It’s amaz­ing how quickly the excite­ment of a fresh idea can lose it’s lus­tre after just a few weeks. Take for instance my grand plan to rev­o­lu­tionise New Years Res­o­lu­tions for­ever. (Well mine anyway).

The orig­i­nal plan was to, at the end of the month, write a blog post about one expe­ri­ence or event that hap­pened in the past 30 odd days. I thought it was an inter­est­ing idea, but when one of the things I want to focus on in 2010 is improv­ing my writ­ing (both in vol­ume and qual­ity), then once a month just isn’t going to cut it. In my notes I’ve only man­aged to scrounge up 9 events any­way, so I’d already failed before I began.

Get­ting back to the New Years Res­o­lu­tions, it seemed like last year I’d just thought up a bunch of things to pass the time with­out putting any thought into the why. Why was I doing each res­o­lu­tion? What would I get out of them?

I guess this was the other prob­lem I had with ‘the grand plan’.

Then there’s the infa­mous Things To Do Before I Die list. Real­is­ti­cally is should be a list of things I can only do at cer­tain points in my life. Like punch­ing an octo­ge­nar­ian in the solar plexus with­out feel­ing shame. I think I might retire it, or at least take it down from this website.

What to do with this blog then?

I should always be updat­ing it. Whether it’s a link dump, image or a 500 word micro-epic about the joys of CSS3 (and there are many joys to behold). Doesn’t mat­ter as long as the site is  kept pumping.

The comic reviews were always pop­u­lar, so my site sta­tis­tics say,but I just couldn’t keep churn­ing them out. Not when I wasn’t putting any­thing back out there for review myself. It just didn’t seem right. Why should I pub­licly crit­i­cise other people’s hard work  when I wasn’t will­ing to bare my own work to the world?

I really don’t like the look of the site and I think thats one rea­son I’ve stayed away. The design was dated back when it launched and just looks eye-bleedingly hor­ri­ble now. I’m going to redesign the site with an aim of mak­ing it infi­nitely eas­ier to read. I’ve been immersed in the User Expe­ri­ence field for the last 2 years, so there’s no excuse for why this site still looks and behaves like it does.

I know I keep mak­ing promises that I don’t return to for weeks at a time, but this is really impor­tant to me. Hav­ing said that you prob­a­bly won’t hear back about the redesign for a few weeks, but rest assured that I’ll keep updat­ing this site regardless.

And now it’s time for the tra­di­tional look back at the year that’s been.

I set seven res­o­lu­tions for 2009 and for­got half of them just a few weeks later.

1. Learn how to make bread. Be able to make sour­dough and whole­meal high tin loaf.

Pass.

Call it lazi­ness or fear of the unknown or that I work best under pres­sure, but I didn’t attempt to make bread until just a few days before the year ended.

I’d been told that mak­ing bread with­out using a machine to knead the dough would be extremely dif­fi­cult, but I had no prob­lems with that or any part of the process. In a nut­shell throw flour, sugar and salt into a bowl, then  add a cup of beaten eggs, luke­warm water and yeast. Fol­low that up with two ses­sion of knead­ing ses­sions alter­nat­ing with two rest ses­sions. Bung it in the oven for 30 min­utes and you’ve got one crusty white bread loaf. Too easy.

2. Go on a mush­room picking tour.

Fail.

I remem­bered I had this down as a res­o­lu­tion about two days after mush­room­ing sea­son fin­ished. Whoops.

3. Con­vince the Ital­ian com­mu­nity to let me get involved in mak­ing sausages.

Pass.

I was all psy­ched up to make sausages this year, but then my con­tacts decided they’d much rather go on a holiday.

To make up for that I took a sausage mak­ing class through CAE back in Octo­ber, so I at least had some­thing of sausage mak­ing experience.

4. Sub­mit fic­tion to at least two short story competitions.

Fail.

Another res­o­lu­tion I com­pletely for­got about.

I did attempt NaNoW­riMo in Novem­ber and man­aged to write just over 19,000 words. So this year wasn’t a com­plete bust in terms of my writing.

5. Fin­ish a 100 page script for Script Frenzy in April.

Fail.

I started Script Frenzy. I fin­ished Script Frenzy.

Did I write 100 page? No.

6. Par­tic­i­pate in Dry July.

Fail.

Another res­o­lu­tion I com­pletely for­got about. (Are you sens­ing a theme yet?)

7. Loose 10 kilograms.

Fail.

I became a full mem­ber of my work gym at the start of 2009. I had my first pro­gram writ­ten up for me in mid-Jan with new iter­a­tions every 6 – 8 weeks.

From 14th Jan to 21st Dec I went from 93.3kg to 90.8kg and my body fat per­cent­age dropped from 26.6% to 25.5%. So I only ended up los­ing 2.5kg in weight. BUT, I lost cen­time­tres off my legs as bi-weekly ses­sions on the spin cycle began to tighten up my leg and hip mus­cles. On top of that I’m lift­ing over twice the weight was  was when I first started there. Mov­ing to the “big boy” free weights was prob­a­bly the high­light of my gym year.

In Con­clu­sion

Two Passes, five Fails.

It’s become very clear that New Year Res­o­lu­tions and I do not mix well. So there will be no res­o­lu­tions this year. They’re too easy to make and too easy to break.

I have a bet­ter idea for 2010. One that I’m really excited about and has the ben­e­fit of not need­ing year long man­age­ment like New Year god­damn Res­o­lu­tions. But I’ll save that for another post.

Before I get into the res­o­lu­tions for next year I think it’s best to do a final tally of the 2008 ones.

1. Start home brew­ing beer
2. Learn to bake bread and bread related products
3. Learn how to make my own sausages.
4. Increase exer­cise to coun­ter­act the effects of a beer/sausage/bread diet
5. Fin­ish writ­ing my novel
6. Get at least two short sto­ries published
7. Learn more Italian

I wrote up an update around Sep­tem­ber for my post a day and not much has changed since then.

I made beer and started learn­ing Ital­ian. Most impor­tantly I put a lot of effort towards increas­ing my daily exercise.

Way back at the begin­ning of the year I was given a free ses­sion card for the gym located in the same build­ing as I work. Given the heavy fees most gyms charge find­ing that lit­tle card was like find­ing a golden ticket to health­i­ness. It was only 10 ses­sions, and I only man­aged to use 9 of them, but for 30 min­utes I worked myself like a dog.

I also hit a sep­a­rate gym close by the house for a cou­ple of spin classes. If you’ve never been, spin class is hell. 45 min­utes of con­stant leg mov­ing, inter­sected with peri­ods of stand­ing, sit­ting and high ten­sion leg break­ing. After all that you get to nap, wait a week and do it all over again. Fun with a cap­i­tal F.

So thats 1, 4, half of 6 and part of 7. Although you could argue that 7 was vague enough that it would never ever be ‘com­pleted’. In fact all of those res­o­lu­tions weren’t as fleshed as they could’ve been. Three and a bit res­o­lu­tions out of seven com­pleted. Ter­ri­ble, just terrible.

I’m ram­bling again, so I’d bet­ter get to the list for 2009. I’ve tried to make it a lot more detailed so there’s actual goals to reach:

1. Learn how to make bread. Be able to make sour­dough and whole­meal high tin loaf.
2. Go on a mush­room pick­ing tour.
3. Con­vince the Ital­ian com­mu­nity to let me get involved in mak­ing sausages.
4. Sub­mit fic­tion to at least two short story competitions.
5. Fin­ish a 100 page script for Script Frenzy in April.
6. Par­tic­i­pate in Dry July.
7. Loose 10 kilograms.

So that’s seven mod­er­ately easy res­o­lu­tions. Same num­ber as last year. Now I just need to keep them.