So I missed writing about my resolutions on the last day of June, but then I should have been concentrating on my daughter’s birthday anyway. So now, as the sun goes down in Seattle, it’s time to take stock of progress so far.
- Reading Well, one thing I’ve managed this year is to read a lot of books from Games Workshop about the Horus Heresy (think existentialism, full-scale cultural burglary / cunning attempt to sneak Roman history into the minds of teenagers obsessed with little plastic solders, body horror, religious satire and Everything In Space Louder Than Everything Else). I’ve read at least 13 of these (most of which I’ve written about, but a few of which I’m behind on reviewing), so if nothing else, I’m hitting the number of books I said I’d read this year. I’ve not read any of the books I thought I should have, but that’s a different story entirely.
- Writing I’ve managed to write almost every day this year. Travelling across time zones has made this harder, and I’m not sure about the quality of some of the entries, but there’s at least the consistency of showing up (almost) every day.
- Sleeping I’ve logged my sleep patterns most days this year, via my Garmin Forerunner 235. Right now I’m averaging 6:23 per night. (Bear in mind my resolution called for 7 – I suppose that’s about a 7% miss…)
- Play more Blood Bowl This resolution conflicts with the previous one, because in order to play Blood Bowl, I often need to stay up until very late at night to get a game with somebody in Europe. Or get up very early for a game with an Australian. Strangely, there’s a slight lack of Americans who want to play a pastiche of their national sport, online, on a platform with graphics from the 90s. Who’d have thought that? I’ve played in three table top tournaments this year, with a couple more scheduled, and I’ve played 112 games in my trophy run (attempting to play 150 matches against random opponents in a year).. I had a 4% win ratio in the 26 games I played last year. It’s fun to see that this has doubled over the last 6 months to 8%. So perhaps there’s some progress there. I still lose a lot, but I think I understand better why I’m losing. I did say it would be risky to judge my success by whether I could beat people more or not – but certainly I seem to be playing fairly strongly on tabletop, given my current tournament ranking.
- Swimming – I think I did as well as I could before we left Singapore. I can do a length or more now. I hope I haven’t got that much worse since I stopped at the end of April.
- Climbing -fair to say that I’ve exceeded the level I was at before my crash last November. I can’t do 10 consecutive pull ups yet, but I’m on my way, courtesy of a chin-up bar at the office.
- General fitness nothing impressive and no structure yet. I was going to restart my calisthenic routine this morning, but woke up feeling like death with a sore throat and a blocked up ear, so maybe next week.
- Maintain routine with the children – another success! Almost every day I was in Singapore, I managed to walk the kids to school. 93% would have been 100% were it not for a few days’ illness.
- Juggling – a bit of practice here and there, but it’s not really been a focus. One to do more on.
- Diet/nutrition. Oh dear. Between eating copious amounts of pizza every single day when I moved to America, and all the sugar filled snacks, and too much coffee, (only managing one coffee a day 82% of the time) this has been one that I’ve let myself down on. The constant bloated feeling recently is a sign that this is an area that needs a lot more focus.
- More writing – Oh dear oh dear. Nothing at all. One for the second half.
On the positives, that’s at least 6 out of 12 (don’t forget, general fitness counts for three!) which is much better than the past (did I sandbag things?) plus I’ve started an MBA, moved country, bought a house … a few little distractions, eh? It will be interesting to see how things fare in the second half of the year. I’m also a little surprised by how little I remembered of the later resolutions until I looked at them. Focus, James, focus…