Resolution Number '09

[athelind]

A year ago today, I did something I rarely do: I wrote down an explicit list of New Year's Resolutions. The other half of that tradition, of course, is to sit down at year's end and evaluate my progress.

2008 Report Card:

1. Be more social. Grade: F. quelonzia and I started off with all good intent: we went to the first couple of Further Confusion staff meetings, and I even signed up to be the Species Track Lead. mythos_amante invited me to a Sketchbook Jam Day one weekend, and that went well -- but by April, Quel and I had both retreated even further into our cocoons than before. I dropped off of Staff (though I'm still going to be giving my usual panels, fear not). If we'd "fallen off the face of the planet" in previous years, this year, we took a slow boat to Barnard's Star, and most of it in suspended animation.
   
   On the other claw, my overall human contact has increased dramatically, thanks to working retail (see 3, below). That helps a lot, really; I'm occasionally surly and burned out when I come home, but I'm not spending much time curled up in a scaly ball of existential angst anymore.
   
   
2. Kick the exercise up a notch. Grade: C-. My eating habits backslid horribly, and my weight crept back up to 220. I haven't been walking as much lately. Aerobic exercise? Pfeh. The one time my heart rate got significantly above resting in the last two months, I went in for an EKG.
   
   However, on the plus side, I'm on my feet 5 to 8 hours, 4 days a week, and lugging heavy boxes around at least one or two of those days. My feet are reaping the benefits of all that standing, too; they ache a little when I get home, but I haven't seen a blister in months. We'll see how they weather FC...
   
   
3. Get a job that lasts more than three months. Grade: B-. I've been working at the local comics-and-games store for seven months now, and that does count as employment. Part-time, minimum-wage employment, yes, but consistent, part-time, minimum-wage employment
   
   I think I may have managed to break some kind of record on short-term employment: technically, I am still the Candidate of Choice for that position that I interviewed for back in July. However, the negotiations for the project that I'd be getting hired to do have been stalled since August -- but they haven't turned me down yet, and I've been checking in regularly. That almost counts as holding a job for negative months.
   
   
4. Learn new stuff. Grade: C+. I didn't teach myself GRASS, MySQL, or learn much more about Linux, all of which I'd enumerated under this resolution. I did, however, do a lot of social, political, historical, and political reading this summer and fall, and not just for the obvious reasons. I picked up some new mental lenses with which to view the world, and that's always a plus.
   
   
5. Crank up the creativity. Grade: C. Working weekends, ill-timed illnesses, and just plain Life kept my Mutants & Masterminds game from establishing any kind of regular schedule, but despite that, we did manage a major adventure or two, a couple of minor "brawl for brawl's sake", any number of Pure RP sessions, and... yes, you know, Way Too Much Time Developing Background Material does count on the creative front.
   
   Other Tangible Work, though? Not so much. I did manage to maintain some momentum on drawing, early in the year, and even tried my hand at some 3D art, but I pretty much pooped out by April, as I mentioned above. Writing? Some vague story outlines, but nothing much, really.
   
   I did come up with an idea for a web comic, and even put a decent amount of development into it. I need to get back to that, even if my drawing skill are sub-par; the whole point of trying for a simple, gag-based comic is to draw regularly so I improve. Again, nothing since May there, really.
   

Okay, so that's a GPA of 1.8 for the year. Honestly, I've had worse semesters. If I'd sustained the creative burst past the middle of the year, I'd grade myself higher.

So, let's redefine these resolutions for 2009:

1. Be more social. I need to remember that this is my resolution, not quelonzia's. If I want to spend time with people, and she just wants to stay home, I can go out anyway. Really. She's said so.
   
   
2. Kick the exercise up a notch. Minimum goal: get a new bike, ride it semiregularly. Preferred goal: ride to work at least a couple of times a week.
   
   
3. Get a job in my field that lasts more than three months. No more getting off on a technicality, buster!
   
   
4. Learn new stuff skills. That MySQL book's been sitting around for a year now. GRASS is still on my system, as is The GIMP. There are a lot of powerful tools in Ubuntu and Linux in general that I'm slothing around; I should at the very least write up a cheat sheet for commands like grep and start using them regularly.
   
   
5. Crank up the creativity. Lots of options here:
   1. The M&M game is still rolling; I need to build up more momentum with it.
   2. I've got an LJ and a wiki as campaign resources, and a few other gaming-related ideas to hammer out; that's a better way to spend the idle minute here and there than getting lost in links on TV Tropes.
   3. Webcomic! By FC 2010, at least some of you should know the answer to the question, "WTF is Walt The Fox?"
   4. Writing! A certain Christmas present has been tickling the long-dormant prose centers in my brain. For years, now, I've been certain that my Magnum Opus would work best in a comics format; while I still think that's true, it's not the only format it lends itself to.
   5. Other Creative Options As The Bug Bites Me.

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