Goals – Rich Brownell

Goodbye 2016

I didn’t do any blogging this year. That’s probably for the best. This year has had a lot of ups and downs. For my kids, mostly ups. They are doing fantastic. Though they are behind on some milestones, they are intelligent and super happy. What more could a dad ask for?

In other aspects of my life, 2016 was not so great. And for the world at large, 2016 was horrific. Our next President is already hard at work to make the world a terrible place before he’s even in office. We saw more high profile celebrity deaths in any year I can remember. The world is showing many more ways that climate change is hurting us. Things were just rough.

But let’s not dwell on that. I’m trying to focus on being positive, even if that means ignoring the negative things I have no control over. Looking back over the year, here are some things I find are worth a mention:

My job at Lyons didn’t work out, but I am now a contractor with Moku Collective. There are a lot of great people there (great clients too). It’s a good place for me.
My pirates-themed Pathfinder game fell apart, but we are now having a lot of fun playing through Mummy’s Mask. I don’t foresee any problems with us finishing this at this time. And my 3D terrain and lighting is better than ever.
I didn’t read many books this year, but Brandon Sanderson gave me my two favorites of 2016: The Bands of Mourning, and Mistborn: Secret History. I love the Mistborn series. Go read them so we can chat about how great they are.
I helped out my friends at Ding develop some video game ideas. We didn’t publish anything but I learned a lot and had fun.
I played many video games and even finished nine of them. Of those, I have to mention three for different reasons:
- The Stanley Parable. It’s best to go into this game with no knowledge of what’s within. Just play it. You can beat it very quickly and there are multiple stories so you will enjoy playing it numerous times.
- Ultimate Chicken Horse. Single screen multiplayer games are mostly a thing of the past. So when a good one comes along, I have to mention it. This is a great party game that I can’t rightfully explain. Look up a video to see the mayhem and then pick it up.
- Dark Souls 3. I’m still torn on whether I consider this one better or worse than the first Dark Souls. I’m still tempted to put the original on top, but they are quite close. I can’t wait to dive back in for the DLC once it’s all released.
I played two dozen tabletop games. The one that deserves the biggest mention is Pandemic: Legacy. It’s a story version consisting of 12-24 games of Pandemic with the rules changing every game or so to reflect the story progression. It’s one of the highest rated games on boardgamegeek and for good reason. I highly recommend this to any group of seasoned tabletop gamers. For the relative newbies, pick up the original Pandemic which is also great.
For TV, movies, and anime, a few things deserve mention:
- Evangelion movie 3 was just not good. I keep trying to think of a way for it to be good because of my love for the series but I can’t. I hope movie 4 gets back on track.
- One-Punch Man is my favorite anime in years. I highly recommend it for fans of humorous action.
- Zootopia is one of my favorite movies in a long time. It seems like this year had a lot of good animated features but I’m quite behind. Hopefully I’ll catch them next year.
- I caught up on quite a few movies I missed out on: Rumble in the Bronx, Way of the Dragon, Spies Like Us, and Training Day. All worth a watch
- The new Voltron on Netflix is surprisingly good. I didn’t expect that, but I highly recommend it.

So 2016 wasn’t all bad. I’m planning 2017 now and I’m trying to double down on the things that make me happy (time with friends and family) and cut way down on the things that don’t (wasting time on the internet mainly). I don’t call them resolutions any more, but I’ll post about my 2017 plans in a few days once I’ve finished them.

Resolution: lose weight

I managed to keep my weight steady in 2013 but in the early days of this year gained some more. Several days ago I was at my highest ever: 240.

I’m going to have a series of goals this year to get to a lower weight. I don’t want to have an overall goal for the year because if it looks like I won’t achieve it due to early year setbacks, it will discourage me.

I set my first goal a few days ago to lose 5 pounds. I only have 3.3 pounds to go.

Farewell 2013

Yes, I waited a year or so in between blog posts. And this despite that I had resolved to blog more. Silly me.

It turns out blogging is pretty much dead, at least in the sense that many people maintain personal blogs about themselves or whatever they feel like talking about. Even Twitter now has more niche services aimed specifically at teens or other groups fighting for its supremacy.

But I do still want to post here and much more often. And I don’t even care who’s reading.

2013 was a good year for me. The most important event was buying a house. This has been a dream for Christina and me for years. We saved and saved, even more than we needed, and ended up with a fantastic little house. We’re in a great location and it’s perfect for entertaining or just having a quiet night at home.

The main thing I really made no progress on this year was losing weight. According to my records, I lost .4 pounds, so no change at all, but at least I didn’t get bigger.

I also recorded every game, TV show, anime, movie, and book I read. This is fun for me. Yes, really. I actually didn’t finish any new video games this year, which is strange. I have a habit of leaving games unfinished but this year was particularly bad. I blame League of Legends as it took a lot of my gaming time.

I finished 13 books, mostly setting/rules books for my Pathfinder games. The most important book I read was The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. This book and the lecture that preceded it went viral several years ago, but it’s never too late to take the core messages away from Randy’s words. Have fun, follow your dreams, and make the most of life. Sappy? Sure. But still correct.

I watched quite a few movies this year, though I wanted to make more trips to the theaters. Call me old-fashioned but I enjoy seeing movies with the public. I can’t pick just one movie to comment about to here are a few:

Star Trek: Into Darkness. I enjoyed this, as a popcorn movie and as a Star Trek movie. The original Star Trek series and some of its movies get put on a pedestal that no new movie could ever reach. I think the original series was corny as hell. I enjoy the original and reboot for different reasons.
Thor: The Dark World. Christina is a major Loki fangirl. But beyond that, I liked this movie, especially as an action comic book movie. Film critics and average movie-goers alike commonly forget that comic books are typically about people punching other people. Almost every plot in Marvel/DC comics are an excuse to have people punch other people. In that sense, this movie delivered. And the plot behind the punching was good enough for me.
Evil Dead. This reboot was great. Highly recommended for fans of classic horror with a bit of a gruesome twist.
Someone’s Gaze (Dareka no Manazashi). An animated short that I found super touching.

To wrap up my 2013 resolutions, I didn’t go hiking or do as much cooking as I wanted, though Christina has cooked quite a bit since we moved into the house. 2014 is looking bright. With the house out of the way, we can focus on saving money for whatever surprises await us.

What didn’t go well: 2012 resolutions

I like to revisit my resolutions each year to see how I did. Normally, I do this privately, but since I actually accomplished my resolution of relaunching this site, I’m doing it publicly. This first post is only on the parts that didn’t go well.

My usual fitness resolution was somewhat all over the place. My weight fluctuated by about 15 pounds this year, but I’m ending on the heavier side. I’m eating healthier than I ever have, but portion control is a problem, as is the lack of sufficient exercise.

My usual Japanese learning one didn’t go well either. I’m still learning more kanji, but at a glacial pace. I catch occasional words and phrases in Japanese media, but I don’t understand much.

I had a few goals that I really thought would be no problem. I wanted to watch more movies in the theaters with the wife, but didn’t make it out to many this year. There were quite a few good movies out, and I did make it out to Muppets, Avengers, and Dark Knight Rises, but I expected to see many more. Perhaps we spent too much time in front of the TV.

I also thought I would have no problem with cooking more. I love cooking. And I’m good at it too (or people I cook for are crafty liars and only I like my food). But alas, I didn’t do much cooking and didn’t try many new recipes (in my many cookbooks).

Last year, I really got back into reading and completed about a book a month. Heavy readers will think this isn’t much, but I’ve found almost everybody I know hardly reads any more. My goal was increased from a book a month to 30 books for this year. But I actually read less. Despite enjoying them, I spent more than half the year getting through Games of Thrones and its sequel. Some day I’ll get to writing about those and other books I’ve been reading. But unless I finish a book in the next couple days, I only can say I read seven for this year. I also only finished eight video games, but I’ll get more into that in a future update.

A couple other resolutions eluded me as well, but there is good news! I did well on several. I’ll have another entry covering what I did well on. So look forward to that soon. If all goes well, I might even include charts!