Sometimes I miss my days in Colorado with no TV and little to no Internet. It forced me to live a more productive and more interesting life. But, now that I'm not living in the Boondocks anymore, I've fallen back into old habits. It's easier to be forced than to summon the will power to step away from the TV. Fortunately some shows are just aweful enough to make me think about doing something else. For instance, the other day I turned on the TV and found a video game competition (I think) on TBS. Who wants to watch other people play video games? What.....the.....Fuck? Surely TV stations must be dying if their scraping that low in the barrel. One of my new year's resolutions is to read a book whenever I get the urge to watch TV. I usually feel guilty reading for fun instead of studying, but I think I can maintain a good balance (It's better than TV anyways).
The other part of this resolution is the Internet. Crappy TV shows are easy to avoid, but the Internet has genuinely interesting things. I can spend hours exploring the rabbit holes from article to article. But while a lot of articles are interesting, they add no value to my life. Some of them can actually be mentally draining. Facebook has become an infinite source of rabbit holes and is a complete mental minefield. Thanks to the recent assault of political posts, I've realised what a huge time-suck Facebook really is. It's nauseating to see post after post spewing lies and hate. Sometimes even from close friends and family. So, to avoid starting a lot of unproductive arguments, I went through and unfollowed everyone except for close current friends and select family members. Still, I'd rather abstain from it altogether. I'll keep an active account for now, but it may be deleted before too long. Cutting out Facebook should increase my online productivity by quite a large margin. My second resolution: waste less time.
I also have a goal of riding more miles than I drive. This year I'll break 5000 miles on the bike, but will have driven around 8000. It would be difficult to ride more, so my plan is simply to drive less. Right now, I really only drive to get groceries every couple of weeks and on long distance trips. I probably won't keep track of my biking miles as religiously as I have this year, so I'll focus on getting my driving miles down to around 5000 or so.
Another goal is to get the cycling club more active. The core group of four racers are really the only ones that ride regularly. Next semester we'll come up with a better schedule for more social-paced rides. My mission is to get people riding without the core group so that the club will survive when we're gone.
Lastly, my final goal is to spend less money. That number is already pretty low, but I can certainly spend less on bikes. A four bike fleet is more than enough to keep me occupied, and the occasional maintenance is fairly inexpensive. Also, driving less will save money, and the cycling club is now allocated enough money to cover travel expenses, entry fees, and race licenses. So there you have it: my resolutions for 2017 - most have already been put into practice.
