2016 Goals

Here are the goals I set out to accomplish last summer:

1. Be debt free by summer 2016.  This isn’t happening due to the car.
2. Get back into shape (~170 pounds!). I can’t say ‘DONE’ here- I’m not just in shape right now, I’m actually in the best shape of my life thanks to the triathlon lifestyle. But getting down around 170 is a work in progress… I was 211 pounds this past summer and I’m 185 right now.
3. Complete the Abu Dhabi triathlon. DONE
4. Present at a TESOL conference. DONE – actually presented at two conferences!
5. Brush up on my French (Duolingo 3x per week) Started well here but dropped after two months.
6. Brush up on Korean (finish at least one of my books). DONE – did a course offered locally and finished its book.
7. Learn a new Language (complete a level of Rosetta Stone and/or one textbook). In Progress – been taking an Arabic course for the last two months.
8. Cook at least once a month for friends. DONE
9. Develop and expand the blog (add a cooking section and an EFL section). This is far away from happening.

While I didn’t do everything I set out to accomplish, I did make progress on everything but number nine. Here’s the plan for the year ahead:

1. Be debt-free by… Aug 2018! 
That’s a long ways off but the car payments follow a schedule so this is the new date. It may seem a ways out but this follows the car.
2. Do a half-ironman triathlon.  I was originally going to go to Iceland for this but I was recently accepted to work at the university over the summer so I picked a triathlon that is happening in Almere (Netherlands) during the September Eid break.  The triathlon happens really early in the break so once I finish the race I will go to Amsterdam to enjoy the remainder of my break!
3. Cook something at least once a month for friends. This worked out well enough last year so I figure it’s good to keep it up.  I attempted eggs Florentine this past month (poached eggs on spinach and salmon). It came out ok but I need to perfect my the poached eggs.
4. Continue with Arabic by finishing the university’s level 3 & 4 courses. This will happen after the summer.  I’ve done the first two levels so far but I’m busy these days as our semester is winding down so I’m taking a break from it over the summer.
5. Present on technology in language education at a TESOL Conference. Working on my proposal now for Korea in October 2016.
6. Get Published! Time to see if I can get my name into the academic journals on teacher.
7. Make a blog entry at least once a month. I’ve decided to just maintain the blog this year as opposed to expanding it.  
8. Learn about website design – take a course.  Before I attempt to do anything ambitious with this blog I’ll need to learn more about coding and how to customize a site.
9. Keep the weight off and become healthier – keep exercising and educate myself on productivity and self-improvement. .  I wrote in a blog entry a while  back about what it means to be ‘healthy’.  Basically health and being healthy for me has come to encompass the physical, emotional, and spiritual. I have been attending to each of these and intend to continue to do so.  I’ve got books and audio books on productivity and self-improvement.  I intend to read/listen to each of them at least twice and take action on the things that speak to me on a philosophical level.

That’s the manifesto for 2016.