Tag Archives: New Year

New Years Resolutions 2025

Hello and welcome to 2025. I hope your celebrations were the perfect balance of frivolity, contemplation and fireworks.

New Years has always been a special time for me. Not because of the parties, but because of it gives (me) time to be retrospective. To take proper stock of the last year and how I can improve myself for this year.

Its not really a new years resolutions, more a “why did I not do this/why did I do that” and is it worth it to continue to do so. In the past, this included writing an actual letter to future me and reading it on New Years Eve. Today, its a more informal. More of a stop / start / continue approach. Start this, stop that, continue what works.

For 2025, I have decided on 3 focal areas.

  • To keep up consistently writing every day. A simple goal of 250 words dedicated to a personal project, be it this blog, a book project or even writing exercises. On the latter, my wife and I will be doing a writing prompt every two weeks.
  • To improve my overall health. Simply put to eat better, drink less alcohol and exercise regularly. 2024 was the year I have been ill the most, minor stuff mostly, and I would like that to improve.
  • To build a better home. This is a bit more nebulous, but will include moving house, decluttering or just making everything more cosy. Nothing here is really set in stone, its more of a long term improvement project.

Only the Writing and Health parts have goals set for now, but I hope that next year I will be polishing off my first novel, more fit for fight post pandemic, in a new home.

I wish you and yours a great 2025 and I hope you will stick around for more updates on my writing, painting and whatever else tickles my fancy.

Happy New Year!

Reviewing 2015

Oh hi, didn’t see you there. Almost welcome to 2016. Isn’t it nice? The last day of the year. Time for reminiscing and planning, looking back and forward, and possibly regretting a bunch of major and minor incidents that you’ve experienced. I hope it was good and wish you a great 2016, and if you’re following the blog, then thank you very much for your readership.

Yes, I am indeed swirling a lovely tumbler of Talisker Dark Storm while typing this and enjoying a bit of time off during the season. Did you get the books you clearly wanted for Christmas? No?! Then you should probably go out and buy them yourself (next year) and swallow that lump of disappointment like a particularly dry piece of turkey. Have some whiskey with it. It helps. 

So how has writing and reading worked out for me this year? Well, the WordPress helper monkeys prepared an annual report for me, if you’re interested.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 23 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The blog has been particularly bothersome for me since I never made an actually a plan and to be fair, I still haven’t. Like any project it has evolved and I hope to greatly expand it (maybe even draft a plan – the horror). I did write more and I plan to increase my output.

So in 2016 you can look forward to a weekly post from my new fictional diary of Archi, the potentially mad scientist, a monthly-ish post on either reading, writing or something else related to it, and possibly a few book reviews.

Naturally the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge failed spectacularly in 2015, like Goodreads was kind enough to inform me. But 18 books is nothing to sneer at and I leave quite a few unfinished ones for my total for 2016. I’ll update my page accordingly soon.

Screenshot 2015-12-31 18.45.38

Right now it’s time to start prepping food, go see friends and make vague overarching resolutions that I have little intention or motivation to keep. Except to “write more” and “be happy”.

On that note, I wish all of you a happy New Year and a great 2016.
Thank you so much for your readership. I hope you will hang around. Cheers…

 

Reviewing 2014

Welcome to 2015! I hope you had a great 2014, if not, then it’s finally over and 2015 is going to be so much better. So, how to review my reading and writing in 2014? Well… Abject failure is one way although that would probably be overstating it, as I did actually read and write stuff, just not at the level I hoped for. Continue reading Reviewing 2014