In January I set goals for what I wanted to achieve in 2009. With the year coming to an end, it's only fair that I address my progress.

Debt Elimination: I will pay off every debt I currently owe. This includes my car loan, my credit cards, and anything else I have outstanding. The one exception is my student loan debt from law school and grad school. As ambitious as I might be, I somehow doubt I'll be able to scrape together over $100,000 by 2010.

I've made some serious progress, however, paying off one credit card and bringing the other well under control. I also took care of a couple smaller bills and one huge one, but I do have a couple more lingering. I didn't pay off every debt I currently owe, but I'm happy with what I accomplished.

Weight Loss: I need to lose about 100 pounds total, but I'll settle for 50 in the next year. That will go a long way toward getting me back into a healthy lifestyle once and for all.

No two ways about it, this is a bust. I've actually gained weight. There is a glimmer of hope from which I'm now working. I rejoined Weight Watchers online and bought a bathroom scale a week ago. Since then, I've lost 10 pounds.

Publishing: I will write and submit for publication at least one article on a law library topic. I haven't written a thing since I left my tenure track job in mid-2007. If I really want to be a library director some day, I need to start publishing articles again, regardless of whether my current job actually requires it.

Check. Last month the Legal Information Institute's VoxPopuLII published my article, "Duopolies, web usability, and legal research instruction." In addition, during the second half of the year I posted several short articles about law librarianship on my personal website (and by extension, Henderson Valley Eggs). No, these aren't scholarly works, and no faculty would likely consider them to be significant work towards tenure status, but that kind of writing has little appeal to me as an author at this point in my career.

I'm now pondering a long-term writing project unrelated to law or librarianship that could become a full-length book.

Hollywood Tom: I will start a movie blog & review website with a handful of friends. I've wanted to do this for several years but always found excuses to postpone it. No more. If someone wants to call me Hollywood Tom, I need to live up to the nickname.

Didn't happen. I did no work at all on this project in 2009. I'm not concerned about it, thanks to 3 other website projects I completed this year: ScheduAALL, the CS-SIS Web 2.0 Challenge, and Henderson Valley Eggs. I do hope to make some progress on this idea in 2010.

Reading: I will read 26 books in 2009. In 2008 I set a goal of 52 books in 52 weeks. I'll likely end the year having actually read 16. I need to improve on that total, but I also need a more realistic goal. So I'm cutting it in half for this year. Oh, and I'm getting a public library card. This book buying addicition of mine is getting expensive.

So far I've read 22 books and expect to reach my goal by the end of the month. I did not, however, get a public library card. A big reason for this is my switch to ebooks. Except for the first book in January, I've read everything this year on my iPhone, using either the Kindle or Stanza app. Thanks to that convenience, I now read everywhere: the couch, the train, in bed, waiting in line at the dining hall. The books are a bit cheaper, so my book buying addiction is a little easier to maintain.

I'm not sure what my resolutions will be for 2010. I suspect several will carry over from 2009, with some alterations, but I need to think of some new challenges to add to the mix. Suggestions?