New Year's Resolutions - A Look Back at 2011

New Year's Resolutions.  It's the fashionable thing to do.

However before I throw down some amazingly in-achievable new goals for 2012, let's first review the musty old ones - so humor my vanity as we take a step down memory lane...

#1.  Fish New (or Different) Water
I'll give myself at least half point for this one.  I did fish the Little Lehigh for the first time (is it still fishing if you don't catch?), as well as Factory Brook & the West Branch of the Tioughnioga River in central New York state.  Spurky also ran me around Lebanon County a few times.  Like this time & this time.  So yes, I fished some new (to me) water, but still feel like I fell back on ol' reliable (Valley) a bit too often.

A central New York brown

#2.  Lose a Few More Pounds
That would be a big fat negative!  I think I gained 5.  I probably should have written down my starting weight to be sure, but I'm not where I want to be.  But those P90X DVDs sure do look cool on the bookshelf.  This will carry over for 2012.

Damn you Tony Horton

#3.  Stop & Smell The Flowers
I did intentionally take more vacation days than I did in 2010 and prior years.  I've been at my place of employment for 12 years, so I get 25 PTO days and I always end up leaving at least 10 on the table each year.  So we did a lot of long weekend type trips this year.

We went to Disneyworld, Ocean City (Maryland), Sanibel Island, Washington D.C., New York State, and then the end of year road trip we're on now, but work still kicked my butt, especially in the back half of the year.  There is unfortunately no "off switch" when you work in e-commerce and are outfitted with a company provided iPhone...so even when you're on vacation, you're not really on vacation.

I know, cry me a river...I am aware I'm very fortunate as things could be much, much worse.

Remember when weekends were weekends?

#4.  Meet Some of You Folks Face-to-Face
I scored here.  I met & fished with Matt from Functioning Fishaholics and Mike from Dub The Thorax.  I also was lucky enough to meet Gaeron from My Life on the Fly & Ulf Hagstrom from The Way of the /:Fly:/ at a fly tying show...and missed out meeting Lou from Fly & Fin at the same show by about an hour.  That will be remedied in 2012.  Anyway, that's four more than I had met at this point last year.  I was hoping to knock this one out of the park big time by attending an OBN Rendezvous, but...well...we all know how that story ended.

I could also mention the fact I was able to "meet" a few fortunate souls in a sort of creepy face-to-face video chat on Google+...but that really doesn't count.

The good news is I made a ton more fishing and outdoor minded friends online, so that makes my odds of running into more people in 2012 all the better.

From Left:  Dub's elbow, fly tying light, yours truly, a bald spot, Func, and a backpack - photo credit Ulf

#5.  Give Back
Simply put, my ideas never got off the ground.  This one was a big fat, FAIL.  I still contributed in the charitable form, TU, National Parks, Sierra Club, all that stuff, but not really in the personal way I wanted to.  This resolution will carry over to 2012.

I picked up trash at a creek cleanup.  Not exactly what I had in mind.

So that was 2011.  What's in store for 2012?


To be continued....