I guess I should have written these back in December. Or at the very least in early January. But hey, it’s Lunar New Year today, so it counts. At least it’s still January. Last year, I wrote my resolutions in March. And the year before, I wrote them in August. Not only that, in the last 3 weeks, I’ve already gotten a head start on a number of my resolutions.
I’d say 2023 is off to a good start.
2022 New Years Resolutions
We’re going to skip talking about my old resolutions this year. I wrote some resolutions, got started on them, and then got distracted and stopped doing them. I’m not going to quantify how badly I did. I’ve filed it away and I’m ready to move on to 2023.
2023 General Vibes
A combination of things happened toward the end of 2022 that helped me find a new focus on, well, focus. The big one is, I dropped out of all but one of my DnD games. Now instead of having only 1 of every 4 Saturdays free and having only every other Sunday free, I now have every other Saturday free and every Sunday free. And having an entire weekend free every other week is huge. It really helps with the mental health and time management. (And of course, I’m a lot more flexible now with scheduling movie outings or cooking parties.)
In addition, I reactivated my Habitica account. There’s something about gamifying my chores that adds just that extra bit of motivation to make sure I do them every day.
I also bought a new 2023 planner and made a commitment to fill out every page. It helps me in three ways. First, writing down what I want to do tomorrow helps ramp my brain up into actually doing it. Second, if I schedule a 30 minute piano practice block, or a 30 minute reading block, or a 75 minute home workout session, if it’s on my schedule, I’ll be much less likely to skip it. Third, planning out what I want to do helps me realize that, a lot of the time, there’s just too much I want to do and I can’t possibly fit everything in. So I’m still not doing everything I want to do, but at least it helps me set realistic expectations.
There are a few new things I want to try this year. I still find myself easily distracted by Reddit and YouTube and other sites that are designed to be distracting. And I don’t want to go the nuclear option of just blocking those sites on my devices.
The first thing I want to try is, when I catch myself looking at a distraction, I set a timer for, let’s say, 5 minutes. And at the end of those 5 minutes, I stop being distracted and focus on the thing I need to do. It’s a psychological trick I heard somewhere (although for the life of me, I can’t remember where I heard the idea from originally), which is that I give myself permission to be distracted for 5 minutes and get it out of my system, and then I get to work. I’ve used it in previous years on smaller scale things, like setting a timer for my breaks between sets at the gym, or setting a timer for my tea at work and working on the puzzle until the timer is up. We’ll see how well this carries over to the rest of my life. At the very least, it’ll be an interesting experiment.
The second thing I want to try is, the Pomodoro Technique. The idea is, I set alternating timers for 25 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 25 minutes, then 5 minutes, etc. During the 25 minute blocks, I do productive things, and during the 5 minutes, I allow myself to take breaks. I’ve used it successfully in the past for cleaning and chores. If I’m having one of those days where I’m having trouble focusing on work, or having trouble focusing on some DnD writing, I can set a timer. If I find my flow and get in the zone before the timer is up, then I didn’t need the timer. And if after 25 minutes is up and I’m still having trouble focusing, then I guess I really needed that 5 minute break. And then after 5 minutes, I can try and get some focus again.
Unless I fail 2023 as bad as I failed 2022, I’ll let you know next year how these things turned out.
2023 New Years Resolutions
Resolution #1: Read 6 Books – Last year, I read 1 book: Dune. And this year I want to read 6? Well the truth is, it’s still January, and I’ve already started and finished The Three-Body Problem, and I’ve started Mistborn Book 4 and I’m halfway through. At this rate, I’ll finish my reading list in 4 months, and I’ll have time to spare.
Resolution #2: Cook Something New Every Month – I lost track of how much cooking I did last year. (See, I told you I didn’t want to talk about last year’s resolutions.) This year, I’ve already made plans for a cooking party for Lunar New Year. I’ve also given myself a specific theme for this year: curry. Indian curry, Thai curry, Japanese curry, it’s all good. And preferably not made from a cube. If I can learn to make Mexican mole from scratch, then I can definitely learn how to make curry from scratch.
Resolution #3: Upload 4 New Piano Videos – Dwayne, you haven’t uploaded anything since 2020, and you want to make four videos this year? Well, I already uploaded 2 (Emil’s Theme and Grandma from Nier). To be fair, they were easy songs, but they were songs I’ve been meaning to record for a while. I’ve already promised a specific song for a third one, and I plan to keep that promise. And I already have an idea of what I want to do for the fourth one.
Resolution #4: Plan Eclipse Trips – This is a new one, because sometimes we have to do new things. There are two major eclipses coming up in the United States. One on October 14, 2023 and one on April 8, 2024. 2017 taught me that I need to plan these things really early, so I’m going to get started on that now.
You’ll notice one that’s missing from last year’s resolutions, which is to discover new music. Well, my friends have since showed me a lot of new music. I’ve found some that I like, some that I wasn’t impressed with, and some that I really like. (I now listen to three bands: Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Diamond Head.) I’m sure my friends will continue to show me new music, and I’ll almost certainly seek some out. (I still have a long list of bands to check out.) But I don’t think I need to make it a resolution anymore.
Other minor goals that I’m not going to turn into full-fledged resolutions: post my random photos on social media instead of letting them languish on my phone, post on my Catstagram more than just once a year, burn through my backlog of shows and video games. That last one is gonna be the hardest. They keep making games faster than I can play them. And I keep going back to Paradox games, for some reason.
In any case, this is probably the biggest ramp-up since the pandemic. And I need to stop using the pandemic as an excuse and start being awesome again. Wish me luck!