibility.
Getting defensive and more specifically trying to justify myself is an incorrect response when ignorance or different perception causes me to be irresponsible. I very well may be correct in my assessment of my own actions and have a valid case for why my performance was sub-par, but in the end that does not some how make things right.
Disregarding my responsibility, which usually boils down to laziness or indecision, is also an incorrect response because it is a blatant lie. I, unfortunately, have been guilty of this on many occasions.
In the end, the best choice for dealing with my own irresponsibility is to take the responsibility and do better. As an example, say that I was working on a project at work where the details of the project were not gathered by me. When it comes time to release the program, and the first person to try it out finds a problem with missing functionality I could easily disregard my responsibility by shifting the blame to the person that gathered the requirements. The better solution, and seemingly the ‘right’ one, is actually to acknowledge that I should have dug deeper and made sure that all the requirements were recorded and met…and then do so.
This year, I hope to show that I have learned to accept responsibility when I find myself to have been irresponsible. I can guarantee that I won’t be perfect in this, but I want to do better at not always trying to defend myself when I am very likely in the wrong.
1. Love Really Is: Patient, Kind, etc.
I have had time to think about people that I know, and I have felt rather conflicted with the fact that given a Biblical perspective (taken straight from 1 Corinthians 13) on love that I don’t do very well at loving people. The list of people that I owe an apology to for not loving them seems to be longer than I care to admit.
So, in the coming year I would like to be more patient, more kind, less jealous, less boastful, less arrogant, act more appropriately, be more unselfish, less easily provoked, stop keeping score with people, mourn bad behavior, celebrate truth, put up with more, believe more, hope for more, endure more. I think these things will lead to a more loving life. This does not mean I will have to ‘like’ people or their actions, attitudes, or words, but it does mean that despite all my other shortcomings I will have at the very least done more of the right thing.