{"id":830,"date":"2017-01-12T01:49:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T09:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/?p=830"},"modified":"2017-01-12T01:49:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T09:49:46","slug":"new-years-retrospective-and-resolutions-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/12\/new-years-retrospective-and-resolutions-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"New Years Retrospective and Resolutions 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>2016 Retrospective<\/h3>\n<p>They say 2016 was a bad year. And in terms of politics and celebrities, it was.<\/p>\n<p>But for me personally, 2016 was a good year. There was a Vegas trip, an amazing California road trip, and a whirlwind 2-week romance with a Canadian girl. I&#8217;ll be looking back fondly on it as we send off 2016 tonight.<\/p>\n<p>More after the cut.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h3>2016 Resolutions<\/h3>\n<p><b>Resolution #1 &#8211; Re-organize the house.<\/b> I&#8217;m really bad at this. Let&#8217;s break it down.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1a, clean my bedroom at least once every quarter &#8211; I&#8217;m very good at cleaning the rest of my house on a monthly basis, because that&#8217;s what visitors see. But I always get lazy about my own bedroom. No one other than me ever sees it. Not even my cats. First three quarters went by fine. In December? I knew I was supposed to. But I didn&#8217;t. There was no reason for it.<\/li>\n<li>1b, make a process for filing mail &#8211; Didn&#8217;t happen. My mail still piles up on the dining room table, and I just sort through it when the pile gets big enough.<\/li>\n<li>1c, organize my game collection and sell off what I don&#8217;t need &#8211; Sort of. I spent a few months sorting through Magic cards and earning about $800 in store credit at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cardkingdom.com\/\">Card Kingdom<\/a>. But the rest of my game collection? Not so much.<\/li>\n<li>1d, re-organize my kitchen &#8211; Well, I did this. There was a clause about magneic spice jars. I bought the jars but still haven&#8217;t actually used them yet. Oops.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Three subparts that are partly done and one that&#8217;s not done at all. I&#8217;m gonna round up and call this <b>Result: PARTIAL SUCCESS<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Resolution #2 &#8211; Make progress on <i>Everything I Know About Cookies<\/i>.<\/b> I did in fact finish all my experiments by June. I also got most of my recipes and photography done by November. However, in December, I realized there were a few pictures of ingredients that I really wanted in my book. I&#8217;ll call it <b>Result: MOSTLY SUCCESS<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Resolution #3 &#8211; Diet, exercise, and sleep.<\/b> The one I&#8217;m good at. The one I put on my list every year to keep myself honest. <b>Result: SUCCESS<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Not a home run, but still better than last year!<\/p>\n<h3>2017 Resolutions<\/h3>\n<p><b>Monthly Goals<\/b> &#8211; Let&#8217;s try something new. I liked the idea of setting monthly milestones last year, so this year, let&#8217;s kick it up a notch. Every month, there will be a specific goal or task that I need to accomplish.<\/p>\n<p>There are three overall themes here. First, piano goals. I&#8217;ve sort of neglected the piano, for a variety of reasons. Plus, I have 92 subscribers now. I should show them something.<\/p>\n<p>Second, <i>Everything I Know About Cookies<\/i>. My book is almost complete. If I don&#8217;t release it this year, that will be a personal failure on my part.<\/p>\n<p>Third, re-organize the house. Yeah, justs because I suck at it doesn&#8217;t mean I should give up on it. In fact, for something as important as re-organizing the house, I should probably keep trying until I get it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>January:<\/b> Post piano video (1\/4)<\/li>\n<li><b>February:<\/b> First draft of <i>Cookies<\/i><\/li>\n<li><b>March:<\/b> Clean my room (1\/4), magnetic spice jars<\/li>\n<li><b>April:<\/b> Final draft of <i>Cookies<\/i><\/li>\n<li><b>May:<\/b> Post piano video (2\/4)<\/li>\n<li><b>June:<\/b> Clean my room (2\/4), give away my stuff<\/li>\n<li><b>July:<\/b> Release <i>Cookies<\/i><\/li>\n<li><b>August:<\/b> Post piano video (3\/4)<\/li>\n<li><b>September:<\/b> Clean my room (3\/4), organize and sell my game collection<\/li>\n<li><b>October:<\/b> outline of macarons book<\/li>\n<li><b>November:<\/b> Post piano video (4\/4)<\/li>\n<li><b>December:<\/b> Clean my room (4\/4), (something else related to the house)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Resolution #2 &#8211; Reading.<\/b> I haven&#8217;t really read anything since I don&#8217;t remember. And my ability to write is directly correlated with my ability to read. (Not that I have any aspirations to write any time soon.) So really, I should get back to reading. I&#8217;ve decided, one book a quarter, so four books. Those books are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>House of Leaves (recommended by (I don&#8217;t remember))<\/li>\n<li>Snow Crash (recommended by Charles E)<\/li>\n<li>Ready Player One (recommended by Connie)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/parahumans.wordpress.com\/\">Worm, Chapters 1-3<\/a> (recommended by James) &#8211; It&#8217;s a web series. Online estimates say it&#8217;s about 6000pp, and it&#8217;s 30 chapters, so I&#8217;m thinking of breaking it into 10 chunks. Yes, I know this means it&#8217;ll take me forever to finish reading it&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thanks to everyone else for all the other recommendations. So many recommendations, I can&#8217;t wrap my brain around them all.<\/p>\n<p><b>Resolution #3 &#8211; Diet, exercise, and sleep.<\/b> Same as last year. <b>a.<\/b> No more than 10 cheat meals per month (even when I&#8217;m on vacation). <b>b.<\/b> At least 10 exercise days per month (pro-rated for when I&#8217;m on vacation. <b>c.<\/b> Don&#8217;t miss my bed time or wakeup time by more than 4 hr cumulative per month. (Again, pro-rated for when I&#8217;m on vacation.) Note that this is bumped down from 6 to 4 hours. This is because my median month was about 4 hours. And the months where I went over, sometimes I went over because I knew I had spare &#8220;minutes&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Wish me luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2016 Retrospective They say 2016 was a bad year. And in terms of politics and celebrities, it was. But for me personally, 2016 was a good year. There was a Vegas trip, an amazing California road trip, and a whirlwind 2-week romance with a Canadian girl. I&#8217;ll be looking back fondly on it as we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-new-years-resolutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":831,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions\/831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynejeng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}