How did I fail this year? Let me count the ways…

The 2024 resolutions:

• ACCOMPLISHED: Blog daily. I’m pretty sure I’ll accomplish this one for the next several years at least.
• ACCOMPLISHED: Walk/run at least 5,000 miles. I did (am doing?) at least 1,000 miles more than that.
• ACCOMPLISHED?: Run at least five (official) marathons. I think I did this? I actually didn’t really keep track of the marathons I signed up for. But I definitely ran  more than five unofficial marathons, so…
• ACCOMPLISHED: Run at least one (official) ultramarathon. Minimum distance: 60 km. The Calgary (virtual) Ultramarathon! I did this in…April? *checks* Yup. April 21.
• ACCOMPLISHED: Run a sub-4-hour marathon. I did this like right at the start of the year, haha. I don’t know what drugs I was on, but I booked it like all hell and ran it in like 3:55-something. I know that’s not very fast at all compared to people who can, y’know, run run, but it’s fast for me.
• FAILED: Do something with my 2020 NaNo story. Hopefully more than just another draft. I just did another draft.
• ACCOMPLISHED: Do some non-writing creative stuff. I picked up watercoloring! And I watercolored quite a bit.
• FAILED: Buy fewer frivolous/unnecessary things. HAHAHAHA NOPE shopping = what I do when I’m stressed. And this year was Stress Party 2024.
• FAILED: Take at least two French classes in my progression towards the certificate. I only did one class in Winter. I’ve learned that trying to take a class in Fall is setting everything up for failure, because Fall semester is ALWAYS insanely busy.
• ACCOMPLISHED: Get the DAMN BLOGS POSTED. I ACTUALLY DID THIS HOLY SHIT
• FAILED: Limit my “down time” screen time. I reiterate: Stress Party 2024. Sometimes obscenely long TikTok binges were the only thing keeping me from jumping into traffic.

ALRIGHT, so let’s set some for 2025.

• Blog daily.
• Walk/run at least…let’s say 6,500 miles. Surely that’s do-able, huh?
• Run at least five (official) marathons and actually KEEP TRACK OF THEM THIS TIME.
• Do something with my 2020 NaNo story that is more than another draft. I really take the next step with that thing and I’m sick of being afraid to take that step.
• Finish and print all my old blog archives. I think I have up through Year 15 formatted and printed, so I need to get the rest of those done. I hate not having physical copies of all of those blog posts. Those represent my life, man.
• Take at least one French class in my progression towards the certificate. Hopefully in this upcoming semester, because we all know it isn’t happening in Fall.
• Do a 50-mile run. My record right now is 60 k (37 miles); surely I can add 13 miles to that, right? Even if I just have to ping back and forth for 13 hours on that street at the bottom of our hill?
• Do some sort of writing that’s NOT an edit of my 2020 NaNo story. I’ve actually been wanting to try writing a story by hand (like, not typing it out but writing it in a notebook). So let’s say that. Write a story by hand.
• Be more careful with my money. Last year ended up being REALLY bad for this. I need to do better. Especially in terms of buying new clothes. I DO NOT NEED ANY MORE CLOTHES.
• Be more careful with “mindless” screentime. I’m not going to say screentime in general because I do a lot of productive stuff on my computer and don’t want to limit that (also, I feel like I’m the one person on this planet who does not get eye strain/eye fatigue from staring at a computer screen for like 7 hours straight). But I want to spend less time on Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube (unless YouTube is just on in the background when I’m doing other stuff). I’m not quite sure how I’ll measure and keep track of this just yet, but it’s definitely something worth watching.

That’s all I can think of for now, but if I come up with any more, they’ll be added here!