We had some really nice holidays to wrap things up in 2008. It's always nice during Christmas to see all the friends and family that are so spread out during the rest of the year. We caught up with a bunch of them and had some fun times and, among other things, became Rock Band/Guitar Hero pros:

Resolutions

I've never been big on resolutions as I've always thought that if you need a change, there's no need to wait until a new year starts. But this year I think the timing is just right with the move coming up (even though I'm almost a month late!), so I've got a few I want to formally document, so that perhaps you people reading this can yell at me if I don't follow through. They are as follows:

1. Be more open-minded, make more friends
   I'm still a youngster but I can feel the slight pricks of a narrowing perspective as I get older and I don't ever want that to get the best of me. I always want to do my best to be open to change, new things, new experiences, and not become some grumpy dude who's set in my ways. I've got a whole new city to explore and I want to be open to it all! And I've never been very good at making friends, so I want to get myself out of my shell, maybe try some stuff I don't normally (without being a creepy weirdo), and meet some cool folks when I get there.
2. Design more, create more
   I'm a web developer for a living and I love it, but I have a degree in design and I really love that too, and I've definitely lost my touch with it since it's not a big part of my day job anymore. I still love making art & design and I want it to be part of my life. As we've been preparing for the move, we've been going through some of our old stuff and it's great to see some of my old projects and sketches and I want to bring it all back. This year I want to bring some art projects to life, whether it's design, drawing, maybe even stuff I haven't done much before like painting, etc. I think it would help to get my portfolio back up on my site, and use this blog to post stuff that I work on.
3. Keep learning things
   I feel like this is just part of my life and part of being a web developer, but I want to keep expanding my knowledge as always, and I want to set a concrete goal for myself this year: I want to make at least 1 desktop application and 1 iPhone application this year. I started reading up about Cocoa programming last year and really loved it but I haven't yet put it to use, aside from the tutorials in the book. I want to make something happen with that, and then get my hands dirty with the iPhone SDK and make an app — even if they end up being stupid, I at least want to make something as proof of concept.

Being that I'm not a resolution-er, I'll keep them short and sweet. What do you think? You have any resolutions this year? After (almost) a month, how are they holding up? Happy (late) 2009 people!