January 1, 2009

Jacob says hi.

Happy New Year!

I don't have the holidays precisely ordered by personal preference, however if I did, the New Year's Eve, New Year's Day sequence would likely rank as one of the top two favorites. Right now I would say it would rank at the top but that will probably change when the Fourth of July roles around and I get to feed the pyromanic part of my personality. The thing I love about New Years Day is that the day starts a fresh page. The day provides a great reckoning point from which to evaluate personal progress and direction. Missteps and misdeeds of the previous year can be washed away into thoughts of possible improvement in the next year whereas accomplishments of the previous year can be relished.

As far back as I can remember every new year I get really excited about writing goals for the new year. For the last few years I have included in those goals a goal to keep my written goals such that I will be able to evaluate them on New Year's Day the next year. So far every year I have managed to loose my written goals somewhere through the course of the year. This year in particular I am sure I wrote goals in 2008 but I do not have any idea where I put them. I find myself very curious of how well I did on my goals. I am sure I flubbed some that I thought were must wins. Most potently the thing that comes to mind is I do not have a game on the market yet. I am also not running more than 4 miles at a time. With that said I am still free of my cube cage, still getting great time with my family, making great progress on what I believe will become a great game and I am starting 2009 running farther and with a lower body fat percentage than I started 2008. So even though I am frustrated with myself for not keeping track of my goals I am sure that even if I didn't reach any of them I am heading the right direction on all of them.

Perfectionism and idealism are enemies to my personal happiness. It is a source of great displeasure and discomfort as I look at what I perceive to be a possible reality for myself and I take a measure of myself against that unattainable picture of perfection. Even though I know that it is toxic I am afraid to let go of my idealism. I hold the belief that if I just want something badly enough and just torture myself long enough I will be able to attain it. I also hold the fear that if I take my eyes off the prize of perfection I will have my energy disappeared into meaninglessness (is a person allowed two suffixes on an english word? Oh well, if not I'll take this one as a bogey and move on). My mental model of the nature of God has been very strongly challenged over the last couple of years such that at this point I honestly can't say I have a fully reconciled view of his nature. What ever God's nature I do view life as an extremely wonderful and valuable gift. I can't think of any horror greater than to stand before God following the consumption of this gift to find that I had squandered the gift. It is obvious to me that God does not want us perfect right now. If he did he made some gross design errors on knees, backs and hormones. Dealing with imperfection fits into the human experience somehow, it just doesn't feel comfortable. Any mistake or missed opportunity can feel like such a waste.

Thinking along those lines the way I am going to approach my goals in 2009 is I am going to start with my unformed wishes of things that I would like to have happen in 2009 and my lying mind tells me should happen in 2009. From those I will break them down into things that I do actually think are responsible for which to hold myself accountable. Hopefully by putting my goals on the blog I will also know where to find them on New Years Day 2010 when I find myself wondering where I wrote down last years goals. Also by sharing my goals with others my hope is that if any of my friends find me wildly off course, drunk in an alley somewhere, they will at least be able to help me get staggering back in the direction I was originally headed.

Dan's thoughts and wishes for 2009 (unordered).

• Learn conversational Spanish.


• Learn all of the constellations names and be able to consistently find the visible planets.


• Get the mindjump website implemented to the architecture I envisioned in 2008.


• Run a marathon without walking.


• Get a 5K time under 20 minutes.


• Slam dunk a basketball at a ten foot goal with two hands without a running start.


• Get a national distribution of the Spelling Castle game with over 1 million copies sold.


• Maintain or improve my quality of married and family life.


• Watch a space shuttle launch in Florida.


• Donate a significant amount of money to combat the problem of world hunger.


• Reach true financial freedom such that all of my and my family's basic needs can be met without action from me.


• Get my body fat down in the 12-15% range.


• Become free of neck pain.


• Increase my spirituality.


• Be happy


• Refine definition of my life's purpose.


• Learn to identify most common rocks, birds, plants and minerals.


• Climb Mt. Rainier or do 100 miles on the Appalachian trail depending on whether I am on the west or east coast of the country.


• Write the Chicken vs. Ducks math baseball game.


• Update the blog every week.


• Get the family hiking and climbing more.


• Get my chess game in the 1600-1800 level.


• Only eat foods produced in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.


• Only eat organically produced meat and dairy products.


• Avoid products which are developed through sweat shop labor.


• Help the children get ahead in their school work.


• Help the children solidify a positive self concept.


• Let everyone in the family know how much I love them.


• Find life's perfect balance of work, family, church and play.


• Find the perfect balance of eating healthy but still getting ice cream, chili cheese dogs and root beer as often as possible.

Now goals Dan intends to evaluate himself upon in 2010 (also unordered)

• Complete training programs for and race in a 5K race and a 10K race.


• Establish a monthly income above $2700 while working about 30 hours per week remotely.


• Make one visit to Mexico in 2010.


• Learn to locate the Andromeda galaxy on a clear night.


• Learn to identify 10 constellations which I currently can not.


• Learn how to find the planets which are viable without a telescope or binoculars.


• Finish the Spelling Castle game and get it visible in the market with sales in excess of 1000 copies. (The game isn't financially viable at this point but it will mean that I have at least sold it to someone not directly related to me).


• Get the kids to at least one major museum or educational site such as the Monterey Aquarium or the Lebrea Tar Pits.


• Direct 2% of my income toward combating world hunger. (I really hope this does become a significant amount of money).


• Have one month in this year preferably an early one in which I do 30 sit ups and 30 push ups every day.


• Maintain or improve my current body composition. (This will be tough to measure because I don't know my current weight or body fat percentage, but if my church pants don't fit next January I put this one in the toilet)


• Do an outing with each of my four oldest children at least once a month.


• Write updates in the blog at least once a month, with at least 20 updates through out the year.


• Give an accounting of the goals in early January of 2010.

I am excited. It is a lot easier to have good intentions of getting goals written down than it is to get them written down. I feel like I have made a great step forward. I also think I have good chance of actually being able to find my listed goals next year. If I do hit all of my goals I will still not be sure I made the best possible use of the year. I will at least get some satisfaction of feeling like I am going the right way.

New Years Eve Party

For the first time this year we let our kids stay up to welcome in the new year. We didn't expect them to stay up, Jacob was out early, but David lasted until 11:30PM and the rest were up all the way until mid night. Lexie made popcorn (thanks to my little brother David), cookies and something with sugar, oatmeal, chocolate and caramel. We watched the movies "That Darn Cat", "Scoobie Doo Pirates Ahoy", and "Chicken Run". We heard a noise that sounded like a bomb at midnight. I don't know what it was. I had been joking about exploding a propane tank to welcome in the new year. I wonder if someone actually did.

General Family Stuff

We had fun with a paper chess set I printed off the computer.

I was able to get out with Dallin, David and Tyrell on father son hikes. Dallin and I had fun looking for a geo cache but we didn't find it. The GPS led us to a small cave that had a lot of bat guano in the entrance which I didn't dare enter without a flash light. I am not a fan of close encounters with bats. We were pleased to find what I belief are genuine petryglyphs. Tyrell and I made an attempt on the little mountain near our camp. We got a late start in the afternoon and found that our chosen route was too step to make good time. We settled for a couple of small foothills and finding a geo cache. I would still like to make it to the top of the mountain, but we are going to need to allocate some more time to make that happen. David and I just went out for a little walk in which I let him lead. I was impressed that after getting out of sight of the trailer and turning David didn't have any trouble navigating his way back to the trailer.

David out on our walk.

Tyrell making a selection from a geo cache.

On Tuesday night we took advantage of some Mc Donalds coupons Grandma Meikle sent the kids for Christmas. I didn't miss the opportunity to tell the kids that it was convenient that Mc Donalds put their garbage food in garbage bags for you, referring to the paper sacks in which happy meals are now served. I actually like Mc Donalds fries and chicken Mc Nuggets but I find their hamburgers nauseating.

The kids enjoyed the toys from their happy meal.

Jacob didn't care for the head set, but isn't he cute!

With the new year and nice weather outside we started the day with some spring cleaning. The project turned out to be a little bigger than we anticipated but it was nice to get things organized under the couch.

The kids helped with the organizing.

Natalyn found a tarantula.

A view of home.

 

 

Lexie's turn for just a minute. Most of all I want to make sure I write down what I thought were two of Natalyn's funniest sayings of 2008. Dan may have written them in other blog's, but I'm not sure so I'm going to write them now at the risk of repeating another blog. The first was on Halloween a lady was talking to Natalyn about Jacob and she exclaimed, "We have one baby and LOTS of baby clothes!" She loves to choose his outfits everyday and has recently been trying to dress him. Her other funny (which is really more scary than funny, but I choose to laugh): One of her favorite tapes is about a princess who learns how to be happy. One day she was complaining I wouldn't give her something so I quoted her tape, "but little princess, happiness doesn't come from things, happiness comes from within." Her answer to me was, "They didn't teach me that and I won't learn it!"

I agree with Dan about setting goals and one of my goals for this new year is to stay in touch with people better than I did last year. I'm going to start by at least making an appearance on the blog occassionaly. Since it's time to get the kids ready for bed right now I'm going to call this an appearance and say goodbye for now.