2019 and 2020

At the end of 2018, I made a list of "Things I want to do in 2019." Not resolutions, exactly; not goals, exactly; more like a plan with some assorted ideas for things that I wanted to happen, without restricting myself or forcing myself to do any particular thing.

Here's how it went.

• Do a triathlon -- No, but I did get through most of Couch to 5k and did a 5k near the end of the year. I think a sprint triathlon would be eminently doable next year.
• Make wedding photo book -- No, but I made progress; I curated the photos I liked most into a manageable set of a couple hundred. The next step is to find a layout program I like and have access to.
• Send family wedding prints -- Yes. I did this when I sent out our wedding thank you notes.
• Keep DMing -- No, sadly. I did make some progress on this, after my last game ended -- got some people together for a potential new game, purchased Ryuutama, and read through the rulebook. I never actually scheduled sessions or started prepping a Ryuutama campaign, though.
• Make umeshu -- Yes! I started a batch of umeshu in May that is still steeping now. I'll open it in June of 2020, and hopefully drink it in good company.
• Passover -- Yes! We had a seder again this year, similar to the one we had in years past, and it was really nice.
• Lift weights -- Some. I did this in the middle of the year, and even got a routine going with my spouse at one point, but it got disrupted by my change of jobs and other life events.
• Put my fic on AO3 -- Yep! I lightly edited and posted the 50k word fanfiction that I wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2018. It's gotten a small positive response, which is about what I expected, given that it's a small fandom.
• [redacted, work-related] -- Totally dropped the ball on this one. Oh well. Not going to worry about it; I won't need to do this in the future.
• Leave some time to explore -- Hard to grade. I think I would say yes, and perhaps even a bit too much. More pre-structured time is better for me; if I don't have enough to do, I often end up floundering.
• Write a mission statement -- No, but I did spend some time thinking about values and what I care about in life. It might be nice to have an explicit version of this in the future.
• Go to Quaker Meeting (tentative) -- Yes, to my own surprise. I went a couple times while visiting distant family earlier this year, then started going regularly to a local Meeting. I've been enjoying it much more than I would have expected to, and plan to continue.
• Go to the dentist -- Yes.
• [redacted, personal] -- Yes, but I'm not sure it was a good idea.
• Go to Consonance, the Bay Area filk convention -- Yes, and this was a great idea. I had a lot of fun -- more than I expected to given the amount of time that was just listening to music! -- and it provided tons of entertainment after the fact as well; I think I enjoy music a lot more after I've seen the performers live. Definitely will go back this year.
• Send out wedding thank you notes -- Yes, thank God, though a little bit past the technical etiquette deadline.
• [redacted, personal] -- No, though I'm not entirely responsible for this. I will sit down with spouse so we can get it done sometime this year.
• Valentine's day cards -- Yes, and this went really well.
• Spring cleaning, get rid of the garbage in our room -- I think we ended up doing some of this while moving, so I'll give it a yes. Overall I think we've done a much better settling in to our new place as soon as we moved, and I'm happy about it; there are a few things that could be improved here, but we hung up our pictures just like I wanted to.
• Charge spouse on Splitwise for many things -- No. Total failure to go through past transactions and do this. I think I won't worry about doing this far after the fact too much -- too much hassle, and it's probably balanced out by him forgetting just as much or more to charge me for stuff. I do want to keep better tabs on expenses going forward though; I did save csvs of all my bank transactions this year, so I have some data to work with now.

This year I also tried a new tradition, which goes like this: on New Year's Eve you write a letter to yourself and seal it; on New Year's Day, you open the previous year's letter and read it. I wrote a letter, but since this was the first year, I won't have one to open until next year. I'm looking forward to it.

A big conflict that I've run into this year (and in past years) is between overscheduling and underscheduling myself. If I don't have enough things to do and look forward to, I end up spinning my wheels and feeling crappy; on the other hand, if I have too much scheduled stuff and not enough time to decompress and re-plan based on what I feel like in the moment, I start to chafe. It's a difficult balance to strike; I think a good overall direction for 2020 would be to work on finding that balance more explicitly. Right now, it feels like I need to move in the direction of being more scheduled and having more things on my plate.

And now, I'm going to work on my 2020 list.