A New Year

I have a co-worker that always comments on the tendency that people have to start some new phase of their lives at the beginning of a new year.  New diet, working out, making some other kind of positive life change.  He has a valid point, why wait till a new year to make a positive change?  Don't know... the human brain is likely wired in such a way that crossing a threshold of some kind makes it a little easier to make an above board change.  

The first 6 months of the new year for me are going to be pretty busy.  Mostly, but not entirely, from commitments made last year.  RAAM with The Georgia Chain Gang is going to be pretty high on the priority list.  I'm impressed and humbled that we where able to reach over $50K in funds raised before the close of 2013.  The team this year has some pretty heavy hitters from both fundraising and athletic ability, the bar is plenty high for me.  My own fundraising is going well, both bike repair and the Ultimate Cycling class look to be putting well on my way to reaching my personal goal.  I'm also grateful for the donations that have been made in my name as well.

Back to the 'new year' theme, one thing I'm going to try to be a little more proactive about this year is continuing my coaching education.  It's easy to get complacent about something that isn't really putting food on the table, but I do enjoy coaching and cycling, do have a lot of time already invested into it, and am likely going to be involved in it for a long time.  I don't have any aspirations that coaching is ever going to be my 'job', but in today's world there are some pretty good educational opportunities that are very affordable or in some cases free that can be accessed online.  Even if my only client is myself, it is worth it.

My photography outlets are going to be Tumblr and Flickr (didn't get completely into the Yahoo ecosystem by design, it just kind of happened), and to a lesser degree, G+.  Thanks to Frank Fuerst for turning me on to Tumblr, it seems like a pretty good place to share photo's.  Not sure yet exactly how I'm going to divide the work among the three, but I do hope to push more work out this year.

Enough for now.  Training for RAAM gets serious on Jan 6th, or maybe the 7th...