Ever Onward

This post should've been written and finished and posted somewhere around the 1st of January, as a sort of introduction to the new year. It seems to be a common trope that bloggers put up a list of what they will do in the coming year, and then review the list 12 months later. In a GTD kinda way, I can see the benefit, and as human beings it definitely helps to have hopes and dreams to provide a little direction to ones life.

The thing that's always made me pause over bullet pointed plans for the longer term has been that hopes and dreams were attached to educational success, career success and financial success, and therefore weren't long term at all. My formal education is over, I have a “permanent” job that I love and I'm comfortable with my bank balance.

So, now what?¹⁾

Skipping over the first chapters and heading straight for the whodunnit-page: I really hope my new job stays every bit as exciting as I find it now. It's really given me a lot of energy that I wasn't ever sure I'd get back. Being in the wrong job really does affect you that much.

2009 was the Year of Music; which got off to a slow start, but has made me sort out a lot of things that I would otherwise have just not done. 2010 (that's twenty-ten: welcome to the future!) is to be the Year of Gaming. Video games, board games, card games, roleplaying games, and whatever kinky games I can get Pam to play now that she's got the promise of a ring! Although, forgive me if I don't write about those …

Specifically I'd like to start working on some chronicling of what I've played, and really examine what I like about a game, and what I don't like. I'm thinking about a new site to dump some of these critical ideas, and I think I may have found a use for Twitter, even! Coupled with this self-examination, I've been threatening to write a game or parts of a game for a while, but never quite gotten around to it. My programming skills are the best they've ever been, so this will be an excellent stretch for me, and could lead to some interesting discoveries.

I think originally, the Year of Music was intended to produce an album that I could be proud of - in reality what got kicked off and set up was much much bigger than I really planned for, and has paved the way for far more than just a handful of well recorded songs. Already plans are in the works for a digital pop act, song remixes, and alternative versions of our own songs.

So that's how you should view the Year of Gaming - a focal point for me to get my shit together and do all those things that have been bubbling away for too many years. I'm not going to list the specific things I want to get done, because that would mean knowing it all up front, so instead look out for more bits and pieces to come.

The crux of all of this, however, is ensuring that I'm not dropping one focus for another, but rather adding to that focus. Less specific to 2010, but specific to me, is that I see myself adding to the number of concurrent tasks I have, instead of trying to get them all “finished”. I'm testing myself to see how much I can make progress with at the same time before I'm overwhelmed. By increasing the number of focal points slowly, I'm hoping to not only get a lot of different things done but also stretch and train myself to be able to do more.

Game on.