No, not “Goooooaalllll!”. Though the European Cup in Switzerland was an unbelievable experience, that isn’t the topic of this post. I will make a genuine attempt to get photos and video from this year’s trip to Europe online soon.

Rather, the purpose of this post is to put to paper (or keyboard) my thoughts on some of my goals. I’ve been giving them quite a bit of thought lately while trying to formulate a strategy for tackling them. I’m only going to lay them out briefly right now; I’ll elaborate on how I plan to progress toward each specific goal in posts to follow. I haven’t exactly shared these with anyone, so this is an attempt at “going public”, so to speak, as a psychological tool. By posting them here, I’m hoping to put some pressure on myself to commit and follow through. As usual, your thoughts and comments are invited and appreciated.

In no particular order…..

1. Get in shape!

I enjoy running. I really do. But you couldn’t tell by the shape I’m in right now.

As I’ve mentioned to several people by now, Jen and I plan on running the Hartford HALF Marathon this October. We’ve got two months to get ready. I did run two miles after work once this week. But we need to get on the ball if we hope to finish a 13 mile run.

Since I’m a geek, I plan to bring technology into play. I’m considering either a keyring GPS unit to carry along on runs or the Nike+/Apple training tool. These will help to track our progress by allowing us to record distance and pace. The GPS unit would add route mapping to the mix.

More on this to come….

2. Get better at guitar!

Technically, I’ve been taking lessons for three years now. That is to say that I started lessons toward the end of 2005, although there were some issues and it was very off and on for some time. However, to listen to me play would lead one to believe that I’ve been playing for far less than that. I’m just not very good.

To be fair to myself, I need to point out that I’ve never been particularly good at music or anything creative. It’s a (HUGE) weakness of mine of which I am perfectly aware. My mind works technically. Or, logically, as I like to tell Jen. To me, music seems to work in a way entirely counter to the way I think.

Anyway…
I’ve resisted the conventional route of learning guitar. There are a couple reasons for this, but I’ll go into them later. For now, I’ll just admit that I need to get more organized with regard to a practice routine. Rather than playing around with the songs and/or rhythms I want to learn, I need to go back to the basics and get the technical bits down.

Did you catch that?? Yes, I’m confessing that I’ve taken the wrong approach. The conventional approach that I resisted IS technical. And boring. But I need to suck it up and practice, practice, practice the technical boring bits if I ever hope to progress to the point where I allow myself to play in front of someone other than my immediate family.

Enough on that for now….

3. Improve my spanish!

I’m Puerto Rican. (Boricua!) But during my childhood, I heard more spanish than I spoke. As a result, I can understand a fair amount of spanish, but I suck at actually having conversations. It isn’t beyond my reach, mind you; it has more to do with my level of confidence and my self-consciousness with regard to mistakes. In other words, the problem is in my head.

It’s high time I correct this issue.

There are many other elements to this particular goal, some of which I don’t plan to discuss yet. However, I’ll elaborate more in the follow-up posts.

Hmmm. While I’m at it, I’m going to throw another one out there.

4. Improve my writing!

It takes me a REALLY long time to put thoughts to paper. Errr, keyboard. An embarrassingly long time.

Much like my spanish problem, I think the solution lies in my own willingness to actually engage the part of the brain responsible for this sort of exercise. With that in mind, I plan to post regularly on each of the goals outlined above in the hope of not only moving toward those goals, but also improving my ability to write in a structured and coherent manner.

Thanks for reading this far. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Wow, check this pair out. I think I am officially a fanboy.

They have a sort of odd story: a couple Mexicans with a background in the metal scene go to Dublin, of all places, hit it big there and have now come back across the pond to critical acclaim here in the states.

He’s good, but she is just amazing.

Here they are on Jimmy Kimmel Live performing ‘Diablo Rojo’:

Here they are performing ‘Tamacun’ on some overseas tv program:

and ‘Juan Loco’ on the same show:

Finally, if you’re not into the style but you’re into guitar, be sure you check these next two out.

The first is their cover of Metallica’s ‘Orion’:

And here’s Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’: