I have not discussed some of these themes in my blog before, something that I might correct in the near future but if you follow my identi.ca/twitter feed they will sound familiar from my ramblings in the last few months!

I suppose to start with is Open University study which is now registered and paid for and starts in May. If all goes well this could be the start of a much longer programme of study, so long in-fact it scares me but I think will be valuable for developing myself in many ways both personally and professionally.

I plan to take my Python programming to the next level (or two) after achieving far more with it in the last few months than I ever could have dreamed. I have a bit of experience now writing command line programs in the good old black box but I can take this into new realms like GUI and Web development which I plan to do this year probably through PyGTK and Django, respectively. I may even contribute to an open source project for one of the many Python-powered applications I use frequently.

On Friday I resumed my piano lessons following a small hiatus over Christmas and my house move and by the summer I hope to be ready to do my grade one piano exam. It’ll be a lot of work but my teacher believes in me and assures me I’m learning very fast so who am I to argue!? I’ve upped my formal tuition to an hour a week which will at the very least ensure I have at least an hours’ practise a week even if I don’t have any more time to give to it.

I want to get outdoors more this summer, more time in the garden, more time riding my bike, more time walking up mountains, more time photographing the world. Now I live in an area that doesn’t suffer from permanent light and air pollution I may start doing a little astronomy, it’s a field that interests me a lot but I’ve never had the chance to pursue on my terms until now. I would also like to try starting a grape vine in my back garden, it’ll be a challenge but if successful could result in a new extremely limited edition organic northern wine in a few years time! It’s been done before so why can’t I??

I could go on but I’d just be setting up more things I won’t have time for. It’s been a shaky start to the new year which isn’t all that unusual but it’s improving and maybe, if I’m lucky, I might just achieve a few.

Here’s hoping.