Tuesday, December 30, 2014

End of Year Update on Goals

With the Christmas Game taking place yesterday, I'm now unlikely to make any meaningful progress on any of my goals. Therefore, since I will have several things to post tomorrow, I thought I'd make a head start on the end-of-year wrap-up with my final update on this year's goals:

  • Weight: The first entry is also the worst, I'm afraid: once again I made no progress whatsoever here.
  • Work: This goal was a success, with 2014 seeing me consolidate the good work I did in 2013. Although the last two months proved to be a major slog, the hard work paid off, and I ended quite strongly again. Success!
  • Books: I passed the target of 60 books a few weeks ago, and will finish the year at either 62 or 63 (the former being more likely). I'll post the list tomorrow. Success!
  • Games: This one failed, but only just. I did indeed complete the "Star Wars: Imperial Fist" campaign, although this ended in somewhat disappointing style (actually, the last session was very enjoyable; it was just the lead-up to that that wasn't great). I also ran a short-lived D&D 5e game, but that only made two sessions before again failing. And two of the three planned one-shots didn't happen: "A Lament for Lustivan" failed to draw a quorum at its third and final attempt, and "Ultraviolet: 2XS" disappeared without even a whimper. On the other hand, I did get to play in two sessions of "Numenera" and one of "GUMSHOE", completing that part of the goal, and the year ended very strongly with a successful Christmas Game ("Firefly: Inglorious", for the Firefly RPG). So a narrow failure, with a positive ending.
  • Maintenance: This was done, reopened, done, reopened... and ends the year done. There will be some work needing done on the flat next year (getting the roof fixed, hopefully in January, then lots of little jobs, and a big redecoration). But the goal itself was completed quite handily.
  • Computer: This was completed quite suddenly when my laptop suddenly died on me. This was a fault in the screen, which meant that the hard drive survived, which in turn meant that I didn't lose anything of any significance (possibly a few emails, but even then it was just a few, and nothing vital). Besides, I had backups, so any risk was always minimal. Success!
  • Money: This was also achieved, with me finally paying back the money I owed Dad from buying my car back in August. Of course, this was paid off just in time for the car to get written off when the clocks changed, but that's just coincidence, I'm sure. Anyway, success!
  • Non-Goal #1: Band: I didn't set a goal for band, but I did indicate that I mostly just wanted to enjoy the season. By that metric, I failed. However, there were lots of positives for the band, and we end the year strongly. So, I'm hopeful things will improve.
  • Non-goal #2: The Bible: I also didn't set a goal regarding this, but at the start of 2014 I did set out on a programme of Bible reading, using Don Carson's "For the Love of God". I was a little concerned with this that if I ever missed a day then that would fail, but I'm pleased to report that I've actually completed all but one of the daily readings, with one day to go (the one I've not yet done is, of course, the one for tomorrow). So that will succeed.

So, that's one disaster and one narrow failure, plus one non-goal mixed bag. Stacked up against that there five goals and one non-goal succeeded. All in all, a pretty strong year.

For next year I'll have another set of goals, though I suspect this will be slightly less extensive. In particular, I'll be redoubling my efforts on the weight front, and will want to look again at what I'm doing with regard to gaming. But I doubt that there will be any real surprises in the mix!

Oh, one more thing: this is the 1,200th post on this blog. So add that milestone to the successes for the year!

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