I’ve always been more one for birthday resolutions than New Year’s resolutions — one’s personal new year being more significant than some arbitrarily designated date on the calendar — but I seem to be in a self-improvement cycle, or at least a wanna-be self-improvement cycle. Here goes, anyway.
Item 1: Figure out the techie bits of WordPress and not glaze over while trying to read the documentation. For a while there, I thought I was the business, fairly up on the procedures of sticking bits into your sidebar and linking within posts without even having to use the Quicktags buttons. I have been disabused of that notion, and now realize just how much I really have to learn. There’s just so much out there to learn that I can’t possibly learn it all, but I vow to give it my best shot. Over time, at least.
Item 2: Be more socially active on Flickr. I tend toward being a hermit, both online and IRL. Sure, I post pictures of whatever I’ve scraped together for a meal, but it still unnerves me no end to add those photos to a group. Also, when I find someone whose photos I like, I tend to quietly RSS-feed ‘em rather than adding them to my Flickr contacts — because they’ll be notified if I do the latter, and that is just too scary. By nature, I am a lurker/blogstalker, I suppose. The thing is, what am I scared of? That someone will not “contact” me in return? So what? That someone will block me? Highly unlikely to happen unless I’m a nuisance. So, I intend to get more involved in Flickr groups, and actually comment more on pics I think are technically or culinarily interesting. It won’t kill me. (Just scare the bejeebers out of me, but oh well. I’ll get over it.)
Item 3: Support, to the extent I can, local businesses, farmers, musicians, and others who help keep our cities vital and vibrant and unique. As previously mentioned, I want to support local businesses more — not because I want to punish chains that happen to behave in a reasonably ethical manner (while being bang alongside punishing chains that behave outrageously and without consideration for their employees, the environment, etc.), but because I want to try to help preserve something of the local flavor. Everywhere you go, there’s a Starbucks, a McDonald’s, a KFC, even a Krispy Kreme. To a certain extent, that can be reassuring — a familiar port in a storm — but it’s primarily depressing. I haven’t been doing too badly since my initial resolution; it’s just a matter of keeping it up and not visiting the one-stop shop instead of making a stop here for the cereal I like and a stop there for the best selection of organic veg.
Those are, of course, in addition to the usual “get organized, lose weight, save more money, read more classic literature, and generally become more amazingly fabulous with each passing day” resolutions that I make several times a year. Somehow, despite my best intentions and efforts, I don’t seem to quite manage any of that, but one must keep trying.
