[image from flickr]

..and new decade – wow!  What was I doing 10 years ago?  Hmmm…I think I was doing an all-nighter with some youth in the church I was pastoring in Hanover.  Honestly, I can’t remember… which is probably not a good thing.  I actually caught myself saying to my 6 year old son tonight that in 40 years I will probably be dead.  Note to self: don’t tell your young child at his bedtime that you are going to die someday. It leads to a very long conversation.  Just saying.

I’m really looking forward to 2010 and this next decade.  From a tech point-of-view, the changes that I’ve experienced in the past 10 years are simply astounding! Of course there have been a lot of changes in my personal life as well.  I really can’t imagine what the next 10 years are going to bring!

As far as new years resolutions go, I’ve never really been one to make them – I guess I always think, why should I only resolve things only once a year?  It’s funny, but for me, my year tends to start in September, not January – must be something to do with having kids in school and pastoring a church…

Still, there are some things I am hoping to accomplish in the next year.  I just thought I’d write them here so I can look back a year from now and see how I’ve done.  So, in no particular order:

• My wife and I really want to work on paying down a lot of our debt.  It’s been an ongoing big deal for us but we’re determined to kiss our debt good bye.  As a result there’s going to be some difficult choices made as we cut out some of the expenses in our lives.  One of the tools I think will help us is this.
• As part of paying down our debt I’m going to start trying out different ways of monetizing some of the things I do on the internets.  I’ve already started somewhat by doing some custom work related to my Organize Series Plugin for WordPress but I’m planning on expanding on that by releasing some custom add-on plugins for Organize Series that will not be free.  Along that lines, I’ve been following this discussion on Weblog Tools Collection because it helps me consider how I might go about doing this.  Been thinking about bringing classy ads to my blog too.
• I plan on posting more frequently here at UnfoldingNeurons.com – I think there is room for more Canadian Tech and Ministry bloggers out there.
• One of the highlights in the past year for me was taking some training on being a leadership coach.  Every now and then I think we come across something that as individuals we really connect with as something we’re created to do.  Coaching is one of those things for me.  I’ve decided that I’m going to pursue the path to becoming a certified leadership coach as it really jives with what I believe God created me for.  I’m starting off this year by leading my church pastoral team through a peer coaching course and I’ll also be attending another training session myself.
• I’m going to comment and interact more on the internets.  Confession: I’m a lurker.
• On that note, it’d be an awesome honor to be invited to be a guest blogger on one of the blogs I read.  Dunno if I have anything to offer, but still it’d be cool
• I hope to continue volunteering for some great causes (along with continuing the work I do for vohmalawi.org and vohzimbabwe.com).
• I may be going on a trip to Siberia this year.  Yes, that’s crazy.
• I’m going to continue working on being a great Dad and husband to my family…if I fail at that, then it doesn’t matter what else I succeed at.
• I’m going to be memorizing scripture through the year along with others in my church family who are joining in the journey (I’ll be posting about this sometime in the next two weeks).  My 8 year old daughter is also participating and when I sent her an email (yes she has email – I’ve introduced her to the Google Behemoth)  to tell her that I’m doing it too she replied, “Neat. Bring it on Dad”.  The gloves are down.
• I love YouVersion.com and thanks to the many Bible Reading plans they’ve made available, I’m going to be reading through the Bible (again) this year.  If you don’t read the Bible, you should – it’s one of the best things you can do (and the digerati team behind youversion has made it so easy!) My wife and I are working through a plan together as well.

Well, this list has been getting pretty long but it’s a great start.   I could keep adding to it but I think I’ll leave it at that for now.  What about you?  Have you got any things you hope to accomplish for the new year?

[image from krisdecurtis]

In what is a most time-honored tradition around these sorts, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  This past year has been a very interesting year in my life and I’m looking forward to an even more interesting year.  I wish, like others I could have a nice cute picture of my family up here but in my household we define “Christmas busy” and usually don’t get around to getting our pictures done until late Christmas day.  Maybe I’ll get something up then (probably not).

Enjoy your holidays, don’t freeze, eat carefully, laugh with family, and check out what Christmas is really all about.  Thanks for sticking around unfoldingneurons.com!