h1. new years resolutions p(meta). 31 December 2009 So this is the time that I will be writing a public new years resolution. Writing one will be good for me because it will serve as my external memory and people can hold me to it if I don't accomplish my goals. When making goals, I think it better to set much larger goals instead of saying something unclear and not concrete like I will lose more weight or I will exercise more. Those goals don't really mean anything. Running more could mean go out running twice and then never running again. Instead your goals should be something like I will run a marathon or I will obtain a six pack. So anywhere, here is my list of things that I will accomplish for 2010: * I will run a marathon * I will write a blog post once a month or at least 12 posts * I will write an ebook and put it up for sale * I will fix my sleeping problems, meaning I will be able to sleep * By the end of 2010, I will be generating at least $2k/month in passive income * I will finish reading the original version of 三國演義 aka Romance of the three kingdoms * master my text editor * learn to cook and cook at home at least 1/2 of my meals I'll explain these things in detail h2. run a marathon I've always wanted to run a marathon. I have a bunch of friends who have done it and it seems like an awesome way to stay in shape. There are many marathons that happen every year so I will just start training now and run one when I feel ready. Eventually I would like to attempt one of those crazy ultra marathons but that is really far away right now. To accomplish this is pretty simple, just go running 3 times a week and run a little further every 1/3 time. I've already ran a bunch of 10k races so I'm partially there. h2. write more blog posts I've always wanted to do more writing, but I thought I was a bad writer. I still think I am a bad writer, but you can only improve your writing by writing more. Hopefully you will all be seeing more useful content around here. I'm hoping this skill will help me later with writing some ebooks and maybe a real book later on. h2. write an ebook There are always talks on hackernews about how the parrot ebook makes tons of money. I would like to see how profitable writing an ebook can be. That will require me to find a niche idea to write about, write about it, and put it up for sale. This will be an experiment for me in learning to write better and maybe generate some income. If anyone has ideas for topics, please tell me about it. h2. fix my sleeping problems Out of the whole list, this is the hardest problem for me to solve. Since I was a young boy, I've had chronic sleeping problems. Almost everyday I have bad headaches from not getting enough sleep, the black cirles under my eyes are the war scares of having dealt with this for so long. This effects everything I do such as my memory, my work, health, etc. When I go to sleep, I toss and turn for hours, sometimes all night. If I don't want to deal with staying up all night, then I take sleeping pills (often). When I wake, my mind is literally moving at full speed thinking about work and programming. I don't know how that is possible. During the daytime I see people take naps sometimes,I have never been able to do that. No matter what time I go to sleep at night, I will wake up at the same time in the morning. So no matter if I go to sleep at 12 am or 4 am, I will be waking up at around 8:30. So how will I know when I have solved this problem? When I understand my problem and when I feel healthy. As of now, I don't feel healthy at all. Even though I run sometimes and I bike everyday, I still don't feel healthy because of little sleep, the sleep deprivation is killing me, literally. I've tried many different things, I bought sleeping music, meditating at night, I never drink any coffee or soda, etc. It is time for me to solve this problem and I must do something extreme to fix this. If anyone knows of something I can do, please tell me! h2. $2k/month of passive income After reading the 4 hour work week, my life has been changed forever. I don't agree with a lot of what the author says, but what I have learned is that I should be retiring AND working now. We are only on this planet for short period of time and I feel we need to live our lives to our fullest. For me that means seeing the world, learning languages, and building awesome websites that help people. To be able to do that I need to have some kind of passive income though. I have a few projects that generate some passive income, but its not enough for me to be able to live off. The definition of passive for me is not spending more than a couple hours a week on the particular project. Understanding the goal is easy, how to achieve that is the hard part, I'm still not quite sure on how I will achieve this. h2. finish romance of the 3 kingdoms "Romance of the 3 kingdoms":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms is 1 of the 4 classics of chinese literature. I've wanted to read it since high school. I've read different versions of the book including the english version, but the original is a very hard book to read. I have never been able to finish reading it because of time issues, I think it would require a few full months of studying to finish it. I hope to eventually read all 4 of the classic books. h2. master my text editor (vim) I've been using vi for over 10 years and I am very proficient in it, but for the past few years I have been using textmate as my daily editor. I love how textmate integrates very nicely with the mac, but I feel it is stagnant and hasn't improved. I still use vim everyday because of the command line, but I don't feel comfortable like all the "wizards" I see using vi/vim. All of my configuration files are just copies of other people's files and so I don't really understand how they work or how to customize them. A text editor should be modified so that it fits perfectly with your work flow. I will have achieved this goal when I am using vim for 100% of all my text editing and when I have modified vim to work exactly how I want it. Maybe I can publish a couple of screencasts. h2. learn to cook The majority of my money waste goes to eating out. I have never really done any cooking so 95% of my meals are ordered. When you are eating out , you can't control the quality of what you eat ( you didn't cook it yourself, how do you know how it is was made and with what ingredients?) I want to learn how to cook so that I don't feel like I am wasting so much money. The problem with cooking is that it uses up a lot of time. I would like to figure out a good method that allows me to save time and money, maybe cooking in bulk? I know I have achieved this goal when it is normal for me to eat at home( at least 1/2 of my meals are homecooked) Overall I think this is a reasonable list of things for me to accomplish for 2010. I don't think its too easy or too hard, these are all things I've thought about before.