Share your knowledge -

it's a way to achieve immortality.
-- The Dali Lama

Greetings from the heart of Dallas. I hope your 2011 has begun with a bang - mine has. Goals are being set, habits are being reviewed, and I'm telling myself that this, this will be the year that things really take off for me.

Then I turn on the Resolve to Watch NCIS marathon on USA. It's going to be a long year.

My life is full of lots of things - big things, little things, tiny things. It's like some kind of mad three-dimensional Tetris, with pieces ranging in size from a brick to a whole house. The whole thing gets faster and faster, there's no pause function, and I don't get to see the next piece. And, naturally, the pieces only fit together one way.

It's not a bad life, really. It's just incredibly difficult to manage it well. The small things (like trying to convince my ten year old daughter to pick up her clothes) get in the way of the big things (my wife's disability) and almost make me lose sight of the gigantic things (school, career, hobbies). I think, however, that they're manageable given good planning and execution.

Toward that end, I'm making my goals and progress public (for the one person who actually reads this blog (thanks Sofie!)). I'm working on posting daily, both about aeronautics and science, but also about family and school. Today is just a starting block. I haven't written in a minute, and it would be nice to get back in the habit.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about some of my goals for the year. They're not resolutions; I only have one resolution, and that's to increase my GPA via more quality study time stemming from better time management. My goals are things like straight As, a functioning garden, being published for the first time, and running a sub two hour half marathon.

Today is just for loosening up a bit. I'll see you tomorrow.

Cheers,

-- Zach