Hello 2013

This year has been insane, monumental… overwhelming. Two of the Podcasts from the Maximum Fun network both celebrated 2012 as a year for getting things done, and getting yours. “My Brother, My Brother, and Me” embraced 2012 as 20-does, in which they encouraged people to “get it done.” On “Jordan, Jesse Go!” the hosts declared the motto of 2012 “More Powerful Than Ever: Going Ape.”

Last year probably represents the biggest changes I’ve ever had... it was a huge amount of life experience crammed into a tiny year and I’m overwhelmed and burnt out by all of it. It’s as if I played catch up and then jumped ahead of where I should have been all within the same few months.

I’m not sure how to describe the total of what happened in 2012 in any kind of coherent way. I’m the same person I was a year ago in most ways, but at the same time I feel very different from even six months ago.

In 2012, I entered my first long term relationship; purchased by first new car; got a promotion to a much more exciting and high paying position, and purchased a my first home which marks the first time living on my own..

There is nothing really much more to say. I took got extremely lucky with some of it, and most of it I just pushed forward and took what I wanted.

Of course, some things suffered. I haven’t posted a blog post on Otaku in Review since October and haven’t been writing much outside of the “HEY LOOK AT MY HOUSE” posts on this blog. I also haven’t been seeking out any photography in the last few months…other than “ OH HEY, I BOUGHT A HOUSE.” Those hobbies have been replaced with learning how to paint and maintain a condo that is mine now… also paying for it.

I also kind of… let my diet fall apart at the end of the year with all the holidays and other distractions. So I’m at the weight I was when 2012 started. So the year 2013 will be the year that I not only endeavor to drop to my goal weight but hopefully learn how to adopt healthy eating habits. Low-carb dieting is how I lost the bulk of my weight but that really isn’t how I want to eat for the rest of my life.

So the general things I promise myself to do every year still stand. Fix my sleep schedule; which is a constant problem; get better organized, write more, take more photographs, and lose weight.

I do want to add another goal to this year: Go completely paperless. Not in getting rid of books or other such things but scanning mail and getting rid of it, moving to digital notebooks exclusively, using Evernote to transmit hand written notes. I don’t think “going paperless” means getting rid of all paper, but hand written notes should be catalogued digitally and then destroyed because there is no effective way to store and search it. So that is what I’m going to work on accomplishing this year: dump as much paper from my life as possible.

Happy New Year! Hope your 2012 was as great as mine and I hope you accomplish your goals for 2013!

New Year's Resolutions 2012

I tend to make New Year’s Resolutions that I forget about by halfway through January and so to prevent that, I decided to put them down in writing and that way I can come back to it at the end of the year and see how I did. The main problem with vague resolutions is that they are hard to measure, so I will make them as specific as possible. My most successful New Year’s Resolution was in 2010 when I vowed to avoid “Any fast food with a dollar menu” and so I managed to avoid Burger King, McDonald's, and Wendy’s for an entire year. Having such a specific goal forced me to stick to it and hopefully putting my goals down in writing will have the same effect.

1. Lose sixty pounds

This year I started on a strict diet thanks to a weight loss contest that started at work. When it began I decided that this was the jumping off point I needed, and so I dove right in. Now, about eleven months later, I’ve lost seventy pounds; more than 20% of my body weight; and feel better than I have in my useful memory. But, unfortunately, there is a lot of work left to go and while a steady 266 is far better than where I was I still have a long way to go. So I think losing another sixty pounds in a year is a reasonable goal and will get me closer to being healthy and remaining healthy.

2. Write consistently

Yup, a vague goal. I hope to write at least one blog post per week here, even if it is a video with a bit of commentary, and a post up on Otaku in Review at the very least once every two weeks. I would also like to spend more time working on my fiction than I did in 2011, which honestly was almost nonexistent. In 2011 I thought more about what blogging format I wanted to use than actually writing content. Now that things are set up the way I want I’m going to just work on my craft.

3. Take as many photos as possible

I started to take photography seriously as a hobby in 2011 but I still don’t get out and take photos as much as I should. So in 2012 I want to not only just take photos with less abandon with my camera phone but make sure to have my DSLR on me more often so I can take it out and start taking photos if the urge comes over me. Also I want to make sure I take more photos on occasions I do take out my camera, because there is no reason to hold back. This is especially true at conventions more than anywhere else.

4. Time management

One serious flaw I have is my lack of time management. I go to sleep too late, wake up too late, and waste my idle time. So part of my goal for time management is to wake up early, go to bed early, stick to a set schedule and not waste idle time. Idle time is death and even a few minutes is time I could be reading, writing, watching something, or playing a game. The more I get done in a day the better!

So those are four goals that I think are attainable for the coming year. I’m getting older, and it’s about time I start getting some important things together before it’s too late. Hopefully, these goals will allow me to take some steps in the right direction.

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