The new year is here and everything is, well, new! New job, new city, new friends, new social networks, new toys. With all of this new, I best try to use it to improve myself and maybe even help others. Here are my New Year’s resolutions for 2010:

1. Save and Invest

This is the first year in my life that I will earn more than I spend. There’s no more tuition to pay and I’m one of the lucky 2009 grads to have a paycheck. I have some manageable debt in the form of student loans, but for the most part I’m looking to get my income into a 401k, IRA, savings account, or some other form of investment before I can go spend it.

I’m not making gobs of money (yet) but if you need $10 or $100 or $1000 to do something awesome, send me an email. I figure the easiest way to start giving back is by donating to designers and developers who give out their work for free and have little charity pages setup.

2. Optimize Information Intake

Since starting my new job, Google Reader has become unruly and my Read It Later List has grown to nearly 200. I need to take an hour or two a night to knock out 10-20 old links and do a better job filtering or scanning new articles as they come up. Surprisingly, I feel like I’ve kept up with Twitter and other social networks pretty well.

3. Read More Books

I read a lot on the screen, but never on the page. I couldn’t tell you the last book I finished cover to cover. I’m hoping to read one book a month but perhaps more depending on how much I fly and how crazy the new TSA rules are. I think I’ll try to keep a springpad list of books I read.

4. Return to the Dark Side

For the past 4 years, I’ve done everything in my power to get away from Microsoft to the point everyone in my family now owns a Mac or runs Ubuntu. Joining the corporate world has forced me to submerge myself into everything Microsoft once more. I knew it was going to happen so I’ve been trying to learn more than fight.

I also have a Windows Home Server that I’ve neglected for months, so now that I’m back into dealing with Windows headaches I should hopefully be able to trick it out. I want to enable remote access so I can access all of my media when I’m on the road, automate torrents (legal ones) to download to it, and explore what our household XBox can retrieve from it to play across the house.

5. Produce More

I want to put out more blog posts, more videos, more designs, more code, more everything and not just get things started but actually finish them. I want to focus on getting things done. I have tons of ideas and half-cooked projects started, but nothing is completely done and out in the wild. I want to be able to show more from 2010 than I can from 2009.

6. Visually Brand Myself and My Sites

My blog design is tired and nearly expired. I don’t have a logo. I want to further develop a brand so I’m more recognizable across all 100,000 profiles I have everywhere. I really like what Kyle Haskins has done with how he’s kept his blog, Tumblr account, and portfolio all congruent. Both of the Hale brothers are putting the finishing touches on their new designs which has motivated me even more to get my own out there.

The last few things I want to do this year are minor and I haven’t completely figured out how I’m going to do it. I want to play more basketball and get back in shape. I also want to stop ordering the same movies as my roommate Alex from Netflix weeks and months after he does. Anyone know of a collaboration service that can read your Netflix queue?