Happy New Years! It’s the first day of the year and it’s a day known for setting goals. I had several goals last year and did pretty well over all. At least in my opinion which is really the only one that counts for this particular type of thing.

First a review of my goals for 2013

• Post twice a week on my blog.
  I posted 95 times which isn’t exactly twice a week but I didn’t actually start any of these goals on the first of the year so I count this one a success.
• Get my MCITP for 2008 Development and my MCSA for 2012
  I managed the MCITP and the first test for my MCSA upgrade. I’ve been taking 2 certification exams a year for the last few years so this is par for the course. I would have liked to finish that 3rd exam but it requires a significant amount of study for me. It includes the BI exam and while I’ve done some SSIS I haven’t had a chance to do any significant work with SSRS or BI in general. I’m looking forward to learning some new things on this one.
• Have 2 more articles published.
  Complete failure here. Turns out that writing 2 posts a week was my complete limit. I’m not too worried as this was a rather secondary goal.

 
So now my new goals for 2014.

• Continue to post twice a week on my blog but try to improve the quality of the posts.
• Finish my MCSA and my MCSE before June so I can use the upgrade exams that expire end of July since the MCSE exams are supposed to expire in July.
• Begin learning PowerShell. Specifically by finishing the book Windows Powershell in a month of lunches as recommended by Steven Jones

 
Of course these are just my professional goals and I always include my annual “Get healthy” and “Lose weight”. For those purists out there who feel that all goals should be specific, that just hasn’t worked for me with these particular goals. At my house we have a saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the different results.” So I’m going to try something different this year and go with a general direction.

So that’s my goals for this year and last. I’m posting them primarily to have a good record of my plans for the year. Also I have found that by sharing my goal with others I feel more motivated to complete them than I do otherwise. Feel free to share your own goals in the comments so you can have a record for yourself.