2024: Goals?

With only a couple months left in 2023, I figured this is a good opportunity to look forward to 2024 and figure out what I want out of the year. While I am not much of a planner and often like to be spontaneous and make plans a day or two before the thing I am making plans for, having a list of goals might help me stay focused on them. I intend to make some sort of goal tracking page to stick on this site at some point, but for now I feel like writing about some of my goals and not focusing on web development.

1: See the rest of the US owl species

This was #1 for me in 2023, and I ended up getting a puppy instead of committing to this and never putting the time in to try to find my remaining species. I actually want to make this it's own series of webpages, but for now I am just getting a few things on paper. I'm currently sitting at 14 different owl species seen, with 5 more I need to find. I think the rest of the owls I'm looking for can be found in Arizona in the spring.. I just need to commit to spending some time down there and looking. The owls I still need are: * Elf Owl * Ferruginous Pygmy * Spotted Owl * Western Screech Owl * Whiskered Screech Owl

A couple of those are going to be easy. A couple of them are going to really suck to find. I'll write more about this when I work on my webpages focused around my owl experiences.

2: Improve at capturing storms.

I love storms. I love them even more when they produce beautiful tornadoes. I dedicate much of my time and money to trying to see the most incredible storms on earth. I don't always get the best pictures of these tornadoes, and I definitely don't get the video. I'm getting better each year. I need 2024 to be my best year yet. I can't really say why, I just know I need to keep improving or I'm going to be pretty unhappy.

3: Be healthier.

While I'm not the heaviest I've ever been, I am not happy with where I am at right now. I've taken steps in the right direction to try improving this through exercising for half an hour or more nearly daily, but I am still struggling with diet. I put absolute garbage into my body, and it behaves exactly like you'd expect when you do that. Exercise and a good diet need to go together to really achieve good results. I'm steadily improving at part of that while doing virtually nothing about the other part. While I don't want to set static goals at this time, I'm going to be somewhat brave and say I want to be at or below 210lbs by the end of 2024. This is an achievable goal, and many wouldn't want to stop there. To get there I need to shed about 30 pounds over the course of a year. I'm teetering right around 245-250 right now depending on the day. This is down from my heaviest at 306. I will never get there again and I feel so much better now, but there's more to be done.

4: Continue improving at web design stuff.

I'm having fun writing this little blog. I want to keep doing it, which means I need to stay motivated to do it. There's not a whole lot else to say besides that. I want to stick with it. I have a terrible history of abandoning ideas.

There are so many more, but I think I'm satisfied with what I've written for now. This achieved exactly what I needed it to - giving my brain a little kickstart and forcing me to think about things that are always idle on my mind. Something about getting ideas down on paper helps immensely.