Goals

I’m not a big believer in New Years Resolutions — if a resolution is worth making, there is no point in waiting for an arbitrary date change. And a resolution made just because the date has changed, probably isn’t worth making.

That said, there are some things that I do need to improve upon.

The first of these is my weight. Although I’ve never been much of an exercise type person, I have been relatively active for most of my life. However, over the past decade or so, this has become less true and middle-age spread has started to set in. Back in October, my partner bought me a hybrid smartwatch and I was forced to face up to just how inactive I had become. I’m not going to cut down on my eating or drinking but I have made some changes to ensure that I walk further and more frequently — and it seems to be having an effect. So I now have to keep this up — seven more kilos to go.

I also want to catch up on my embarrassingly large pile of unwatched DVDs. I have accumulated a significant number of books and DVDs over the years and, with the onset of fatherhood, have found that I have a lot less time to read and watch films. For the books, I have very nearly caught up — commuting by train helps a lot — so now I need to find time to catch up on that pile of films. For some of them, the boys are now old enough that we can watch them together; for the rest, I shall have to step away from the internet a little sooner when Fridays come around and put a film on instead.

Since I have pretty much caught up on my pile of unread books, I shall be both adding to it and attempting to read more books. In 2018, I read 26 books — I 2019 I am aiming to read 30. You can see how close I get to this by following me on Goodreads.

And finally, I want to get better at Go. This is a game I started playing back in 2017 and I’m still terrible. Go may well be the perfect abstract game — the rules are incredibly simple and anyone can learn them — but the strategies that can be employed are fiendish. I’m getting better though — I still lose a lot more games than I win, but at least I now know why I keep losing. More practice is needed, more books must be read and more people must be badgered to play and hopefully, by the end of the year, I will have improved on my utterly awful 25k ranking on OGS.

Lists like this are never comprehensive, but this one will do for now. So all that remains is for me to wish a Happy New Year to anyone who visits this site. Hopefully 2019 will be an improvement on 2018.