Goals Update: Mid-Year 2019

It has been super hard to find time or motivation to write lately, but at the very least I can get in a quick update about where goals are for the year. There were some changes I made about a month ago to one of the goals, and I’m going to talk about another one I decided to make. So the TL;DR version of this post is: two goals are still on track, though lagging behind lately, and two goals have been outright changed to better reflect how things are.

Run a Half-Marathon in Under 2 Hours -> Beat My Best 5K Time

I knew a month ago that there was no way I was going to run a half-marathon by the end of the year, much less crush my previous best by 15+ minutes. While I have been good at working out more often, my eating habits have not been improving, so progress is hard coming. I still think it is possible for me to get fit enough to improve in some way though, so we are just going to switch the half-marathon to a 5K.

I’ve run plenty of 5Ks, especially in the early days when I started running and I was working up to longer distances, but I didn’t get many of them recorded, so I don’t know what my actual best time is. All I have to go on is what I do have recorded from my races, which indicates my best 5K is 26:30. This was basically right after my first half-marathon as a way of recovering, so not me at my best fitness, but still a decent time. Thus, new goal, beat that time.

Publish a Post Every Week

Up until this past month I was doing well here. Having to catch up sometimes, but mostly getting them done on time, even if at the last minute. But lately the motivation has been lacking. For once I have enough things to write about, but I’d rather just do other things. It’s summer now, so doing more activities and I’ve also had some bad luck with illness. Got a summer cold that knocked me out for four days this past week, which means watching a lot of SGDQ and playing easy games.

Still, I have no doubt that I will be able to finish this out. I’ve got a few posts to catch up on right now, but eventually things will get back to the normal cadence. Just a bunch of distractions lately that will go away soon. Hopefully motivation will come back too, but I can always push through until I do (like I did with this post).

Listen to 200 New Albums

Last update I was at 33 albums, this time I’m at 51 albums. Halfway through the year, that’s not great progress. I basically have to listen to triple the amount of music I already have so far.

There are a couple reasons for this. One, I haven’t had nearly as much time to listen to podcasts or music or anything at work as I expected. I knew pretty early on it would be harder than it was at Amazon, but it’s gotten even worse as people have gotten to rely on me more. The pros and cons of open space offices. Collaboration is undoubtedly better, but focus time is much worse. I get pulled away from my tasks so often to help others that it’s not worth having headphones on most of the time.

So yeah, my original plan of using work time to get a bunch of listening done isn’t working too well. Need to find another strategy. I really want to increase the amount of time I spend on writing, so that will be a perfect time to get new music in. That’s not super reliable though since I can’t guarantee more writing will happen. I think ultimately it’s going to come down to reducing video consumption since that eats into podcast time, which eats into music time.

No real updates on albums that have stood out to me since last time. Finished the whole Queen catalog, and I listened to a lot more Stone Sour than I probably should have, but I just really like their stuff (Come What(ever) May is legit one of my favorite albums ever).

Make a Focusing/Quitting Habit

As I (tried to) explain in a post a month ago about Passions and Priorities, I have effectively given up on this goal. I haven’t fully decided what it should be replaced with, but what I’ve been trying to do since then is focus on one thing at a time, even if it’s not fun to do so. It’s not a new concept to me, I’ve tried it a couple times over the last few years to short-term success. But, going back to that previous post, since I find it hard to keep focusing on something unless it grabs my attention fully, it’s not going well this time around either. So it can’t be the long term solution, but it can help for now until something else clicks.

The other question with this is simply figuring out how to give myself the time I want to focus on anything. Inevitably it always comes back to being lazy about doing the things that are high priority and getting distracted by things that are the lowest priority. The internet is bad and I find it harder to ignore it all the time.

I’ve got nothing else for now. Turning out to be another year where I’m re-learning the lessons that I’d forgotten from failing in previous years. On the plus side, this really only impacts my hobbies. I’m still a very responsible person with a good job that I excel at, so I’m not a total screw up. I just have too many freaking interests and too many freaking distractions. Feeling like crap all the time because I can’t get healthy is having an impact too.

Sigh.

The Diet Cycle

As some of you are probably well aware of by now, getting back on the running wagon is one of my goals for this year. At this point, almost 4 months in, I still haven’t gotten back into running regularly at all, but I am making strides towards getting the ball rolling again. On the exercise side of things, I mentioned in the 100 day update that I was considering doing Orangetheory again as a way to motivate myself, and I have since signed up and gone a couple times. I would’ve gone more, but I’ve been hampered with body problems and other things that ate up my time (excuses, excuses, I know). Of course, the other side of getting healthy is on the eating side of things, so this week’s post is about that.

To say that I have trouble sticking with diets is an understatement. It’s also universal among people in today’s world of food excess. I definitely fall into the camp of finding a diet that looks interesting, trying it out for a while, seeing results, and then slipping back into lazy mode once I’ve reached my goal.

To help give context for this monologue, I’ve provided a nice graph that shows my weekly average weight over the last 6+ years, starting in 2013 when I started taking daily measurements.

I really wish I had measurements all the way back to 2008, after I graduated from college, since it would show an equally impressive dip and climb back up to where the data starts. This post is going to cover essentially three different periods of time where I was able to make big gains, and then immediately fall off the wagon again, concluded with a look at what’s I’m going to be attempting this time around.

Before I start, it is important to note here that according to most estimates I’ve been able to find on the subject, the ideal weight for my size is around 195-200 lbs. That’s for a 6’4” guy, big frame, around 12% body fat.

First Cycle

As mentioned, I don’t have exact data from 2008-2012, but I mostly remember how it went. When I graduated college and moved back home (not having a job yet), I weighed around 215-220 lbs. The exact number isn’t that important, the significant part is that I gained around 30 lbs during those 4 years away from home, partly from time in the gym, but mostly because being a student means a poor lifestyle of ramen, potstickers, mac n’ cheese, chicken nuggets, pizza, and burger patties on toast.

Since I was living at home and had a bunch of time to fix this problem, I was able to undertake a pretty rigorous exercise plan. It’s not around anymore, but back then there was a website called I Want Six Pack Abs or something like that, and my best friend and I decided to give it a go. It consisted of six workouts per week, three days on strength training (for 30-60 min depending on number of exercises) and three days on cardio (30 min or less, focused on sprint intervals), plus some guidelines on what to be eating.

Food wise, the guide wasn’t too far off what many diets recommend these days. Meats and vegetables, some healthy grains, and allowed for desserts that consisted of applesauce or cottage cheese with berries. I also remember eating a lot of nuts between meals since the plan recommended smaller, more frequent meals that is common among athletes.

This strict routine lasted for almost 4 months, basically until I royally messed up my left elbow such that I couldn’t do half of the exercises anymore (and my elbow still has never fully recovered from this). But by the time this happened, I was able to get back under 200 lbs, so it was a success.

What happened after that? It took a while, but without the exercise I couldn’t maintain that weight, and my eating habits slowly got worse after I moved out on my own. I tried to get back into it a few times over the next few years, but it never stuck, so I ballooned back up to my post-college weight and beyond, as you can see from the graph.

Second Cycle

Now that I can use the graph, it is pretty obvious where the second cycle happened. There’s basically a peak around June 2013, then a consistent fall for almost a year into April 2014, holding steady for a few months, then another drastic drop from November 2014 to my ideal weight in the Spring of 2015.

The two main factors for the first drop are both exercise related. One, I started working at Amazon in September 2013, which meant that I started walking to work instead of driving. That alone had a huge impact on my mobility and how I felt. Two, I also started running in June, followed by joining Orangetheory shortly after starting at Amazon. I probably also made some diet adjustments to help fuel the new exercise, but I can’t remember exactly. It really was mostly just getting back into the habit of pushing my body.

The second drop was entirely diet related as I plateaued from exercise alone. November 2014 is when I heard about and immediately started trying the Bulletproof Diet. These days I have my doubts about the full efficacy of this diet since it seems to rely quite heavily on products that they conveniently sell, but at the time I was all in. And while I didn’t do the full Bulletproof Coffee since I generally dislike coffee, I stuck to the rest of it really well.

And the results definitely showed. My weight immediately started going down again and I cut off another 15 lbs in 4 months. However, maintaining the full diet is really difficult because of the limitations, so I didn’t stick with it much longer after I got down to that ideal weight. As I said before, I fall off the wagon quite easily.

Third Cycle

After falling off that diet for a few months, and seeing my weight creep back up again, I tried to find another diet that I felt would be easier to maintain with fewer restrictions. And I did find one that appealed because it was more about cycling through different modes of eating rather than limiting foods, so you would fast one day and then eat a bunch, followed by eating less again, cycling through different ratios of protein versus carbs versus fats, and so on. That also worked for a bit as long as I stuck with it, getting back down to 200 lbs again in early 2016. But again, it ultimately didn’t sync well with my normal life, so it lasted probably the shortest of any diet I’ve tried. I’m also not sure if the diet itself caused the weight loss or if it was just me focusing on healthy foods again.

And from there you can see the slow creep back up to where I’m at right now, hovering around 230 lbs. There are a few spikes along the way there and they are directly correlated with me quitting on my long-distance running due to foot injury, me moving away from downtown Seattle to a more suburb-like area (limiting good food options and walking), and me parting with Orangetheory because it got too inconvenient to attend. But even with all that I did seem to manage keeping the weight under control for a long while until I left Amazon in August 2018, at which point I became even more sedentary than before.

Fourth Cycle

That leads us to today where I’m aiming to start yet another cycle. I have no delusions that I will be able to lose the weight and keep it off forever, that’s just not how I operate. But if I’m going to fluctuate within a range, I’d rather it be around 200-210 instead of 225-235 like I am now.

So here’s what new. As I mentioned at the beginning, Orangetheory is back again, though I’m not planning to be as intense with it as I was before. Previously I would do 3-4 days a week, now I’m aiming for just 2, and try to get in a run on the weekends. Since my goal for the year is to run a half-marathon in under 2 hours, I need to be doing those longer runs at least once a week. Realistically the farthest distance I can get in at an Orangetheory class is about 2 miles, so that doesn’t cut it.

For my diet, I’m trying something pretty new. Not in the food I’m eating, I’m going to be attempting a close-to-keto diet, which is pretty similar to the Bulletproof stuff I did years ago that worked really well. No, what’s new is that I’m taking the super lazy route and having all my meals prepped by someone else. If I look back on my history of diets, the easiest time I had sticking to something was during those months after college when I lived at home. All I had to do was tell my parents what I was trying to do and they helped make it work. As soon as I was on my own, bad habits crept back in.

So this time I’m going to take myself out of the equation as much as possible, just eat pre-made meals with the right keto components and only involve myself when I feel like it. Yes, it is a little more wasteful and more expensive than doing it myself, but overall it’s still going to be a lot cheaper than what I’m doing now, which is going out 90% of the time because I’m lazy.

I don’t think this is something I can keep up long-term, but I’m going to do it for a few months, see how it goes, and then make adjustments if I find myself wanting to cook more. I’ve found over time that it’s easier to make good decisions when you’re already in a good place, hence why I eat so much bad stuff right now.

Hopefully things work out well this time around, and I’m sure I’ll have an update every month or two on how things are going.

Goals Update: 100 Days

As I promised at the 50 day mark, it is time for the 100 day update on how the goals are progressing. I probably won’t take as long to go over them this time around, so this will be short and sweet. This is everything up to April 10.

Run a Half-Marathon in Under 2 Hours

Still the area where I’m behind the most at this point. I have managed to do three runs in the first 100 days, which is pretty bad. My eating habits also haven’t resulted in any significant body change, though it is definitely better than it was. Still eating too much and not cooking at home enough, but getting in more healthy and less bad foods.

The hard part right now isn’t that I don’t have the time, since I do have time. I just don’t think about it most days, so I need to start setting reminders and making sure that I don’t make other obligations for when I get home on the days I should do a run.

One option I’m considering is that there is an Orangetheory Fitness next to our train station, which I used for a several years in Seattle until it became too inconvenient. Positives with this option is that you have to go to the classes or forfeit money, which creates incentive. The workouts also balance cardio and strength training, and I do feel like I need both to make any real progress. Just need to figure out what time works best if I go this route. In any case, I need to do something soon or I won’t have enough time to train up.

Publish a Post Every Week

No real change here, I have managed to have a post for every week, even if they arrive a week or two late. This is week 15, and you can see that there are exactly 15 posts in the column to the right within 2019.

The biggest struggle has continued to be thinking of topics to write about. This is mostly due to not having as much time to work on things to review as I’d anticipated. I suppose this is also partially due to having ideas for posts I want to write about, but not willing to do so without having enough data/experience to give a worthwhile opinion. Like, I could talk about my time with VR, but I’ve only spent like 5 hours with it, which isn’t much. I really want to talk about some board games, but with only a couple plays I can’t say that I’ve really engaged with them (which is partially why last week’s post happened).

On the plus side, with my schedule more settled and fewer trips coming up, I have time locked down to do the writing, so I have been getting more consistent at being on time.

Listen to 200 New Albums

As of day 100, I have listened to 33 new albums. That means I’ve almost tripled the number since the last update, but still only 1/6 of the total I need. Considering that we’re only a little more than three months in, I’m positive about the trend.

What has been helping is that instead of forcing myself to follow a set list of albums, I’ve been jumping around between different artists and just going through their whole discography, making note of the new stuff. That was always the plan, but I’m okay with going with what I want to hear rather than doing a purely alphabetical journey. On the other hand, what hasn’t been helping is that I still have to try to keep caught up on podcasts, which eats into music time. My office is also not conducive to consistent listening since interruptions are constant.

Since the last update, a couple albums have stood out as worth repeat listening. Rubber Factory by The Black Keys, Favourite Worst Nightmare by The Arctic Monkeys, and Queen II by Queen (duh). I already liked all those bands beforehand, but these albums were new to me and I keep thinking about them.

Aside from those new ones, I’m also still giving Dreams in Space (my band’s album) a lot of listens, plus I’ve re-remembered how much I love the album Origami Eyes from my friends in American Island, so that’s also eating up some time. But, gotta do what you love.

Make a Focusing/Quitting Habit

In the last update I mentioned that I wasn’t sure where I was with this, and I’ve had to make some adjustments to make it work better. I’m still tracking books (should read every day) and audiobooks (should listen every work day) the way I was before. Incidentally, the percentages for focusing on those are currently 65% for books (better) and 65% for audiobooks (slightly worse).

The games have completely fallen off because I realized it wasn’t actually what I should be focusing on. I kept having other things I needed to do, so what I decided to go with instead was simply marking if I got my focus activity done or not. Each day I determine what that activity is going to be, and then do it (or not if I get distracted). Some of these activities are games, but some are writing these posts, learning new skills, and doing things with my wife. It has made it a lot easier to make sure that the activities I want to do get more equal time, as well as making it less frustrating to see myself not getting things done (because I am getting things done!).

Back on the quitting side of things, I still haven’t encountered anything that I’ve wanted to drop yet. The audiobook from last time (Gone Girl, which I ranted on a few weeks ago) was able to survive the axe. There are a couple more things on the block now though, so we’ll see again what happens. The thing is that right now I’m doing enough different things that I haven’t had a chance to get a full experience of anything.

Alright, that’s pretty much it. Obviously I need to keep going in the areas that are going well, and I really need to get the exercise kicked up a notch. Another update will come at the end of June.

Goals Update: 50 Days

I’m sure it’s getting a little tired by now, but since I don’t have any other things to write about this week, I think it’s a good idea to check up on how I’m doing in regards to the goals I set for the year after 50 days. This means looking at my tracking of goals up to February 19, though this post is being written a little later. I can already say that some of these goals are pretty far behind due to the craziness involved with moving, but there’s still plenty of time in the year to catch up. Hopefully.

Run a Half-Marathon in Under 2 Hours

This is probably the one I’m the most behind on. In the first 50 days I didn’t do a single run and my eating habits have been worse than ever thanks to not having any real way to prepare normal food, since all my cookware was in Seattle while I’ve been in New York, and now it’s all on a truck waiting to get here. It’s also really hard to want to eat well when it’s cold all the time and you are traveling around a bunch to try to get things done at opposite ends of the country.

On the plus side, the amount of walking I’ve been having to do has kept my body less stiff than it got during my funemployment. I’m also trying to be more conscious about the amount of food I eat, even if most of it is just meat and carbs. My body didn’t struggle with any of the moving process either, so that’s a good sign that I should be able to ease back into exercise quickly.

Things are getting into a more predictable routine with work, so I’m hoping that in the next week or two I can cut out some time to get in some short jogs to at least get my mind and body back into the idea of doing something after work a couple nights a week. Still need to find a place to do strength training too.

Publish a Post Every Week

Well, you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t doing this. I haven’t been on time with all of my posts, particularly in the last couple weeks, but I’ve been doing my best to make sure I don’t get too far behind. With this post I’ll be back on track to hit my scheduled time next post.

The biggest struggle here has been getting topics to write about. The idea was to always have a month’s worth of ideas stocked up so this wouldn’t happen. Problem is that I do have a bunch of ideas, I just can’t write about them yet because they are for things I haven’t done yet, but plan to do once I have time. I was relying a lot of having more games and other media to review for most of my posts, and I just haven’t had time to complete much during the last month. A lot of that is my fault for choosing movies and other brainless things over games and books, but you can only do so much when you leave for work at 8am and get back home around 9pm because you have to eat out every night. Not to mention the flying and focusing on getting a new apartment ready to live in.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to get back to some form of normalcy around here. That will help make topics easier to come up with since I will have time to wander, physically and mentally.

Listen to 200 New Albums

As of day 50, I have listened to 12 albums. So 6% of the way there, though almost 14% of the way through the year. That’s not too bad. I don’t have a full list of specific albums to listen to, but I do have a list of artists that I want to visit and see what I’ve missed over the years.

So far all the listening has been done at work. As it turns out, the new workspace is much more chaotic and full of disruptions than any team I had at Amazon, so putting the headphones on has been a must. That being said, I haven’t fully removed all other forms of distraction from my phone yet, so I am still spending more time on there than I should during breaks. I have also been spending a lot of time listening to my own music, which is cutting into time for other new stuff. I’m sure that will eventually lessen once the new album is not so new.

None of the albums I’ve listened to yet have stood out as particularly great (aside from my own band’s, of course!), but I now know some more music from artists I already like.

Make a Focusing/Quitting Habit

I’m not entirely sure where I am with this to be honest. I can say that during this move I haven’t been good at focusing on certain things, but doing okay in others.

What I have been doing well is keeping the daily tracker of what I spent my time on. At least, as far as keeping track of whether I focused on the game, book, and audiobook I should be doing, that’s been going well. I decided to track those three things because they take up distinct parts of the day. Games only happen during normal after-work time. Books only happen during the hour leading up to sleeping. And audiobooks only happen during my commute. For the interested, my percentages for each of those are: 20%, 58%, and 69%, respectively, the goal being 75% over the course of the year.

Where I’m not sure if my system is working properly is that for days where I know I didn’t have any time or ability to do a focus task, I just counted it as N/A, but every other day where I had even the slimmest chance to do one of those things, I would count it against me if I didn’t do it, even if I didn’t actually get distracted from it. So, for example, I don’t count weekends against audiobooks because I’m not commuting, and I don’t count not playing a game against me if I don’t have the game with me, like when I was packing up things in Seattle to move. But otherwise, if I didn’t play the game, but I was spending the time calling or emailing people about moving, or I was writing one of these posts, it would still go against me. I haven’t been doing a good job of tracking those other things, so I should probably start doing that or at least assess if I truly missed my focus task because I got distracted with something lesser than.

Either way, I’m doing okay on books and audiobooks given the system I have been using. Games are in really bad shape though, I just haven’t played anything in almost a month, basically since I started my job. And most of those days are counted against me because I technically had an hour or two at home where I could’ve done it. Some of those days are valid because I would just watch a video instead, but many of them I had other important things to do, I just don’t remember which days they were at this point. Going forward I will make it a point to put the lack of playing in perspective since I shouldn’t penalize myself for doing something more important.

On the quitting side of things, I haven’t felt the need to drop anything yet, but the audiobook I’m currently working on might be the first one. I’m about 3 hours in and I’m not a fan of the characters or the writing. I will give it the 5 hours I said I would, but if it doesn’t improve significantly by then, I won’t have any problem dropping it and picking up something else.

Looks like I ended up having quite a bit to report on. I’m planning to do this again after 100 days, so shortly into April, and see if things have improved by then. After that it’ll just be at the end of each quarter, so end of June, September, and finally the full year assessment. So look forward to those I guess.

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.