Okay – it’s time for the reckoning, taking a look at my resolutions for the year and deciding whether I kept to them or whether they fell through.  My reflections here tend to be much more structured that in my previous post as I’m going to be looking specifically at the resolutions I made for the year and giving each a pass/fail – there’s no partial credit on these.  With the rules out of the way, here we go:

Assembly Backlog – PASS

This is a bit of a tradition for me, and I’m happy to be continuing it and keeping it going.  I buy a lot of models for my miniature gaming hobby, and I once again managed to finish putting together all the ones that I bought last year and wanted to put together this year.  That’s a bit caveated, I know, but there are good reasons I left some off the list.

Of the stuff that I did get done though – there are a few pieces in particular that I’m particularly happy with.  First, I completed my Reaver titan for Warhammer – this is a big walker and fits right in with my dreadnought and knight army.  Next, though it wasn’t on my resolution list, was my 10th anniversary Warmachine and Hordes terrain pieces; I’ve had these for a while in their boxes, but it’s cool to finally have them together (especially as I have a place for them).  Lastly, I did complete my custom models from the league this year and last year, so they’re all done; I really like how these turned out, even if they are not something that is going to see much table time.

Organize my eBook Collection – PASS

This one was the resolution that I think made me the most nervous – Going in, I knew I had a lot of e-books, and getting them all downloaded, much less, organized, was going to take some work.  As I was working through it, I found that I wasn’t as far behind the curve as I initially thought, but there was still a fair bit to do, especially around my DriveThruRPG collection.  Luckily, DriveThru came up with an application to help download and manage their library, which made getting all the files down a ton easier.

As I was going through some of the stuff I had, it definitely inspired me to want to read some of those books to boot; spoilers – I may have a few of them on my 2020 resolutions.

Play through a Campaign Game – PASS

This one was almost a gimme, as I love making time to play campaign games, and I actually had some folks to do it with this year.  Still, playing through all of Sword and Sorcery was more than I had expected to do, but I still had a ton of fun.  It’s probably the only game I have in my collection so far that I’ve ever played through all the content for – super cool!  Also, I do like keeping up with Guild Wars 2 – after completing the Path of Fire campaign, I’ve been trying to clear some of the Heart of Thorns zones which has been a lot of fun with the new mounts.

Medical Visits – FAIL

As the year kicked in to high gear, I knew there was a good chance I was going to miss this one.  It seems like scheduling an appointment should be easy…  …But, in point of fact, I scheduled a doctor’s appointment, but actually missed it when it came up just because of all the stuff that was going on.  I’m happy I got my dentist appointments in, and I do plan on getting to the doctor in 2020, it just didn’t quite get done this year.

Fitness Walking – FAIL

This one was a pretty hard fail – I was motivated early in the year, and not doing too bad, but as the year continued, I just didn’t feel like I wanted to continue spending my time in this way.  Overall, it was different enough from my normal patterns and significantly “extra” enough that I moved away from it.

Financial – FAIL

This one was a pretty complex multi-part resolution, but I only manage to complete some of them, so it’s an overall failure.  I did manage to pay off my car, which is awesome – I really like that that’s done, and my budget is a lot healthier now that I don’t have that payment every month.  Of the three – this is the one I’m most proud of; every time I pay off a loan (like my student loans), I always get the feeling of accomplishment, and that’s pretty cool.

I did not succeed in reducing my energy bills though, which is a bit of a bummer.  I really through that 2% would be an easy win, though it turns out this is harder than it sounds.  In one case, my usage went down, and my bill went up, while in others there’s a natural buffering effect with the base charges that made it difficult to bring the bill down.  Even before this year, I’ve kept a good pulse on my total energy footprint, but I plan on continuing to do this and seeing if there are opportunities to improve.

Lastly, I did manage to curb my eating out at work habit and switch to bringing lunch.  I went a bit higher on this one though, and have been bringing lunch to work almost every day.  There are, of course, still the Ops lunches and various crazy mornings, but this has been a good step in the right direction for me.  It’s helped me get my budget closer to the right spot, and also made my lunches more healthy, which is definitely a good thing.

Verdict

A 50% completion rate isn’t great, but I’m going to stay optimistic down here.  First and foremost, with as busy as everything has been, especially in the latter half of the year, I still managed to get all my hobby resolutions done.  This is a big deal to me because it means that my work/hobby balance didn’t suffer critically even during this time.  Though my health stuff fell off, I am happy with the financial stuff I did accomplish this year, even if it wasn’t all resolutions.