This is the final month of the Groundhog Day Resolution system for 2019. This was the 11th annual attempt at creating life-long habits for myself. I’ve discovered that because of the after the end-of-year holidays I am not mentally or physically capable of sticking with resolutions for the upcoming new year. I need a break so I take the whole month of January off to reflect
and plan. The idea here was to check in every month from 2/2, 3/3, etc to 11/11- today!
So how’d I do this year?
Physical
- The immediate goal is to drop 25 pounds quick. Besides the typical
motto of “Eat clean, train mean, get lean”, I’m throwing in some activities that should help. This was a fail. In fact, I have gained unhealthy weight. - Kickboxing/sparring with Tracy. Not one much thrown.
- Dance lessons. Something fun like Swing? Sexy, like Bachata? We’ll figure it out. Not one lesson. We dance around the house and at the pub but that’s it.
- Disc Golf. Time to get back into it. Less expensive than golf and I don’t have to wear baggy, plaid pants. We tossed the disk around a bit but nothing consistent. I made a brilliant 1/1000 shot though so yeah.
- Yoga/Meditation. I had some moderate usage last year but not enough to form a habit. I did appreciate the quiet time to breathe, relax and focus on nothing. Again, not habit forming but I enjoy the process. Why can’t I make time for simple things?
Technical
- Learn Python. Only one tech goal this year because I get scattered and end up not learning anything. No more. Time to learn and apply data science and machine learning applications. I wrote a few lines of code and then realized I don’t need to. I wasn’t interested. What was I going to do with it? Next year I may write Swift instead but only for the hell of it.
Artistical
- Sketch/Draw/Doodle. I bought an iPad and pencil last year and I want to be more creative. Nope.
- Learn Spanish with Tracy. Nope.
- Learn Chinese. For myself. Nope.
- Learn to play the ukulele. I grabbed one late last year but with the holidays in the way it took a back seat. Nope.
- DAM- Digital Asset Management, or, where the hell are my photos from that shoot last month? They are all (almost) on to a new 10TB hard drive waiting on me. Progress.
- Write short stories. I have a ton of ideas for these. Progress, but only this month of NANOWRIMO.
- Write micro fiction. One hundred word stories. Nope. Change this for NANOWRIMO?
- Work on that novel. Its been ten plus years and I still can’t get all of this out of my head. Progress, but only this month of NANOWRIMO.
- 52 week photo challenge . 52 weeks in a year = 52 photos I think this died around week 9.
Financial
- Order a credit report and start settling some debts for less. 2017 was not a good year and it hurt me financially so I am slowly recovering. This year will be dedicated to resolving this and restoring my good name. Progress! My credit scores dropped a bit at first but are slowly going up. Not fast enough for me though.
- Build credit with a secured credit card. Doing this now.
- Automate savings and track investments. Yes, there is an app for that and it is called Acorns. Nope.
- Cryptocurrency. This year I will dip a toe into these unknown waters. Bitcoin? Ethereum? Research is crucial here. Nope. Not interested anymore.
Overall, I’d rate this year’s GHD Resolutions as failure. In fact, I am thinking of scrapping the whole concept in favor of focusing on one thing a month and practice. That should be habit forming, no? But knowing me, I tend to bounce from thing to thing randomly or as I get bored.
The portrait photography was big this year but as I’ve stated previously I am slowly pulling away from these types of shoots and want to try photographing something else with different methods. Still working these out. But the takeaway is that portrait photography was the culprit that a majority of these resolutions failed.