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2025 resolutions, and other stuff

// 2024-12-23

I'm baaaaack!

Yes, it's been just over a month or so since this site's last update. I've not got a specific reason as to why that's been the case. It's not as though I've not been able to use my computer or anything. I think it's just a matter of the updates to this site coming thick and fast last month; I must have burnt out on it or something. But since it's a fairly gentle way to ease myself back into webmastery after a month away, I thought I'd make a blog post to say hi and share what I've been up to. I also want to talk about my new year's resolutions, because (a) I'm a blogger, and this kind of topic is de rigeur for bloggers, and (b) publishing my resolutions on the Web seems a good way of holding myself accountable.

Well, the funny thing is, I can't think of much in the way of news to share with you all, now I've come to write about it. I went to another Comic Con at the end of last month, this time in Birmingham. I cosplayed as the Third Doctor (I think I might have mentioned in a previous blog post that that was my plan). Gentle reader, imagine my surprise when I found out that there was a Doctor Who cosplay meet-up there that same day! That's two cons in a row now where I've inadvertently gone in a costume that allows me to participate in fun activities with other members of a fandom. Am I lucky, or is that just a thing that happens for everyone? I didn't hear of any other meet-ups taking place that day, although I suppose they must have.

Other than that, most of my time has been taken up with D&D stuff as usual. I've started running a play-by-post after reading a great Medium post on the topic, and I've absolutely fallen in love with it. I might write a blog post in the future about all the reasons I enjoy it so much, but in a nutshell, it gives me time to think. As a DM, I don't have to be switched on 100% of the time. If a player asks me a question about the adventure, I don't have to pull an answer out of thin air; I can go and re-read the notes without scrabbling around to find something quickly to keep the game moving. For that reason, I've been able to run a published adventure (The Sunless Citadel, re-published in Tales from the Yawning Portal) for pretty much the first time ever. I've always shied away from them because I feared that I'd end up improvising a plot detail that ends up breaking the entire story. This campaign has none of that!

I shall wrest myself away from talking about what I've been up to in order to talk about what I'm going to do—or to be more specific, my resolutions. They are in the title of this blog post, after all.

The first one I'm going to talk about is the one that spurred me to write this blog post in the first place. I was reading Lazybear's post "5 years of blogging" when I spotted a reference to the #100DaysToOffload challenge. Essentially, the challenge is to write 100 blog posts in a year. Although that does sound daunting, the rules state that "Posts don’t need to be long-form, deep, meaningful, or even that well written." What a relief! As with everything in life, I shall do what I can, and forgive myself for what I can't.

The next one is perhaps a little more nebulous, but I shall include it because it was the first one I thought of this year. I am going to try and do at least two things that scare me every month. (I reserve the right to choose what those things are! I'm not going to do things just because they scare me.)

Finally, I'm going to read 20 books in 2025. This may not be as many as some people, but by the end of this year I'll have finished eight, maybe nine books—and two of those were manga volumes, which are much quicker to read. If I can double that output next year, I can start putting a dent in the massive pile of books I've taken with me from house to house without ever opening.

I've got another resolution, too... but that one's a secret.

Merry Christmas to you all, and I look forward to beginning the #100DaysToOffload challenge with you all next year!