craven.fr (.ox.ac.uk)

I'm finally getting old enough to realise that there is no point in me making a New Year's resolution, since experience shows it will have no chance of success beyond the first couple weeks, or at the most, months. However, this year I'm trying a different tactic: instead of resolving to change some habit like I did before, this year my resolutions are going to be based on goals: projects that I'm giving myself until the end of the year to complete. This should greatly improve my chances of success. Not only that, but I'm going to set the bar pretty low—low enough that in theory I should be done by June. But then, taking into account how easily I am easily distracted, factoring in a six month buffer is probably a good idea!

So, without further ado, here are my two 'resolution' projects for 2009:

Finish reading Cæsar's de Bello Gallico. I've already read book I and more than half of book II, so that leaves five and a half books for next year, which is quite doable, but will require me to keep at it. Ideally I'd like to also read all of Nepos' Vitæ this year too, and get started on Cicero, but I doubt that that is realistic.

Finish reading Books I & II of the Iliad. I'm near the end of Book I already, so this really amounts to Book II over most of next year, which I don't think will be too burdensome. Ideally I'd also like to read Lysias XII and Demosthenes' On the Crown, but Greek has to take a backseat to Latin for me (because my Latin needs more work), so I know it's almost surely not going to happen.

There's plenty more I could challenge myself with, like running a certain number of miles, having a more succesful garden, finally getting around to reading Двенадцать стульев, or getting through the second volume of my Chinese textbook; but I know that these are closer to things that I wish I was doing rather than things I can confidently say I will do. So in the interest of setting achievable goals, I'm only going to hold myself accountable for those two 'resolutions'.