Holy cow, what is this? I had planned to do a post about the new year and here we are already more than halfway through January. Somebody lit the fuse when I wasn’t looking and here 2012 is already burning down. I don’t really do “resolutions”, but I do have some goals for 2012 that I wanted to document and review at the end of the year to see how well I did:

• Eat better and exercise more. Of course. Like everyone. But I don’t want to start some crash diet in January and give up in a couple of weeks or kill myself in some grueling workout only to give up by the end of the month. I want to plan to run in events like Pi Mile at Georgia Tech and The Peachtree Road Race and train for them. I want to cut out bad eating habits and while I don’t need to lose a ton of weight, I wouldn’t mind shedding some pounds so I’ve got some milestones in place for the year.
• Spend less time trying to prevent negative events and enjoy positive events more often. Part of my job is trying to prevent disasters and planning contingency plans in the event of a disaster with applications. While that’s fine for work, it doesn’t translate as well at home. When I spend all my time trying to figure out how to prevent a tantrum, I don’t enjoy the time that my children are actually happy. When things go wrong, I want to see that as an opportunity to step up and achieve something unexpected instead of being disappointed that my plans didn’t go like I wanted.
• Compliment people more. Especially parents. I know how much it means to me when I’m struggling with the girls when someone says, “you are doing a great job. They are good girls.” We spend so much time comparing our children with others and touting our parenting techniques or whining about how hard it is to be a parent that we forget to tell each other, “you are working really hard and you should be proud of your children.”
• Spend more time outside. Take the girls to the playground. Go for walks alone in the woods. Run. Don’t let summer heat be an excuse to not sweat a little bit.

Some of these goals have tangible results and others are a little less concrete. At the end of the year, I’ll look back and see how I did.