Resolutions For 2011

I’m not normally one to moan, I usually keep what I’m thinking to myself, but to say I’m glad to see the back of 2010 is a massive understatement. This time last year I blogged about my plans for the year ahead but unfortunately things don’t always turn out the way you intended. I’m not going to bore you with the whys, we’ve all been there, I’m just really looking forward to the new year.

Thankfully, 2011 is already looking better than the previous year, I’ve got a new job — which I’ll be starting at the end of January — and although it’ll be a very sad day when I leave my current workplace, I feel that a new job will give my life the kick start it so badly needs. I’ve also got a few conferences lined up; New Adventures, Design It Build It and Build.

Anyway, I digress. The basic idea with my resolutions posts, if you’ve not read them before, is that I seperate all the goals I set out for myself and see whether I met them or not. The ones I’ve accomplished get added to the goals achieved section and all of the goals I have failed to meet get carried over and added to my new list of goals for the coming year.

Goals achieved

Speak at an event

This was nothing spectacular but I like to try and talk once a year and pass on a bit of the knowledge that I have acquired. This year I attended a small evening class and gave a basic introduction into the big bad world of web design. The talks timeframe was fairly short, so I only got to rattle through the basics like <H1>Hello World</H1> and such like.

Stay in a job

At the turn of the year we were entering the second year of the recession and just like the year that had past I set myself the task of merely staying in employment, a year on and I’m very glad to say that I didn’t fall victim to the financial climate. Getting another job, within this economic climate must also be seen as a plus point. However, I’ll once again be carrying this goal into the forthcoming year.

Project 52

I decided to take part in Project 52. I’ll write up my full recap on that in the new year.

Personal Projects

This year I only created one personal project of note — Tweet in the Park. The website was featured in the Sun and received a huge amount of traffic during the festival season.

Goals carried over

Learn jQuery

It seems that I have been carrying this one over every year since I started my resolution series. The truth is I always go out all guns blazing and inevitably give up after a few weeks. This year, for various reasons, I’ll need to make sure that I don’t throw it on the scrap-heap as this is something which I’ll be needing for my new job.

Move Out

Yep, this one has been carried over again but it definitely won’t be on this list next year. Roll on March/April.

Goals for 2011

Speak at an event

As always, I like to try and speak at an event of some kind and this year I would like to step up my level of speaking gigs next year, not that there was anything wrong with the previous audiences I’ve spoken to, I’d just like to speak to a larger and more knowledgeable audience.

Stay in a job

As I touched on previously this is going to be really important, more so than the previous two. I won’t be able to do anything I’ve planned for if I end up out of work. I’ll need everyone to keep their fingers crossed for me.

Personal Projects

As I mentioned earlier, Tweet in the park is probably my most successful personal project to date. If I can come up with another one half as good as that for next year then I’ll be pretty happy with myself. Personal projects aren’t at the forefront of my plans for next year, I’ve got much more important things to focus on but I believe that it’s always important to keep your brain active and sometimes personal projects can help reinvigorate ideas for other projects which may have ground to a halt.

I think that’s about it for my resolutions post this year. I don’t really want to lay down a lot of targets this year because I don’t want to be in the same position twelve months from now wondering why it went so wrong and why I didn’t get to meet any of the targets I set myself. Here’s to 2011! See you all in the New Year.