Firefly has been extensively trained on chicken scratch.
I couldn’t remember if I had made resolutions for 2023, which may give you an idea of how well I did at keeping them. Let’s find out and have a good cry together!
The 2023 resolutions were:
Get to 150 pounds by the end of February.
Verdict: Massive fail. As of today, I am 171.8 pounds, which is exactly seven pounds higher than a year ago and more than 20 pounds above my intended goal. I dreamed of being a hummingbird and ended up being a blimp.
Keep running.
Verdict: Success! Despite knee issues, I kept running regularly throughout the year.
Finish my Gum Gum game.
Verdict: Neither success nor failure, as I put the GGP game on pause to develop a different game first as a prototype.
Do more bird art.
Verdict: Success! I am working on more bird art right now.
Keep birding.
Verdict: Success! But this was a gimme.
Finally finish my blog redesign.
Verdict: Failure-ish. I did tweak the design a bit, but the big redesign still awaits.
Finally start doing some stretching.
Verdict: Success! After the issues with my knees and a couple of visits to a physiotherapist, I now stretch before I run.
Weird bonus resolution:
Record an original song in Garage Band.
Verdict: Failure. I think I opened Garage Band once. Fortunately, this was a silly resolution.
Overall: Eight resolutions, four successes. This is actually better than I expected. Onward to 2024!
My Fancy Resolutions for 2024
NOTE: For 2024 I am skipping the "easy" stuff that I would probably be doing anyway, like running and birding.
Get to 150 pounds. But for real this time. Gotta go with the classics.
Finish my prototype game. Title to be revealed soon™.
Complete my blog redesign. Another classic. It could happen!
Revive my newsletter. I am actually working on this now, and have moved from Substack to Buttondown for the hosting.
Complete one of my unfinished novels. Likely either The Mean Mind or Road Closed. I’ve been itching to get back into writing again, and either of these stories will be fun to noodle around on.
Start a new blog or something. I kind of have something in mind, we’ll see what happens.
Focus on:
Being happy
Staying healthy
Bringing good into the world
Getting decent sleep, which will help with all of the above
New for 2024: I will check in at the end of each month to see how well I am doing on these things and use a letter, star, number or some other system to mark my progress or lack thereof. It’ll be fun!
I’m actually doing some of the things featured in this generic blog image for “resolutions”! Photo by Polina Kovaleva on Pexels.com
Here are a few more things I thought of:
Drink more water and conversely, drink less soda. I only drink non-sugary soda, but it’s still bad and I should feel bad. And I do, somewhat.
Reorganize the cabling for my computer and tidy up the desk. Somehow it’s become a complete mess again. Whoops. I also need to replace my beloved cat DJ in space mouse pad, it’s starting to curl up.
Renew my “draw something every day” vow because I kind of dropped that. I think the messy desk is a minor contributing factor.
This year, I am not making formal resolutions for 2022. There are things I want to do that I am doing now, I just want to do more of them, or have more specific focus on certain things.
These things include the usual self-improvement:
Lose weight
Exercise more (keep running)
Be generally more kind, thoughtful and generous. I’m not a horrible person now, but why not always try to improve?
They also include hobbies, some of which may help me earn an income in the future:
Write more (blogging, the newsletter, more fiction)
Draw more (my own projects, plus some daily or monthly prompts tossed in)
Photography, uh, more. Birds, scenery, stuff. With my camera or phone, both are good tools.
I also want to expand my knowledge in a few areas in 2022, again with generating moola as the desired endpoint, though knowledge for its own sake is good, too:
Programming (C#)
Game development, starting with Unity and C#
Learning my way around more apps like Affinity Designer, among others
And a few hopes that aren’t resolutions at all:
Not get sick, including maybe dodging the covid bullet just a little while longer
That the pandemic will actually end sometime in 2022, and I won’t be repeating this line in a year with 2023 written instead
Find contentment in small things, while always striving for more. I guess just try to be happy, no matter the circumstances. Assuming happy doesn’t mean retreating from reality. Unless they invent the Matrix, but without the killer robots. I’m up for ducking out in that.
Remember: This is not a list of resolutions for 2022, it just looks like one. Thank you.
Let’s face it, I am bad at keeping my resolutions. Let’s assess my success with the ones I made for this year, and then move onto making shiny new ones for 2021.
Note that I did not anticipate 2020 being THE YEAR OF UNENDING HORRIBLENESS when I made these resolutions. I may have been a bit more modest in my goals if I’d known. Perhaps.
Drop to 150 pounds. Grade: D. I am currently tracking on being up for the year. Massive failure, though with some hope for doing better in the future.
Be creative. Grade: B. I didn’t really write fiction (I committed to NaNoWriMo then failed to produce a single word), but I did Inktober again, took lots of photos, kept up fairly well on blog posts (don’t count the number of cat pictures). I feel I could have done more if I had been disciplined, so I only give myself a B.
Exercise at least three times a week. Grade: C+. I actually did not too bad here, but the wheels came off when the days started getting shorter, and the year ended with me being saddled with Plantar Fasciitis.
Read at least 26 books. Grade: B. I will likely end the year with 20 books read and a few more close to completion. This is one where the pandemic completely disrupted a routine (reading on my daily commute) and I never found a good way to adapt. I actually ended up doing most of my reading this year in the bathtub, which turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant way to read. But I do not have baths ten times a week, so I did not hit 26.
Eat better. Grade: C+. Maybe I ate marginally better, but there is still work to do.
Start stretching. Grade: D. I just didn’t start. But now I have orders to, with my foot injury, so there may be hope for 2021.
Investigate other careers. Grade: C+. I started on this, then the pandemic happened and while I haven’t stopped entirely, my pace in terms of investigation has slowed down.
Just generally improve. Grade: B-. Considering how awful this year was, I’m happy with a B-.
A pretty middling year. Goodbye, 2020, and good riddance!
My resolutions for 2021 are perhaps the most modest I’ve ever had. We’ll see if I can meet them.
Drop to 160 pounds. Maybe by setting my sights lower I will achieve more!
Be creative. Keeping this one from 2020:
Do one of the following every day (more than one is even better):
Write a blog post (Note: Jogging/treadmill workouts do not count)
Write some fiction
Draw something (maybe Inktober52 would be a good start)
Take a photo
Write a song (new for 20201)
Read at least 20 books. Down from 26. With COVID-19 likely to be a big factor for most of 2021, I think this more modest number is achievable.
Exercise at least once a week. Down from three times. Again, setting my sights low to see if I can do more.
First, a review of how I fared for my resolutions for 2019. I deliberately made the goals broader and easier to attain after more or less bombing on nearly everything in 2017. Here they are, graded as if by a mean grade school teacher:
Drop to 150 pounds. As of today I am 170.1 pounds, which any mathematician will tell you is more than 150 pounds. A lot more. Alas. Looking at the year overall, my weight held pretty steady for the first six months. In July I finally started shedding pounds (I was also running more) and this continued until September, when the weight not only started creeping back up, it climbed even higher. The only good news after this is that by some miracle (and a treadmill) I managed to actually reverse the weight gain in the last two weeks of December, when it would normally be spiraling ever-higher. Still, short of shedding a lot of water weight tomorrow (the 31st) I am going to end up a bit heavier at the end of the year than at the start. Grade: D
Write something every day. Technically, I achieved this, between blog posts, journal entries, posts to social media and other miscellaneous stuff. But I wrote almost no fiction, so that still knocks a grade or so off. Grade: B+
Run at least once per week. According to the Activity app, I did 58 runs in 2019 as of today (I may do one tomorrow to top off the year. That means I did in fact run at least once per week! Grade: A
Read at least 52 books. I revised this goal partway through the year when it became obvious I would not read near 52. The new goal was 26, which I achieved. There’s a chance I might finish Book 27 before the year ends. For some reason I had a lot more gaps between books, possibly because I read a few too many bargain novels that may have been bargain-priced for obvious reasons. Grade: B
Eat better. A mild improvement at best. Grade: C+
Learn and practice meditation. I thought about this. I did not actually do it. Grade: D
Stretch. See the above. Grade: D
Redo the Complaint Free World 21-day challenge. I’m wearing the band again, but haven’t yet started the formal challenge. Still, just wearing the band has helped me to stay more positive. Grade: B
2019 was a pretty even split between triumph and not-triumph. It was a difficult year in many ways for me, so the result is not unexpected. For 2020 I am going with a slightly revised set of goals:
Drop to 150 pounds. I actually think I have a better shot at this than in the past few years. Really!
Be creative. Do one of the following every day (more than one is even better):
Write a blog post (Note: Jogging/treadmill workouts do not count)
Write some fiction
Draw something (not to be confused with the app)
Take a photo
Exercise at least three times a week. One of the exercises should be a run, the others can be treadmill walks or something similar. I can no longer use the weather as an excuse to be lazy and fat.
Read at least 26 books. I think a book every two weeks is fine and I can probably do better that that with a wee bit of effort. Maybe I’ll start counting comic books or something.
Eat better. I went cold turkey with my diet once before (this did not involve actual turkey), I can do it again. I think.
Start stretching. If I can do this, I’ll move on to meditation. Maybe it’ll be easier that way. Stretch the body, then stretch the mind. Pretty deep, man.
Investigate other careers. I like tech and I like helping people. I am less convinced now that I like both together.
Just generally improve. Try to be kinder, more thoughtful and helpful. Lead by example.
One of the things I did when making my resolutions for 2019 was lower the bar. In some cases I didn’t just lower the bar, I gently set it down on the ground. I wanted as little friction as possible to make progress, hoping the ease in doing so would provide sufficient psychological boost to push me beyond my terribly modest goals and reach for the sky, or at least something that requires me to stand on my toes.
One might make the argument that since I obviously know I’m trying to “trick myself” into improvement, it will never work. And that’s possible. But I like to think I’m at least willing to meet my brain halfway on this.
And so I am adding another resolution for the remaining 11 months of 2019: A drawing per month. Not one per week or day, just one every month–a modest goal that can be built on.
I have 20 days to keep pace going forward. Will I draw a blank (lol)? Find out on February 28! Or hopefully sooner. You never know.
The first month of 2019 has passed. Let’s see how the ol’ resolutions are doing. Remember, I have 11 more months to make “course corrections” in the event of resolution recidivism.
Drop to 150 pounds. Realistically, I was not going to drop 17+ pounds in a month. I did drop 0.2 pounds, though. At that rate I will hit 150 by 2026. I may need to re-examine my current diet.
Write something every day. I am 100% on this so far, though some days have been a struggle. I don’t have any momentum yet, but feel I am on the verge, so I expect better in February.
Run at least once per week. 50% on this, so room for improvement. But I am running!
Read at least 52 books. I’m close to finishing my third book, so a bit behind. On the other hand, I went an entire week without reading, so I handicapped myself.
Eat better. Definite improvements here, especially with evening snacking. More improvements to come.
Learn and practice meditation. I have not started this yet. I kind of feel like I need to get a few other things sorted first, but maybe I’m just stalling.
Stretch. I finished reading a book on stretching, but have yet to stretch. Some preliminary “stretching” left me mildly alarmed at how incredibly inflexible I am.
Redo the Complaint Free World 21-day challenge. I haven’t formally restarted the challenge, but I am being a lot more mindful about saying negative things to others. I want to make myself and things around me better, and I know that bellyaching–though satisfying–is not the way to do it.
Overall a mixed bag, but nothing I would consider an outright failure at this point. I am cautiously encouraged.
At least I didn’t wait until 11:56 p.m. to start writing tonight (it’s 8:26 as I type these words). I have been re-reading parts of Road Closed, my still-unfinished 2014 National Novel Writing Month novel. And I have to say, I rather like the parts that I’ve read. The story, told from the perspective of Christian Warren, a 20-year old alcoholic college student trying to right his life, is engaging, he’s appropriately self-deprecating and never comes off as “woe is me.” He feels like someone you could sit down and listen to tell stories. Which is good, because the whole novel hinges on him telling his story.
Road Closed has mutated a fair bit from its inception as a writing exercise based on a photo prompt. By the time it became a NaNo novel, I was writing it using WriteMonkey on a Surface Pro 3 (and on my home PC). After getting a MacBook Pro sans Touch Bar in late 2016, I found Ulysses and switched to writing the story using that. As Ulysses is Mac (and iOS) only, this meant I could only write on the MacBook, which was maybe not the best idea, given I still had my home PC at, well, home.
Then Ulysses switched to a subscription model and I’ve made it well clear what I think of that.
After that I moved the story over to Scrivener, which has the bonus of being available on Mac, Windows and iOS. Problem solved, novel finished, royalties and accolades flooding in.
Well, not quite. There were two remaining wrinkles:
My fear of Scrivener eating my work based on past experience where Scrivener ate my work
Disparity between the Mac and Windows versions. I upgraded to version 3.0 on the Mac in November 2017. At the time the 3.0 PC version had just released as a free beta, with the final release due “soon.” Now, in January 2018, version 3.0 for Windows is…still unreleased (they are now pretty sure it will ship sometime between April and June of this year). While the Windows 3.0 beta continues to be available to use, I am hesitant to put anything other than test material in it, mainly due to the bullet point above, with the bonus of seeing how much more likely beta software will eat my work.
So although the story is in Scrivener, I haven’t really done much with it. In theory this could change in a few months when the Windows version finally catches up.
But then I actually dusted off Ulysses on the MacBook (the earlier non-subscription version still works) and was entranced by its simple, clean interface all over again.
But as I mentioned, it’s now subscription-only and Mac-only.
And I started mulling over various scenarios:
Get a dock for my MacBook Pro to hook it up to my PC monitor and peripherals so I could use it to write on a larger screen (and with a keyboard that won’t jam up from motes of dust)
Get an actual desktop Mac. The choice here is simple: the Mac mini, because Apple literally has no other model that isn’t an all-in-one like the iMac, or horribly outdated, like the 2013 Mac Pro.
Build a Hackintosh, either using an Intel NUC (advantage: very tiny and can sit unobtrusively on the desk while my PC remains under it) or with something full-size that could also serve as a replacement for my current PC (probably not a great option for a host of reasons)
After this mulling, I realized what I had actually done was concoct a grand series of excuses that all led to one thing: Not working on the actual novel itself. Whatever software I use is just a tool. I had become the equivalent of a person tasked with hammering nails into a board and could not choose between three slightly different hammers, so the board remained nail-free and perhaps something sad or awful transpired as a result. Maybe a dollhouse collapsed. I don’t know. But dithering over what piece of software to use is not going to accomplish anything useful that I can see, unless the future completion of my novel somehow starts a chain of events that accelerates global warming or something, and the world is better off if I never finish it.
So consider this an addendum to my New Year Resolutions:
Pick a program and hardware platform to use for my writing, then continue to work on–and finally finish–Road Closed. My self-imposed deadline for this decision is Friday, January 25, 2019. Writers work better with deadlines, right? I predict great success!
We’ll find out in six days.
Addendum: This post was written on the MacBook Pro, hooked up to my 24″ monitor, using the CTRL keyboard and a Logitech Marathon 705 mouse. To get this working, I needed:
The Apple HDMI dongle. This includes:
HDMI port to connect to the monitor
USB 3.0 Type-A port to connect the receiver for the mouse
USB Type-C port for the power cable so the laptop isn’t running off battery
To plug in the USB-C cable for the keyboard directly into the other USB-C port on the MacBook, as it would not work on the USB-C port on the HDMI dongle
It’s not pretty, but it works and almost makes me forget how terrible the keyboard on the MacBook is. The setup looks like this:
Of the ten resolutions I made this year, I hit four of them and failed on six. Not exactly inspiring, but then this year has been bleak in an existential sort of way that hasn’t happened in a long time, thanks to the appalling spectacle of Trump’s breathtakingly corrupt and inept presidency, which easily eclipsed my absolute worst expectations.
But enough of that. The world didn’t blow up in 2017, so there is a small glimmer it will make it through 2018, too. Therefore, my resolutions.
My theme for 2018 is “Be realistic” so my goals are more modest than in years past.
Drop to 150 pounds. I got as low as 153 this year, but climbed back up in the last few months to 161.6 today. I’m ready to redouble my efforts, which leads to…
100% donut-free. Yes, no donuts all year, no matter what. If someone offers me a free donut I will spurn it and cast aspersions upon the giver (“Are you trying to kill me slowly? What cruel sort are you?”) Well, maybe not so much the casting aspersions but no donuts–yes!
No farmers tan. I got close this year, next year I’ll do it! Stretch goal: full upper body tan. This also provides incentive for resolution #1.
Write 250 words of fiction per day. I bombed out on my goal of 1,000 per day this year and originally was going to aim for 500 next year, but instead settled on the even more modest 250 words per day. I can always up the number from there.
Run at least three times a week. Should be doable, barring injury. Alternate goal: any type of exercise at least three times a week. In case of weather or something, where I would use an elliptical instead of running, for example.
Read at least 32 books. Unchanged from this year, should be doable.
One drawing per week. To help nurture my creative side. It can be anything, in any format. Stick men? Sure. A circle with two dots in it representing a mouth-less face? Why not!
Win the lottery. Repeating this. I’ll use the money wisely, I swear!
Eat better. This ties in with going 100% donut-free and involves drastically cutting back on all snacking. Snacking is bad. Healthy snacking is hard, so it’s probably better to just avoid altogether.
Curb my web surfing and put my WoW sub on hold. These are time sinks that take away from other things I could be doing that would be more productive and probably more enjoyable, too.
Bonus resolution:
Continue to spurn social media, especially Facebook. This one is easy because I don’t have to change a thing!
With only five days left in the year, here’s a look at how I fared on the resolutions I made for 2017. Here’s the original post in full for reference: New Year Resolutions for 2017
I will make resolutions for 2018 tomorrow.
Scorecard for 2017 Resolutions:
drop to 145 pounds. LOL NO. In October I was 153 pounds, down from 165.9 at the start of the year, but the last two months have been a disaster of gluttony and not enough exercise. I’m at 163 pounds today, barely down from the start of the year. I blame my mouth and brain in equal measure.
run at least three times a week barring injury or other extraordinary circumstance. YES–mostly. A few lapses here and there, especially during the fall, but I’ve kept up running, including running at work during lunch when it became too dark to run after work, as well as running on treadmills during last winter’s hellsnow.
no farmers tan. NO-ish. I did start wearing sleeveless shirts during the summer for my runs but too late to entirely shed the farmers tan. Still, a definite improvement over previous years.
killer abs. LOL NO. Did not even try.
eat better. Provisional NO. I ate better than last year, I did not generally eat better. As with the weight loss, I started strong, but collapsed in the last few months of the year. In this case I collapsed into a bed of donuts.
learn to swim. This was a joke so NO.
write 1,000 words a day. Sadly, NO. Again, I started out strongly, going to the Other 11 Months NaNoWriMo group weekly, but though I added about 10,000 words to my novel Road Closed, I never generated any momentum beyond that.
read at least 32 books. YES. I’m up to 37 and may hit 38 before the year is over.
be a positive influence to others. I’m going to say YESbecause no one has told me otherwise.
win the lottery. YES. But my winnings totaled less than $100.
Summary:
6 NO
4 YES
Not great, but not a total disaster, either. The most important ones I flopped on, though, so there is significant room for improvement in 2018.
In my defense, 2017 was generally a colossally awful year for the planet, not just me.
It is time to make resolutions because tradition demands we make silly promises, break them, express regret, then do the whole thing over again a year later, which is just enough time to convince ourselves that this time will be different.
That said, my goal to get to 150 pounds this year was going quite well until mid-October. By then I was at 153 pounds and was still running regularly, having recovered nicely from an injury in the early spring (and having escaped battered but without any broken bits in my Great Tripping Incident in August). Then two things happened:
I caught a very nasty cold. It laid me out for a couple of weeks and I missed a bunch of runs.
Simultaneously, the sun began setting early enough that by the time I was healthy again I could no longer run my usual routes after work because it was now dark and I’d be attacked and carried away by vampire bats.
To address #2 I kept running on the weekends, but once a week is not enough to keep in shape. I pondered running during lunch at work but did not commit to it for various reasons. I thought about using the treadmill at the Canada Games Pool but my partner kept offering to go and then not really wanting to, which made it easy for me to decide that yes, it was easier to just sit at home and eat bags of Bugles instead.
This is all to say that about two months later I am up to 164 pounds, an impressive backslide. Gaining weight is very easy. If I made that a resolution I’d have 51 weeks left to work on any and all other resolutions.
My first resolution, therefore, will not be a huge surprise.
My Resolutions for 2017 Assuming Donald Trump
Doesn’t Destroy the World
drop to 145 pounds. Yes, I’m actually making the goal tougher for 2017. Secretly this was always my goal and 150 pounds was a soft target. I’ve been as low as 143 pounds and it’s definitely not too skinny on my frame. Though I am kind of skinny, anyway.
run at least three times a week barring injury or other extraordinary circumstance. I would previously include “the entire city covered in snow” being an extraordinary circumstance but really, there are gyms and treadmills, so this doesn’t qualify. It’s also the minimum needed to keep in decent shape.
no farmers tan. I wear t-shirts when running and as a result when I remove my shirt I a) blind anyone nearby with my ultra-white untanned body and b) get mocked for having conspicuously tanned arms right up to where the sleeves of my t-shirts sit. My solution this year will be to wear sleeveless shirts (I already have a few) and maybe a few stints working on a wee bit of a tan for my upper body. I might entertain the thought of running without a shirt when the weather is warmer but I’m not sure I should subject the world to that.
killer abs. Yes, the time has come to work on my upper body, especially if I’m not going to have an unseemly farmers tan. I haven’t decided how to do this yet. I have dumbbells but I tried them before and didn’t like them much. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I won’t like anything I try to achieve this goal. It will be an interesting challenge.
eat better. This means fewer Bugles and saying no when offered candy. Currently, I tend to say yes except you can’t hear the actual word because I’m already shoving the candy into my mouth.
learn to swim. Haha, no. I’m not trying that again! Well, maybe. But only if I can learn with people who really can’t swim, not the bunch of cheaters I was grouped with when I took lessons in 2009.
That covers my health-oriented goals. Now onto being a better person in various ways.
write 1,000 words a day. No exceptions except under extraordinary circumstances like every keyboard, pen, pencil and other writing instrument in the world suddenly disappear and even then I could scratch out words in the dirt with a sturdy twig. These 1,000 words are to be fiction, so blog posts don’t count.
read at least 32 books. I’d love to bump this to 52 and do a book a week but I simply can’t read that fast. Maybe I could make speed reading a 2018 goal.
be a positive influence to others. I have no specifics on this. I’ll just try to think before I post, be nice and smile (but not in a creepy sort of way).
win the lottery. I’d spend the money wisely, I promise!
That’s good for now. If I think of more I’ll add them and I’ll try to re-visit the list periodically to see how I’m doing. I expect tears.
