Be it resolved

2010 had begun, and the New Year has been celebrated. As is customary, I have been asked several times if I made any resolutions.

Up until now, I haven’t.

I’ve skipped the absurdity of adding another year of sticking with the usual suspects: lose weight, quit this, etc. I am making efforts towards bettering my health and life. But those resolutions occurred in the summer, and so far have been relatively successful. They are still in progress, an not worth mentioning further in this post.

What I have resolved to do in 2010 is blog more. It’s a ridiculously simple resolution. I believe it to be one of those ‘attainable’ goals that will make me feel better about myself, something I can definitely achieve.

I’ve always harboured a desire to be a more consistent blogger. I’ve had blogs in fits and starts since back in 1999 when it was still called an ‘Online Journal’ – and thankfully, most of those previous efforts have been lost. There are two archives I regret losing however.

In 2003-2004, I kept a pretty consistent journal of events as I went to backpack Europe and live abroad. I believe that there is a file that exists somewhere on one of my previous computers (I have the hard drives saved) that might have most, if not all of that previous blog, entitled ‘Itinerant person’. I enjoyed that experience. It was a purposeful blog, as it gave me a place to interact with my friends and family at home without having to write a dozen emails every time I sat down at an internet terminal at a keyboard that was marked out in a different language.

The other regretful loss was a furtive and short lived attempt to maintain a blog in 2008, I believe it was. It was inspired by several things, one of them being a Nervous Nomadic Deep-Fried Canuckistani Super Hero. I remember being proud of a few of the posts in there, but I don’t think it survived a life purge in early 2009.

A reconnect with that same Super Hero, along with the inspiration of my girlfriend, and a few other factors have inspired me to resolve to do this.

I plan on doing a few things with this blog, and for those of you that read it, I hope you’ll be as excited as I am about it. There are a few categories that I’ve decided to focus on:

• Tutorials:
  Because of my work on No Reason, and a few other things, I have a few fans that have requested feedback or help on creative projects. I’ve decided that I’ll use these as starting points for writing up Tutorials on techniques I use in Photoshop, Illustrator and other programs. I also intend to overlap with the next category, by talking about design from a tutorial point of view.
• A “Rough Guide” to Graphic Design:
  After a decade toiling in various aspects of Graphic Design, Advertising, Marketing and Online, I’ve noticed a lot of good and bad things in two different realms – design itself, and the designers. I’ve tossed around the idea of writing a book about the experiences, but I think putting together ‘chapters’ as posts when things occur to me will be a better use of my time. It could become a publishable piece later, but I’d like to take the time to attack certain topics when I have the chance. This will include ideas around design, and around employment in design fields.
• Personal Essays: I started out my University career as an English major. It wasn’t the essay writing that I didn’t enjoy, causing my switch to Fine Arts. It was more the content of what I was reading – I hate Virginia Woolf. That being said, I have rants upon rants inspired by the absurdity of current events, and I think it’s time to start organizing them into sensible discussion points. Instead of berating my dear loved ones with today’s high-handed opinion, I’m going to make an effort to drop it here, for the world to read and respond to, or not. I think if nothing else, my family and friends with thank my for not waxing arrogantly philosophical about the world today so frequently on their bored ears.
• Change Your Life:
  As I mentioned before, I’m not making the a-typical New Year’s resolutions because I’ve already begun a journey of transformation. I don’t want to go into details here, but the bottom line is the changes have been happening slowly but surely, and I want to start documenting it in a way here. I’ve discovered the joys of cooking, of exercise, and I hope that by sharing this experience, others might be encouraged to do similar things. I haven’t really put much focusing thought into this area, so it’s still a ‘maybe’.

That’s all I can think of for now. As with all my (future) blog posts, check out the links on the side!