As January is underway, it seems as good a time as any to set some goals for the year. I am not one to make New Year’s resolutions, because I think all too often they are forgotten before Martin Luther King Day (the 3^rd Monday in January for those of you not in the US).

The other thing I want to say before diving into my goals is that I intend this to be a very fluid list. Had I written a list on January 4^th of 2014, I would not have included losing weight, and we know how that turned out. I think that over the course of this year some goals will be reached, while others will be missed or change. Still others will be added.

With all that said, here is my current list of goals for 2015, in no particular order. With each I will give a few additional details

• Reach my Goal weight of 195 pounds, and maintain it. I am about 43 pounds away from that goal. I don’t know how long it will take me to lose that weight, but if my trend of 1 to 2 pounds per week continues it would be about the end of July. Time will tell. It might be longer, it might be shorter. The important thing is that getting to my goal weight will very much be on my mind.
• Scan all of my remaining photos. Some years back I started scanning all of my family’s photos. I made it as far as about 2002, and then ran out of time for that project. I haven’t gotten back to that in a while. As you know if you read my blog, I make calendars for people. Sometimes I include old pictures. Right now there is about a 5 to 6 year stretch where I don’t have my photos scanned. It also happens to be the time when I was taking quite a lot of 35mm pictures, just before my first digital camera. It will take some time to get it done, but it will be a nice winter project.
• Make something useful out of wood. Don’t ask where this one came from. I really don’t know. I just think that sometime this year I want to make something useful out of wood.
• Write 400 blog posts. That would be a decrease from 2014. Last year I had the 365 project, I also wrote over 150 posts for my health blog, and I had another 16 on my dormant outdoors blog. We will see what happens here in 2015
• Outline the ———— book and make a research plan. I am purposely not saying what the idea is, but I have an idea for a book. It will be a book that will require a lot of fun research. I am not sure when I will actually write it, but I want to flesh out the idea this year, and get going on the research.
• Visit 10 new Lighthouses. Pretty self-explanatory. The hard part will be that all the easy-to-reach ones in Michigan and neighboring states I have already visited!
• Camp for 40 nights. In each of the last two years I camped about 30 nights. I will get to the extra 10 with a combination of longer trips (3 night weekends instead of 2), and a few more trips. With some other things going on in my family, this will be a challenge. But hey, what fun is it if the goal is easy?
• Take 15,000 Pictures. Over the past 7 years, I have averaged taking about 9,900 pictures each year. My peak was in 2009 when I took over 14,600 pictures. Back then I was exploring my photography hobby more, and was taking macro pictures as well as the landscapes that I enjoy. I also visited a lot of lighthouses in those years. As you’ll see in my next couple of goals, I have other ideas for my photography
• Enter 5 Photo Contests. I think that some of my photos are contest worthy, and this year I want to see if I am right. I plan to look for and enter at least 5 contests. I’ll likely not win anything, but you never know. To help get me there on these last two goals, I will…
• Schedule 4 hours per month for nothing but picture taking. Some of that will be on hikes or drives. Some will be shots I take in my own home. But I will set aside 4 hours every month to take pictures.
• Read 12 books that are not Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers. What can I say? I love those books. But they aren’t the most intellectually stimulating books on the planet. (Quick aside, despite the name, I actually do most of the reading of them in bed before I go to sleep at night). This year I want to read about a book a month. I also am thinking I’ll review them as I go on here, as some of them will likely be related to weight loss or inspiration of some sort.
• Develop 2 other book ideas besides the one above. My wife thinks there is a book in my weight loss story. I haven’t figured out what the angle would be for it, but we’ll see. I have always wanted to publish a book, and I want to get some ideas in the hopper

I first started brainstorming this list before Christmas. I read it to my son who was visiting at the time and he wondered whether all of the things on this list were attainable in one year. Nothing on this list relates to the list of home improvement projects that my wife and I have, so there are still more things I want to do. I told him that I wasn’t sure they were all attainable, but that it didn’t matter. What matters to me is that, as a goal oriented person, I have a set of goals always at hand.

So, there it is. My list of things I want to do in 2015. I will keep you updated on how I am doing along the way.