Year in Review: 2017

Let’s just get it out of the way, this year sucked. While I personally didn’t feel any of the negative impacts of our embarrassment of a federal government, I know plenty of people who did and it’s been one frustration after another. It was virtually impossible not to get absorbed in watching the flaming spectacle, so I’m not surprised at how little I actually got done this year. It’s hard to get motivated to advance yourself when you see so many people getting kicked down and there’s nothing you can really do about it.

On the plus side, the tide appears to be turning in the right direction. We won’t know until the end of this year if the country truly wants to see things change, but at least for now we have a year of fighting experience that will help in the months to come. We have endured a lot and I have hope that this year will be better. We have to be better. I have to be better as well.

2017 in Summary

So a year ago I said that 2017 was going to be my proving year, the year that determines if my life is going to keep advancing or get stuck in a rut for a long time to come. I don’t know how true that is going to be, it felt like I took some steps forward and some steps backward, so I ended up back where I started. This disappoints me to some degree, but it also means that I don’t have to play catch up in the coming year.

In terms of advancing, the biggest thing that happened to me was switching teams and my job role at work. I have moved out of testing and I could not be happier about it. I am also pleased to be on a team that is building things that people in the organization appreciate and are excited about. I know that I was excited about things on my old team a year ago, but, as is often the case, things changed drastically and I didn’t see a bright future ahead there. I am sad to be out of the game development side of Amazon, but my current work is significantly more rewarding, so I have no regrets.

At home, things have largely stayed the same. We didn’t have to move this year, so we could just focus on making our townhouse better, and we are still very happy with where we are at. We also spent a good amount of time helping make improvements to the house we will likely be moving into in the future.

This year we focused on visiting new cities within the US with our vacation time. We visited Chicago in the summer, which was a lot of fun, with the highlight of seeing Hamilton. Just as an aside, that musical was the experience of the year for me. Seeing it was much more powerful than I expected it to be, and not a day has gone by since that I haven’t thought about it. I’ve listened to the soundtrack dozens of times and it still causes me to choke up from time to time. We will be seeing it again when it comes to Seattle and I could not be more excited.

Our other trips were focused around attending more PAX conventions outside of Seattle. We went to PAX South in San Antonio in January and PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia in November. San Antonio is a cute little city, and PAX South was a great time, it felt so much like old PAX and we are stoked to go again next week. PAX Unplugged had a similar feel, though I didn’t get to do as much as I enforced for the first time. Working at PAX ended up being more rewarding than I thought it would be, and I’m eager to do it again in the future. Philadelphia itself wasn’t much to write home about though. It was hard to be impressed when we had just come from five days in New York City, which was incredible. NYC has immediately become my second favorite city in the US behind Seattle. After PAX Unplugged we just wanted to go back there instead of home. Though I doubt it will happen, I could see myself happily living there for a few years.

On the going backwards side of things, my health has gotten worse over the year. Again, it has been hard to be motivated to be good when you are worried and frustrated a lot. I have also had difficulty adjusting to some of the changes I made. First, I ended up quitting the gym I was going to (OrangeTheory) because it was a hassle to get to since moving away from downtown and I felt like I had hit a plateau with it. Between that and not running anymore since hurting myself in 2016, I lapsed pretty bad in my exercise. After a few months of inactivity, I signed up for a CrossFit gym close to home, which I like a lot, but finding the right time to go has also been a struggle since their schedule is not as convenient and the workouts are more intimidating with my lack of fitness. The end result is that I’ve gained weight since a year ago and I feel worse in general. This is going to be an area of focus for me this year.

The last trip I made this year was just for myself, I went to a week-long bootcamp for self-improvement down in Los Angeles. On the whole, it was an amazing experience and I learned a lot. It was really rewarding seeing how much I was able to do in just a week, particularly with getting out of my comfort zone. Plus I met an excellent group of guys who I am proud to know and call friends. However, it has not ended up changing my life in the ways I had hoped, and that is entirely on me for not continuing the momentum I came back with. It is something that I would love to get back to doing this year, but there are some other things I need to fix before I can do that.

And then there’s the whole consume less, produce more goal that I set for 2017. We will get to that in more depth later, but suffice it to say that I utterly failed.

In the end, I am not happy with how 2017 turned out. Yes, plenty of good things did happen, some of my best memories in fact. But at the end of the year, I know that I haven’t taken care of myself physically or mentally this year, and I’m disappointed in myself for that. Hopefully I can use this disappointment as motivation to do better this year. I have already started making some adjustments, so I just need to buckle down and push forward.

Favorite Games

Horizon: Zero Dawn - This is the best game I played this year, hands down. It is rare to have a game where I enjoyed every bit from start to finish, but Horizon managed to do just that with great mechanics, a consistent challenge, and a fascinating setting with engaging characters. I haven’t had time to get around to the DLC yet, but I eagerly await that, and I hope to see a sequel of some kind in the future.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - Another year, another Uncharted game, and to no one’s surprise I enjoyed the heck out of it. It doesn’t come anywhere near the greatness of Uncharted 4 from last year, but it is a fun romp with good ideas that I hope get integrated into future Naughty Dog games. The only real negative I can say is that, unlike the other games in the series, I don’t see myself ever coming back to it again later. Being a smaller adventure, it just doesn’t have the meat I want in something I come back to again and again.

Rise of the Tomb Raider - Came to this one a bit late, but it is an excellent game. It took everything the last game did well and improved upon them, resulting in a compelling adventure that I was happy to spend a lot of time in. I do have some quibbles, mainly that there were too many side quests and the controls didn’t feel as tight as the last game, which led to some frustration. But on the whole I think they did an excellent job and this is one I would not mind coming back to again in the future.

Favorite Movies/TV Shows

Baby Driver - I honestly find it surprising that this ended up ranking as my favorite movie of the year. I really enjoyed this movie and want to see it again, but it didn’t give me things to think about like most of my favorite movies do. Still, I didn’t see any other movie this year that exhilarated me in the same way. It is a movie dripping with style, character, and tension, which are always welcome to me.

John Wick - Yeah, we are really late to this one, but it is a great film and deserves mentioning here since we did see it this year. The only reason we haven’t also watched the sequel is because we are lazy and it wasn’t freely available at the time. It will likely be on this list next year if it’s of equal quality.

The Breadwinner - I was hoping to like this more than I did, since it is from the same people as Song of the Sea, which I loved. I did like the movie and I think it’s worth seeing for the message it provides, it was just missing something I can’t quite place my finger on. The main reason it is on this list is because of how it made me feel emotionally and how it stayed with me.

Your Name - This is actually very close to being my top movie of the year, but it falls just short. It is without a doubt my favorite Makoto Shinkai movie and probably the best anime film I’ve seen in years. I absolutely loved the first half of the movie, but it goes a bit long and astray in the second half, which keeps it from being my favorite movie of the year. I do intend to get it and watch it again to see how much more I’m able to get from it having seen it once.

Favorite Books

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind - This is easily my book of the year. It is absolutely fascinating and left me with a lot to think about. This is one of those books that I feel should be a staple of education at the high school or college level. It has a lot to say about humanity from both a historical view and a philosophical view, so it would be nice to see it get discussed by more people.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - The movie version of this story has always been my favorite of Miyazaki’s films, and the manga version may just be my favorite manga from any author (Akira still ranks higher in my mind at the moment, but it is subject to change). The artwork is stunning and rich with detail, the story is riveting, and I just adore Nausicaä as a character. The world and other characters get a lot more time to blossom here as well and I enjoy them a lot more as a result. It was a long time coming since I’d wanted to read it for at least 15 years, and it did not disappoint.

Goals

As it turns out, when you set a nebulous goal with no specific targets, you don’t tend to stick to it very well. As mentioned earlier, the only goal I had this year was simple: consume less, produce more. I cannot think of how I could have done this worse than did. Instead of consuming less, I consumed significantly more than I did the previous year and I didn’t produce much of anything outside of work.

So this year, let’s be smarter and do the proper targeting for my goals like I had in the past. This year my focus is going to be on fixing the problems I introduced for myself during 2016. Once those are handled, I figure the rest will come in time.

Get Below 200 Pounds - Yes, I understand that weight is not directly correlated to how healthy you are as a person, but I’m going to use it as an indicator. The fact is that this past year my weight has slowly crept up to a level I haven’t seen in several years and I feel awful a large part of the time because of it. Eating poorly messes with my body and brain so I’m not able to be as productive as I want, nor can I exercise the way I think I should. So the goal here is to fix the eating habits and set aside more time for exercise, with losing weight as the easiest way to confirm that I’m on the right track. I’ve been below 200 pounds in the last few years, so I know it’s possible and I know I can get there again.

Reduce Distractions - I think more than anything, this is what killed my productivity this year. Between things like checking Twitter constantly for updates on what fresh hell was brewing up that day and getting sucked into YouTube channels with dozens of two hour long videos, I lost a lot of time to reading and watching things that didn’t help me in any significant way. These were particularly problematic at work, which is already distracting enough without the assistance of external forces. I don’t really have a set goal in mind here since it’s not an easy thing to quantify, but I feel like I will know it when I see it. At the very least I am going to try banning these distractions from work and keep them limited to certain times while at home.

Focus Fire - This also doesn’t have a specific goal in mind, but it’s a continuation of something I’ve been working on for years. Historically one of my biggest problems with completing things is that I see something new and want to try it out. I do this constantly, so when something new grabs me, the thing I was working on gets put aside for months or years. Another aspect of this is that when given many choices, I can’t commit to anything so nothing really gets done. There are a few things that can help with these. First, reducing the distractions as mentioned above, that gives me more time to consume and work on the things I want to (games, books, movies, etc.). Second, I have recently implemented a randomizer system to determine what to consume next, so I don’t have the decision paralysis anymore, and it helps keep my mind on that thing the system selected for me. Third, having dedicated time to consume things seems weird to many people, but it’s something that’s helped me a lot in the past, so I will be bringing it back in limited amounts. Once the systems are in place, I just need to force myself to let it guide me.

I think that’s enough ambition for one year. Obviously the focus for this year isn’t so much advancement as it is get back to a way of living I’m happy with. I have no doubt that things will change here and there as the year goes on, but this is a good place to start. Last year I said that the consume less, produce more thing will be so simple that I won’t need to write it down and reference it, but that didn’t work that well. So this year I will be putting these goals in my face on a weekly and daily basis to make sure they are never far from my mind. This is really taking advantage of the habits I’ve already established and using them to keep myself on the right path.

I will be better this year.

Year in Review: 2016

Oh 2016. A year that will truly live in infamy. I don’t think I need to contribute anything more to what has already been said about it, but I’m going to speak a few words about it anyway.

First, the seemingly endless deaths of beloved celebrities. I will not tell other people that they should feel bad about mourning someone they have (likely) never met, that is not my place and I think having that kind of attachment to someone’s work is a wonderful thing. I personally didn’t get upset or sad at any death this year, I didn’t have those attachments. So while I didn’t put people down, it did get a little tiresome to me, especially when there were more important issues to worry about. I fear what the future holds in store for us when the number of celebrity deaths gets higher and higher each year. It is inevitable. The number of famous people increases every year as our world gets bigger and more connected. So no, 2016 is not the worst year, it is just the first blow.

Second, and more importantly, the election was literally the most disappointing thing I’ve ever experienced. And as I’m writing this, just a couple days after the inauguration, the dread we had in November has become horrible reality. It is really hard to look back at last year and remember anything good about it because of how it ended and how it continues to tear through our nation. Watching the Women’s March across the country did a lot to give me hope for what we can do to fight back, but I hate the fact that we have to keep fighting this fight. I hate that with all the technology and access to information we have now, people seem to only get more insular and protective of their failing ideologies. I like to think that they know in their hearts that they are fighting a losing battle and so they refuse to go down quietly. And make no mistake, there is no doubt in my mind that we will eventually win this fight. I just hate that we have to suffer potentially four years of setbacks and irreparable damage in order to start moving forward again. I feel like this is going to be my biggest challenge going forward, standing up for what I think is right. I’ve never been a courageous man, but I’m going to need to learn if I want to live with myself.

2016 in Summary

Looking back at last year’s review, I said that I felt that I had been preparing for something for two years with the hopes of fully unleashing onto 2016. I still don’t know if I would say that I got everything done in the last year that I wanted to. In fact, I didn’t manage to accomplish a single goal I set for myself, but we’ll get to that. On the other hand, I am pretty satisfied with the year as a whole (outside of the obvious above).

Things at work have been stable, which was a nice change compared to 2015. I got put onto a small strike team focused on some pretty lofty goals, and we did a great job getting those things done. It got a bit bad near the end of the year, but I rarely felt like I was wasting my time at work like I was during the previous year. I feel like being back on the main team with some cool projects coming down the line will make for an even more productive and rewarding 2017.

The big event that happened this year for us was moving, yet again. This time though, as long as we don’t get kicked out, we intend to stick around for a long time. We knew going into our last place in 2015 that it was going to be a temporary solution to get around a crappy situation, but now we are in a better place that we’re happy with. We do miss the area around downtown, but we are still close enough that going there is easy, so it’s a minor loss compared to the gains.

We also managed to spend a fantastic week in Hawaii near the end of the year to get away for a little while. And this year is the first I’ve felt since I started working at Amazon where I am totally secure in where we’re going financially. Going into the third year of employment, I got some big stock drops and boy were they lucrative. Granted most of the money is going towards a future down payment on a house, but it’s nice to know that we have it if needed.

My health hasn’t been doing as hot as the rest of my life though. I felt amazing in 2015 with the half-marathons and such, gearing up to do a full marathon this year. But then I got (what I assume to be) plantar fasciitis in my left foot two months before the marathon, so there was no way I was going to be able to do that, and I still haven’t fully recovered from it. As a result, I’ve fallen pretty badly off the wagon and I’m struggling to get back into shape. At least I haven’t gotten worse, I weigh exactly the same starting 2017 as I did starting 2016. So that is an area to work on again.

On the whole, I feel like I did a lot better this year than I did in 2015. It is just really hard to see those positives after such a horrible end to the year. In a strange way, I think this coming year is going to be my proving year. It will be the year when I determine if my life is going to keep advancing or if I’m going to get stuck in a rut for years to come.

One last thing I want to bring up before moving on is that the end of the year did have one very positive impact. Ever since I got out of college I’ve put aside some money for charity every month, which I collect and donate during December, mostly to Child’s Play. This year was different as I was able to give an order of magnitude higher than previous years, and I felt wonderful doing so. I really hope that my contributions go towards great causes and I intend to keep up the pace going into 2017, when we probably need it the most.

Favorite Games

Uncharted 4 - This was undoubtedly my favorite game of the year, by a long ways. I wrote up an entire review on it expressing my thoughts, but it’s worth repeating that the game is fantastic, definitely the best made game in the series and one of the finest games I’ve ever played. I intend to play it many times in the future.

Final Fantasy IV - While I failed horribly at my FF 12 for 12 Challenge, I did at least come away with finally playing this fantastic RPG for the first time. It was by far the best of the FF games I played last year, and it was fun to see how this game kicked off what we know FF as today. I doubt I will play FF 1-3 again at this point (though kids may change that), but I definitely see myself playing this again in a couple years if I get the itch.

Ratchet and Clank (2016) - I think in terms of pure fun, this is the winner of the year for me. I never played the original game, so this felt completely new to me, and it has so much polish and engaging combat that it was hard to put down. I really need to get back to playing the games I’ve missed. I had completely forgotten just how fun these games are, but this has rekindled the fire.

Monument Valley - I don’t want to spend too much time on this because it wasn’t a long experience, just two play sessions in total, but I have to mention how much I liked this game. It really felt like a game that was made just for me, both in the puzzle aspect as well as the aesthetic. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did, but it ended up blowing my mind for a couple days. Would love to see a sequel.

The Beginner’s Guide - I want to give this one an honorable mention because of the way it made me feel once it was over. I had never experienced a game quite like it before, and it opened my eyes to what games can do. I suppose I need to spend more time on indie games since they tend to do more weird, outside-the-box stuff like this.

Heroes of the Storm - Normally I only post games I’ve finished here, but I would be remiss to ignore this as it probably took up more of my time than any other game this year (outside of maybe Rocksmith 2014, but I covered that years ago). This is my first foray into MOBAs, and I’m rather happy I went with this one. It is a lot of fun, most of the time. I generally only play with AI, so I can get royally screwed by my team through no fault of my own, but I suppose that’s no different than playing with randos. But yeah, this is going to remain a huge part of my gaming time in the coming year as well, as well as digging more into WoW and playing Overwatch with friends.

Favorite Movies/TV Shows

The Hateful Eight - Despite watching this in the first week of the year, it holds up as the most impactful piece of media I saw this year. It is admittedly a combination of a lot of Tarantino’s other films, but it is executed so damn well that I have to hold it up as the best movie I saw this last year. Granted, I didn’t see a lot of other movies, but it is still a fantastic movie regardless of my viewing habits.

Zootopia - Man Disney is really knocking it out of the park lately. I heard so many good things about this and they were all right. I loved this movie, I had a smile on my face from beginning to end. This is definitely going to be in our comedy/feel-good rotation for many years to come.

Top Gear - Yeah, kind of weird to put this on here two years in a row, but it’s really the only good TV we watched this year. Just wasn’t a good year for TV for us I guess. Anyway, we finished this whole series off and it was excellent all the way up to the sad end. I am glad to see that their work on The Grand Tour has been good as well, though that show has more annoying parts to it that I hope they tone down in the second season.

Favorite Books

Game Engine Architecture - Looking back on the list of books I read this year, you would think that I would find something better than a 1000+ page textbook on making game engines, but, alas, here we are. While certainly not the most entertaining book, it was definitely the most fascinating for me, I learned so much it’s kind of ridiculous. And it’s all directly applicable to my job, so double win! Don’t really recommend unless that’s something you want to get into. And get into deep.

Mouse Guard - I’m including all three of the books I read this year since they were read close enough to each other that they blended together in my head. I didn’t read a lot of comics this year, but these stood out the most. They remind me a lot of my childhood and reading the Redwall books, but with stunning artwork to go with the great characters. I got the Legends boxset for Christmas and can’t wait to dig into them.

Hyperion - I only read/listened to 11 fiction books this year (non-comic), and the selection ended up being pretty mediocre overall. This one stands out the most just because it was a lot different from what I expected. It’s a slow-burn, sci-fi story, which I’m finding is more in line with what I like when it comes to sci-fi. It also gave me a lot of ideas for stories of my own, more than any other book this year. I don’t really need to recommend it though since it’s already a classic.

The Nightingale - While I didn’t enjoy this book as much as others, I feel I have to bring it up again because of how relevant it is right now. As I said in my review, there are plenty of books about how the Nazis rose to power, but I don’t think there are many fiction books that dig into what it was like to be part of Nazi-occupied France. What stood out to me more than anything else was how you see the Nazis get worse and worse as the war goes on. They didn’t start out as the Holocaust perpetrators we know them as today, it took a long time to get them there. We really need to make sure we are looking for the same signs in our own government going forward because I dread to see what happens if we ignore them.

Goals

Okay, let’s go back over the goals I had from last year and see how I did (spoilers, I failed).

Post things more often - If you compare this to 2015, you could say that I succeeded since I posted more than I did the previous year, but I don’t think I came up to the standard I wanted. I did a pretty good job overall with this blog between the FF challenge posts and the reviews, but social networking was the other component of the goal, and I totally failed there. This continues to be an issue for me with being uninterested in voicing my opinions, but I think if there is one year for me to break that mental block, this is the year for it.

Run a marathon - As I mentioned before, I sadly got hampered by injury and couldn’t get this done. Once that happened I also lost all momentum for running in general, so I’m kind of done with it. I still like running during workouts, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get back into the long distance stuff I was doing. Maybe 5Ks here and there if there’s a good reason for it, but I’m mostly over this phase now. I don’t think my body is that well suited for it. Not a bad thing, I’m saving more money this way.

Get back on the healthy food track - I still haven’t found a diet that I can maintain. As such, I still go up and down with this all the time. On the plus side, my body has adapted to a point where bad foods make me miserable and I don’t want them anymore, but that doesn’t actually stop me from eating them. I think for this year my focus is going to be on simply not overeating, which tends to be my biggest problem. Sure, eating good things is good, but eating too much is my real roadblock to being slim and healthy again.

Have more fun at home - It’s a bit hard for me to say if I succeeded or failed at this. While I feel I spent spent more time on hobbies this year than the previous year, I actually got a lot less done. So I have to wonder if I actually spent that much time having fun or if that time all got sucked up by other stuff. It’s hard to remember. So, since I honestly can’t say if I succeeded at this, I’m going to say I failed by default.

12 for 12 FF Challenge - Hahahaha, yeah… that didn’t happen. Basically I was doing really well until I got to FF5 and I just hit a major block there. I know now that it was largely because I was playing the worst port I possibly could and it was a painful experience. I’ve restarted the game in the last week on PC and the experience has been significantly better. So I’m looking forward to getting back on this, I suspect that once FF5 is out of the way, the rest of the series will go more smoothly. All the way up to FF15 now, which I’m glad has gotten a good reception.

So yeah, not my best year in terms of goals. Normally I would say that my plan keep pushing on these until I am satisfied with where I’m at on them, but things have changed. The world has changed, and there are really only two goals that I can come up with. Though I wouldn’t call them goals, they don’t have an end game. They are more two parts of a manta that I’m going to try to uphold during the coming year and see where it takes me. And it is a rather simple mantra: produce more, consume less.

Produce more - I’ve toyed with this for many years, but as I said above, I feel like this year is going to be the inflection point that decides the rest of my life. I don’t know why I feel that, but it’s surprisingly strong. So the first part of my mantra is going to be produce more. Produce more quality work for my employer. Write more. Perform more. Create more inspiring works. Publish more opinions. Donate more to help others. Teach more to raise others up. Reach out more. Overall, just be a more positive force in the world.

Consume less - There is certainly a time and place for having fun, and I do not intend to completely forgo that. But I have noticed that my consumption level over the last year has gotten worse, so I need to focus on what is important and not get caught up in the minutia. There are only a couple significant problem areas, but it is a thought process that can provide gains in all areas. The real areas of focus are eating (as I said above) and social media. While I do think social media is important to keep informed, there is also a ton of garbage and duplicated work there, so I need to limit the time I spend on them. I need to work on breaking my phone-related habits, which tend to be my biggest time-sucks away from what’s important. Unfortunately this does also mean that I probably won’t get through as many books or games as I’d like, but at least I’ll know that the time I do devote is for worthwhile pursuits.

And that’s really it. As I said, no real tangible goals this year, but I feel like this is an easier thing to maintain. I’ll admit that a month after I posted my last review, I’d already forgotten what my goals were. But having this mantra is something I can repeat to myself all the time and use it to inform my decisions. At this point, just pointing the needle can be more effective than setting endpoints.

See you again at the end of 2017!

Year in Review: 2015

This year was an interesting one. While I can certainly say that a lot happened, only one thing really stands out. That would, of course, be getting married. Everything else just doesn't seem to matter nearly as much. I suppose that is kind of the intent with a wedding. It should be one of the most memorable days of your life. But I feel like I shouldn't have to rack my brain thinking of all the other things that happened.

In any case, I will do my usual thing of recapping the big events and accomplishments, followed by my favorite pieces of media in the past year, and finish with last year's goals and this year's. Let's go!

2015 in Summary

Looking back at last year's review, I said that 2014 felt like setup for 2015. While I do agree with that, I don't think I fully capitalized on that preparation. In a lot of ways, I still feel like I'm getting ready for something. I know that from a financial standpoint, all of my extra money went into the wedding and honeymoon, so I'm kind of starting from zero again, building up for the next big things to come. But even outside that, I feel like everything else is not quite where I want to be yet.

Lots of big things happened this year. The first one was switching teams at work, twice. One was not planned so much as a forced transition, but shortly afterward I was presented with an opportunity to work on a team closer to my ultimate goals, so I jumped on that and have been there most of the year. That transition was soon followed by another unexpected, and rather unwelcome, event. Our apartment landlord basically kicked us out so that he could renovate the building, and we had to scramble to find somewhere else to live. That, coupled with the weird transitions at work, and the looming costs of the wedding and honeymoon made the first half and then some of the year a lot more stressful than I'd hoped.

As such, my great plans for the year got thrown about a bit and I got more into a holding pattern. My health has largely stayed the same, though my weight has gone up since the move. I did succeed in my goal of running my first half-marathon. In fact, I did two this year. My finances have been on a roller coaster all year, with the end result being back at the loading bay with not much left and waiting for the next set of passengers. So no real growth there, but no losses either.

The second half of the year was much better as things got settled again. I got married and had another fantastic vacation in Europe. I don't feel like I need to recap this one as it was largely similar to the last one, just with Berlin added in. As you can tell from the last post being almost a year ago, I haven't been doing much in the way of documenting or writing this year. I aim to do better about that this year again.

So in the end, it was a good year in some ways, but a bit rough in most. It certainly wasn't bad by any means. I know a lot of friends who have told last year to go F itself, but I'm not in that camp. All things considered, this year turned out well. I already know that this coming year is going to bring more challenges, but I feel like I will be more prepared this time around.

Favorite Games

Rogue Legacy - In terms of pure fun, I think this game wins the year for me. It didn't come out this year, obviously, and I only played it because it was free with PS+. But boy am I glad I did play it. No other game this year made me want to play just one more time from start to finish. I'm pretty sure I ended up beating it five times or so before I finally moved on to other games. I would definitely say this was my favorite game I played this year.

Transistor - Another free game from PS+, my favorite thing about this game was the aesthetic. While I liked the gameplay for the most part, I was much more into the art and the music. Oh man the music. I can't even count the number of times I've listened to the soundtrack. It was a good experience from start to finish (well, aside from the last boss, that wasn't very fun), though not likely one I would do again in the game. I will continue to rock that music though for a long time to come.

Counterspy - There's a bit of a theme here. All three of my favorite games this year were PS+ games. I played four big studio games this year, and none of them matched these three games by small studios. Anyway, this game was a lot of fun too, though frustrating a lot of times. Yeah most of the times I screwed up it was my own fault, but I do feel like there are some situations you get in where you can't really get out of it in a good way. And that's not fun. But on the whole I liked playing this one. Another one with a great theme and bite-size chunks of play that is good for a busy person like me.

Favorite Movies/TV Shows

Top Gear - I'm pretty sure I would be a fool to not put this at the top of my list. My wife and I went through 14 seasons of this show during the year, we just couldn't get enough of it. We still have several more to go, and we just started watching it again after a few months off. I've never been much of a car guy, but this show makes me want to be one. I know I still never will get that into cars, but it doesn't matter. The show is entertaining as hell and I will go to the end just for that.

Legend of Korra Seasons 3 and 4 - The second season was on last year's list, and the rest of the show makes it to this year's. Season 3 is the best one of the bunch in my mind, and probably one of the best seasons of any show I've ever seen. I already cannot wait to revisit this show again in a few years.

Song of the Sea - From start to finish this movie is unique and adorable. The people who made this movie may very well become the next Studio Ghibli if they can continue to make movies like this. Their first movie, Secret of the Kells, was alright, but Song of the Sea does everything to perfection, and I would recommend it to anyone (and I have to many people).

Inside Out - Even knowing that this was Pixar, I did not expect to like this as much as I did. The movie did have its ups and downs, but when it got to the third act, it was rolling and I was in it. When it comes to the movie that made me the most emotional this year, this movie wins hands down.

Favorite Books

12 Years a Slave - I actually started this before the year started and finished it very soon into the year. And despite that, it is still very much in my mind. The story is just so powerful. It never ceases to amaze me just how horrible people can be, but also how kind and enduring. I feel like this should be standard reading for kids (it probably is, I just never heard of it when I was in school).

The Martian - Yep, I jumped on this hype train, though it was well before the movie came out. I haven't actually seen the movie version, but the book was fantastic. The way it is told through mostly diary entries and communications is what really does it for me. Plus the text is smartly written and doesn't seem to care if you don't understand it. I can respect that.

Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained - I'm going to combine these because it's all one story. I do have several issues with these books, namely the ridiculously slow burn to get going and the sheer number of people that you have to juggle in your head, but once it did get going I was hooked. Especially in the second book, there were several times when I literally pumped my fist when something cool happened. I think that's pretty good praise.

Game Programming Patterns - As far as learning books goes (of the 10 I read this year), I think this one left the biggest impression. Making games has always been my passion (I didn't mention it above, but I did actually make a full game this year, though it was just a port of one I'd already made to Unity), and this book was full of great stuff. I am currently making my way through another book about the same topic (it's around 1000 pages, so it's taking a while), and it is just as interesting, so I suspect that will be on the next year in review.

Goals

Looking back at last year, I only mentioned two goals that weren't just carry overs from the previous year. I will go over them briefly.

Spend time working on personal projects every day - While I can't say I did this every day, I did do a pretty good job of it. I mentioned making a song and a game a year ago, neither of which I did (at least, the game I did end up making wasn't the one planned at that time). However, I did do a bit of fiction writing, the aforementioned game, and I also worked on another application that I plan to finish up soon. Both of the programming projects were more as learning things than intending to make something worth putting out there. Maybe this year that will change.

Get better at cooking - I suppose I did this to some degree. A lot of my time this year has been devoted to figuring out ways to make cooking easier to do, some of which have been very effective. So if I were going to continue on this track, I would say the better goal is to reduce restaurant visits as much as possible, and just doing that will improve everything else.

Now, some new ones for this year:

Post things more often - As I've already lamented, I barely wrote anything here this year, despite getting a snazzy new domain and layout and everything. I intend to do more, as well as using social media the way it was intended. If I really want to be better about being social, I need to stop being a lurker and contribute more often.

Run a marathon - I've already signed up for it, so it's going to happen whether I like it or not. I guess the real goal is just to make the experience as painless as possible. I have a few half-marathons leading up to it, so hopefully those will get me in good enough shape to take on the full thing.

Get back on the healthy food track - Yeah, this one seems to be a perpetual problem, but that is largely because I still have yet to find a diet that I can really maintain. It really is just too easy to eat things that are bad for you, even though I know in my mind that doing so leaves me feeling awful. It makes workouts harder to do and I literally feel pain in my back and neck, and sometimes head, when I eat poorly. So my goal this year is to not eat better in order to lose weight. I honestly don't think I have all that much left to lose as is. No, I'm going to focus on eating better just so that I feel better every day instead of having the constant ups and downs. To this end, I am going to try another new food cycling program and see how well that works out. It's going to be from January 1 until January 21 (three week challenge), so I will post again once I've done that.

Have more fun at home - For the last several years, I've berated myself for not being more productive. I have so many things I want to do with my life. I want to make games. I want to tell stories. I want to experience all the great media that life has to offer. I want to do the most with the time I have on this planet. Well, that is good and all, but it doesn't necessarily lead to fun and happiness. During the second half of the year I devoted more time to working on projects, and it was quite successful actually. However, it's still not the kind of balance I want (not that true balance is achievable). I feel like I work enough at work, I don't need to work so much at home too. So this year I'm going to stop feeling guilty for not doing work at home and just do things that I enjoy and have more fun. If I really feel the need to do some extra work, that is fine too, but it should be when I want to rather than a requirement. Yes, I accept that this means I probably won't get as much done as I'd like, but that's okay. I already put in my 40 hours or more at work, and I have a lot to show for it. If I also manage to write a couple stories in between work and enjoying myself, that should just be icing on the cake, not the filling.

12 for 12 FF Challenge - I will have another post about this shortly after this one, but late in December I started getting an itch to get back into RPGs again, Final Fantasy specifically. In the last three years I've only played one RPG, the South Park one, and I liked it, but it didn't fully scratch that itch. But I know the games that will do so: the Final Fantasy series. I have played most of the ones in the main numbered series, but not all of them. And there are several that I haven't played in many years and would like to revisit. So this year, I'm going to play 12 Final Fantasy games in 12 months, or at least attempt to. Again, I will have a longer post about this later and I intend to give weekly updates, plus final thoughts about each game once I complete it. It does kind of seem like adding work to something that should just be fun, but I'm hoping it will have other benefits. Having discussions about the games plus giving me more opportunities to write among them.

I think those are the big ones. Work will continue on as usual, and I continue to learn and grow in that space. Maybe by the end of the year I will make a transition to something even more aligned with my end goals, but I'm not going to count on that as a goal. I suspect that it will be largely unplanned as I have no idea what the coming year will bring with my team. So my focus this year is going to largely be on getting my body to its highest level ever and enjoy myself more.

As far as big events this year go, I already mentioned the marathon, which will be a big deal. There is also going to be another move around the middle of the year, but at least I know that one is coming. And maybe a child coming? We haven't decided on that one yet, but it's certainly on the table.

Here's to a great 2016!

P.S. On the note of posting more often, I have decided that I'm going to actually use my Twitter account for something this year. Mostly I intend to use it for mini-reviews of things I've seen or done, but it will be used for other things too. I'm going to play it a bit by ear. Between that, Facebook, and this site, there will be a lot more of me this year than in the past. That's my goal anyway.

Year in Review: 2014

Looking back at last year’s review, it has been a really long and jam-packed year for me. This will be mostly the same format, but instead of doing just the great stuff, I’m going to do a general summary of how the year went and felt. I also want to go over how I did on last year’s goals before I go into this year’s. Let’s just get right to it.

Summary

If I had to describe this year in one phrase, it would be that this year is just setup for next year. This is not to put down any of the great things that happened or that I accomplished, but most of it is really just contributing to even greater things that are going to happen next year. Last year I ran several races from 5-10K in length, but those are really just getting me ready for the half-marathon coming up this year in June. I got engaged on a fantastic trip to Europe, but that is just the first step towards getting married in 2015. I read a ton of books and practiced many things, learning a bunch, all in the hopes of doing something spectacular in the coming year.

I feel this is all good though. I am a little surprised that I don’t have much to show for this year, but I know in my gut that I’m on the right track, much more so than last year. There were a lot of shifts in my life in 2013, so I spent a good chunk of 2014 getting settled and building up a new foundation for where I want my life to go in the next few years. I understand that marriage is coming this year, and children are not going to be far behind. I would like to be prepared for those shifts so that I don’t have to try to recover as much as I did this last year.

I am definitely happy with all the experimenting I did. Some things have turned out to be huge successes, like using JIRA for tracking my personal projects and signing up for a class-based fitness program instead of a typical gym. Some things didn’t work out so well, but they provided valuable information, and a few of them I’ve been able to modify or come at from a different approach to be more effective. I plan on doing a lot of things in the coming year, so these methods will definitely help me get them done.

Favorite Games

The Last of Us - I only finished four games this whole year, which is probably a record low for me, but I’m definitely glad that this was among them. It’s really the only game I played this year that I enjoyed, and it is easily in my top 5 games of all time. I already loved all of the Uncharted games, and this game is just as good in the gameplay department, but with a story and characters that truly got to my heart. A video game has never made me cry, but this one damn near did. It is truly a unique experience, one that I will be glad to have again and again.

Favorite Movies/Shows

The Lost Room - This is a sci-fi mini-series that only takes a few hours to get through, so there really is no reason for others to see this because it is fantastic. The story isn’t totally original, but the main concept and the way it is executed is amazing. I went into it on blind faith and I’m glad that I didn’t know anything about it as that just made it that much more magical. It’s an incredibly clever show and I highly recommend it.

Kill la Kill - One of the things I wanted to do this year was get back into anime a bit, and this was a good one to bring me back into the fold. I’m not going to say that it’s a great show, it very likely won’t be a classic. But it was lots of fun to watch and I would gladly do so again.

The Grand Budapest Hotel - I really feel like I should include at least one movie in this list, and this was the best movie I saw this year, so that’s why it’s here. Maybe in another year I would have something more up my alley, but I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this movie. It is good enough that I am much more inclined to try other Wes Anderson films (this was my first one).

Legend of Korra Season 2 - Yeah, I know the entire show is over now, but I tend to be late to the party with most things. I will also admit to the fact that I didn’t actually like this season as much as the first one, but it’s still leaps and bounds above most other shows. I can’t wait to watch the rest.

Favorite Books

Steve Jobs/Total Recall - I read almost 50 books this year, so I’m going to group a few of them. I’m not much of a history buff, but listening to these biographies about Steve Jobs and Arnold Schwarzenegger, respectively, was a lot more enjoyable than I thought they would be. What amazing lives those two had (and are still having). I respect them both more in some ways because of these books.

Daemon/Freedom - I had heard on good authority that Daniel Suarez was a good writer, but in reading them I found that I absolutely love his style. His books are fun, fast, and smart. After reading his books, most other authors seem way too slow now. I also read Influx, but I feel like it wasn’t quite a good as these two were.

The Better Angels of Our Nature - This is another book that I wouldn’t have expected to like, but it was utterly fascinating. Not only was it interesting to get the scope of how violence has changed over our history, but it left me in high spirits knowing that we as a species are going in the right direction, regardless of what the news media or others try to tell us. As long as information continues to spread, the world gets less violent. It is a great message to read about and have proven by statistics.

The Satanic Verses - This was another pleasant surprise to me. I had no idea what the book would be about, and that made it all the more enjoyable. I’m not going to say that I loved everything about it, but it was well written, had quirky characters and language, and showed incredible imagination. Definitely one I would recommend to others.

Ready to Run/Bulletproof Diet/Eat That Frog and others - As I said above, I was doing a lot of experimenting this year, and that involved reading a lot of self-help books. Some of them didn’t provide much, but the three I mention here stood out more than the others. Not so much because the information was new or life changing, but because they made me step back and actually analyze myself. Like with Ready to Run, I never really thought about how I stand, but after reading that I realized that even though I stand up straight, the way my legs were aligned was causing issues. Once I started being conscious of it, I can feel the difference in my back and legs when I stand properly. The same goes with the Bulletproof Diet. It is much more about being aware of what I’m eating and how it’s effecting me, rather than being a traditional diet book. That being said, the Bulletproof Coffee in that book as well as the tips on sleeping have created a noticeable difference, so I do plan to incorporate more of that into my life.

Goals

First, let’s go over what I put down last year:

• Keep on the healthy path - SUCCESS - I definitely stuck with it. My eating habits are slow to change, but adding regular exercise and cutting back on drinking have been huge factors in my weight loss and feeling better in the latter part of the year. Fully intend to keep this going.
• Prioritize better - SUCCESS - This is mostly thanks to using JIRA. I have definitely had better focus on what’s important since using it.
• Be frugal - NO CHANGE - I don’t really spend any more or less than I did a year ago, though I have some good savings built up now. That’s mostly just because I’ve had a whole year of higher wages over 2013. And my going out habits also haven’t really changed. Might work on that some more.
• Cultivate positivity - SUCCESS - I like to think I did pretty well at this, though I’m sure there is still room to grow. Mostly I just notice that I don’t get in bad moods as much as I did in previous years.
• Write more - SUCCESS - One of the experiments for this year was to try writing a blog post every week. I was doing pretty well at it, but eventually it got to the point of being a hassle and I reprioritized. It’s hard to say if I will be writing a lot in the coming year, but I would like to think so.
• Compartmentalize work - NO CHANGE - I wouldn’t say that I’ve gotten any better at this since I still waste a lot of time at work (though much lower than the average person) just browsing when I should be working. I also still have trouble relaxing at night when work is being tough. So I still need to work on this.
• Continue focusing efforts - SUCCESS - Again thanks to JIRA, it is much easier to keep myself focused on a smaller number of things than it was before. It didn’t necessarily translate into getting more things done, but the stress is lower.

So I am going to continue working on the above and add a couple more for this year based on what has changed since last year:

• Spend time working on personal projects every day - Now that I have gotten better at prioritizing and focusing my efforts, this year I’m going to work on applying these skills to producing more. Last year I did well with the blog posts, but this year I want to have something more significant to show for it. Right now I’m in the beginning stages of making a cover song entirely by myself and making a game. I might also be able to knock out some short stories while taking breaks from those projects. I’ve had these ambitions plenty of times before, but I really do think I can get somewhere this year with my current habits.
• Get better at cooking - I’ve had this as a goal in previous years, and I think it’s time to bring it up again. Now that I have more knowledge of good foods, it is time to put it to good use.

Whew, that’s a ton of stuff to read over! I’m so long winded sometimes. But anyway, looking forward to what is definitely going to be the best year yet!

Organization and Productivity: Fine Tuning

As promised, this post will mostly be an update to this previous post. What has been going well and what hasn’t worked out. Plus anything else I’ve been doing recently that has been helping me get more stuff done. Let’s get right to it.

Chores

I was already a while into this one when I wrote the first post, so I knew it was going to work out in the long run. And for the last few months, it really has made a difference in how I approach the chores that I don’t like. Dishes in particular are my least favorite chore (yes, even below cleaning the cat box), but knowing that it’s a morning chore takes a lot of pressure off every night. The only issue with the morning block is that if the dishes take longer than normal, or if I get a late start to the morning, it leaves no time for practicing guitar before work, which I always look forward to.

For sure, when it comes to things that you have to do, batching tasks and giving them a set time each day makes it a lot easier to keep on top of them.

Exercise

This is another area that has been going very well. I was still new to Orange Theory at the time I wrote the last post and only going two times a week. Now, both my fiancée are going at least three times a week, and it feels great. With as much as I need to get done, it’s a much stronger motivator to exercise when there is a set time that I must show up for (or risk losing money). I held off on going up from two times a week because I thought that I would go running on the weekends, but that never happened, as I predicted it would. I intend to keep going with my races (up to 10Ks now!) once per month, but the only training I’m going to do for those is with OT.

My advice is the same as before. If you have trouble committing to exercise, sign up for classes. It is a vastly superior option to going solo at the gym.

Using JIRA

I’m so glad I decided to go this route for keeping track of the personal tasks I want to get accomplished, though it has been a struggle finding that sweet spot of how much I should plan to do during the month. After several months, it would appear that on average I can complete 3-3.5 days worth of personal stuff, so around 80-90 hours, or 3 hours per day. That seems logical since an hour of that is listening to audiobooks to and from work, and the other two hours are things like studying French/German (started German since getting back from the trip, and it is significantly easier than French, partly because it’s the language I took in high school) and reading. The time it takes to write and proofread these posts are also tracked in JIRA, plus anything else that takes a worthwhile chunk of time to complete (at least 30 minutes). Normal day to day tasks are not tracked in JIRA, but I do track them either on my weekly list or as reminders if they are time sensitive or need to happen during work hours.

The biggest problem I still have is that I keep putting more tasks in the sprints than I can actually get through. For a while I didn’t know what to do with tasks that were going to take a few months to complete since they don’t fit the sprint model, so I would just put them in there anyway. This makes all of the graphs look awful though. They seem to indicate that I’m not getting as much done as I am, so I just settled on keeping track of these tasks by always having them at the top of the backlog list until they are small enough to be finished off in a month’s time.

I will stop before I put anyone to sleep with details, but it has also proven to be a great tool for keeping me on track with what I want to get done.

Incentive System

Unlike everything else, this ended up being a complete flop. As I suspected quickly after starting, unless you can come up with rewards that work for everyone involved, there are no incentives, so the whole thing just falls apart. I do still think the idea is a good one, it just needs to be rethought for different groups. I can see what I came up with working well if the group is made up of people who are doing the same things and are just competing to see who does the most over a period of time. But since my goals were vastly different from my fiancée’s, there was no real way to make them equal to each other. It was too easy for me to get way ahead of her because of the tasks involved, so she never had a chance to catch up.

In the end, the system is useless if there aren’t reasonable rewards to be had. Neither of us could come up with something since we already do as much for each other as possible without needing an excuse to do so. If I were to do it again, I’d probably do something with coworkers, and the reward would simply be a money pot or something else that everyone pitches into. Really no different from a gambling pool, or some other competition for a prize, but includes a tracking system that everyone can see. And realistically, the other methods I use for tracking are enough to keep me going towards my goals.

New Stuff

Not a whole lot of new things, but there are couple worth mentioning. Most of these have come either from Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy (highly repetitive, but has enough good content to be worth a read) or The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, the book that every other self-help book tries to emulate. Seriously, I had no idea until I actually read it just how much every other book in its genre is just a rehash of what he wrote 25 years ago. It is absolutely worth reading for that reason alone.

One of the biggest takeaways I got from both books is that I didn’t have a really clear vision of what and where I wanted to be in a year, five years, or ten years. They both recommend writing those visions out as concrete goals, and then try to list everything I can think of that will get me one step closer toward those goals. I’ve done that before, a lot of my JIRA tasks are doing just that. But what I didn’t do that they brought to light was that I wasn’t doing a good enough job of prioritizing the goals. I kept thinking about what I felt should get done first, when I should’ve been thinking about which ones will have the most positive impact on me, and focus on those first. A very small difference, but caused a big change in my thinking.

Another good tip that I got is to always plan out my days the day before. I’d heard of doing this in the past, but I didn’t put much stock in it until I saw the common thread in these books and decided that it would be worth a shot. So I started out by just doing it at work, and it helped a bit, though it doesn’t work as well when I’m lacking in things to do, or I get blocked by something/someone else, or there I get a higher priority request that needs to be done that day. It has proven to be a lot more useful at home where I have no shortage of things to do.

The last thing I’ve been trying to get better at is focusing on one big task at a time. I’ve struggled to do this for a long time, so it’s not a new concept to me, but I figured I’d mention it since it’s talked about ad nauseum in those books. As a way to keep myself on a single goal at a time, I have changed my routine such that outside of reading and exercising, all of my free time will be focused on one thing until it is done. So instead of trying to set aside some time for languages, some time for writing, some time for guitar, etc. on a daily basis, I’m going to go all out on just one thing. I think to start with, I’m going to focus on getting through all the lessons on Duolingo for French and German. Once I’ve gotten through those, I can start a routine of just practicing them on a regular basis to build up the mental muscle, probably for 15-30 minutes each morning. This is not to say that I won’t spend some time doing other things that are relaxing, but I know that I have to push something off. Knowing ahead of time what I’m pushing off will keep me from getting frustrated when I keep falling behind on things.

...

That being said, thanks to those tips, I’ve come to the conclusion that trying to write these posts on a weekly basis is not a high enough priority for me to keep it going. Compared to all of my other goals, posting on a website that no one really reads is generally a waste of my time when I could be using my writing time on something more useful, like stories. So, it was a fun challenge to keep this going for a few months, but I don’t feel like there are enough (or any) benefits to doing this on a regular basis. I might take some time to write a post here or there if something comes to me, but for now, the site will go back to its dormant state until I have something that I feel is worthwhile putting up here. Hopefully with some of these changes, that will come sooner rather than later.

Have a good one!