I overheard someone at a local coffee shop ruing the fact they hadn’t read enough books this year. It reminded me that I hadn’t either. When I returned home later, I rediscovered a “to do” list for 2002, written on a post it note and pinned to the notice board in my kitchen.

I had written it last January, but it had since become buried beneath post cards, photos, takeaway food menus, and all the other bits and pieces that end up on kitchen notice boards, and subsequently forgotten about until just now.

The number one item on the list: visit the local bookshop and pick up some books to read this year. Attached to the back of the 2002 “to do” list was a similar list for 2001. Item number one on that list? You guessed it; read more books!

That means two years have somehow slipped by without me even finding time to visit a bookshop and selecting something to read, let alone having the time to actually read whatever I did find. Just where does the time go anyway?

None of this is to say I don’t read at all… I do; magazines, web sites articles, and newspapers, are all popular brain fodder for me. But as to actual, real, books (other than of the tutorial or reference variety) hmm, no.

So let me sum up this last bookless year… it seemed as if proceedings were underway by March. Then I remember it being August. And now here we are, with the final hours of 2002 ticking away. From this perspective it seems as if whole months just vanished into some dark and bottomless abyss. Yet I am sure I must have been doing something with my time.

There were the usual ups and downs. There was progress in some areas, and as usual, at a time of review like this, the realization that certain “pursuits” should have been abandoned long before they finally were. I even had one or two quite pointless ideas as well. Nothing quite so bad, however, as that soy milk phase in 2001. Lactose intolerance indeed!

I would almost say that at times, this year felt a little darker, a little slower, than other years. But this was in a different way; the downs didn’t feel as “hopeless” as they sometimes have in the past.

So there is my 2002 summed up in 500 words or so. The achievements, although small, were reasonably plentiful. For 2003 I would like to tackle some bigger issues though, and make some “real” progress. Don’t we all? I’m best to make list I suppose, where are my post it notes?

And what’s on my list? The usual stuff. Get a life. Get a real job. Broaden my horizons. As you can see, there is nothing that is too ambitious, otherwise unattainable, nor too sublimely ridiculous, and is no better or worse than anyone elses’ new year’s resolutions. Reinventing myself shouldn’t be too tricky, and with any luck I may even read a book or two in the process.