New Year's Resolutions?

I'm a little ambivalent about doing any New Year's resolutions this year, largely because I find it difficult to predict my progress towards concrete goals. This may, in fact, be my problem: my goals are too abstract for me to make reasonable progress towards accomplishing them.

Let's take an example of one of my goals: find a better job. The difficulty comes in defining what, precisely, constitutes a "better" job. One that's in a better location? One that pays more? One that offers better opportunities for advancement? Ideally, I'd like to get all of those things, but often it's necessary to settle for just one of those qualities . . . it may even be necessary to take a cut in one of the other areas.

So, it's often difficult for me to decide what opportunities to pursue, and even then, they tend not to pan out. I didn't do such a good job of accomplishing my resolutions for last year, largely because Something Came Up. I think this possibly qualifies as the Lamest Excuse Ever.

So, this year, I've decided to take a slightly different approach. My overall goals are the same (I'm in pretty much the same position I was last year), but I'm going to try altering my approach to them. So, for instance, instead of resolving to lose a specific amount of weight, I'm going to try NutriSystem for a month and monitor my weight. If I lose weight, I'm going to focus on keeping at it for another month, and so on.

Likewise with finding a better job: I'm going to look at the want ads and apply for anything that looks good this week. Then, next week, I'll do it again. Sooner or later I'm bound to find something.