2018 Goals

05 Mar 2018

I set myself some goals at the beginning of this year. Now seems like a reasonably good time to reflect on why I’ve chosen them and how well I’m progressing with them. I want to figure out if they’re realistic and if they’re worthwhile. If they’re not, I want to figure out what I should change.

Let’s get down to it.

Read 20 Books

I’m not reading as voraciously as I once did, and I’d like to fix that by building my habit back up. Technical stuff (e.g. a book on how to approach certain programming problems) not included in the count as I don’t read those linearly.

Not including short stories and comics, I’ve read 3 novels so far, but I need to read 2 books per month to be on-track. I need to catch up!

My current book is Ursula Le Guin’s The Disposessed and am itching to read some of it whenever I get the chance, so it’s not that I lack motivation. The thing I lack is time.

Go Vegetarian

I’ve been sort-of vegetarian for a few years, avoiding meat and eating it as an occasional treat or when it’s the only option (e.g. at family meals). I’m curious to see what happens when I push the boat out.

I haven’t noticed the switch, to be quite honest. Life has continued much as before. I’ve eaten meat once because my brother invited me around for dinner and I forgot to tell him I’d gone fully veggie.

Learning Swedish

I’ve been learning Swedish using Duolingo for a couple of years now, and I’m still not a confident speaker or reader. Clearly, work is to be done.

Reach 100% fluency on Duolingo
Read some Swedish books
Hold conversations in Swedish without running away

I’ll manage this one.

Do Some Short Courses

Last year I enjoyed attending a couple of short courses run by Edinburgh University, and would quite like to do some more this year. I’m not sure if this will happen, but I’m okay to let it slide.

Post On Here Every Week

Posting makes me feel good, but I suck at getting on with it. This is another case where I just need to manage my time and focus much better. You know, it’s that simple…

Release Quarrel on itch.io

This is a big one, I hope not too big. There will be some small variety of enemies to shoot, some small number of levels, and some sort of story for people to complete.

Release Quiver 1.0

Another big one. Hopefully once I’ve released Quarrel I will be able to say ‘this is version 1 of Quiver’ and feel comfortable packaging a release up and inviting others to make games with it. If not, the release of Quarrel will still be a big milestone and a good point at which to start using some kind of versioning system (I guess SemVer?).

Make a Podcast

Me and Natalie have had this idea for a podcast in which we sort-of ‘Let’s Play’ our way through various Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books such as Fighting Fantasy classics like Deathtrap Dungeon and Citadel of Chaos. To make this achievable, I minimized the requirements:

5 episodes
Each about 30 minutes long
Released when we get them done rather than on a schedule

Natalie, we need to work on this!

Miniatures!

Finish assembling and painting my miniatures pile o’ shame. Then I can get new ones! And paint those! I have no worries about this one. If there’s something I reliably find myself wanting to be doing, it’s hobbying.

This year’s going to be a very busy one professionally and personally, so I fully expect a few of these to slip (even more, in some cases). We’ll check back in June.