It’s been almost a year since I wrote anything… …Here. But, it’s time to talk resolutions again, and I wanted to make sure I got them down again this year. For me, 2024 was a lot, far more than I bargained for, but it was good, even if it was busy. I won’t belabor that point, because this post is about 2025, and, like every year, I have goals. Every year, when I do this, I usually think these things are reasonable, and sometimes more achievable than other years (I knew my 2024 assembly backlog would be a stretch even when I wrote it down), sometimes, even to the extent that I don’t try as hard as I probably should have. This year though, I’m going to still write them down, still track them, and I’ll see how it goes.
That said, here we go.
Assembly Backlog
If you’ve read any of my resolutions posts, you’ll realize this is basically tradition at this point, and I don’t feel like 2025 needs to mess with this tradition at least. I like making sure I get my assembly backlog on my resolutions, primarily because I want to make sure I do it. If I can’t, it really means that I should stop buying miniatures – it’s not so much “pile of shame” or even “pile of opportunity”, it’s that I’m not putting models together. And if I’m not doing that… …why am I buying them? I like building miniatures (certainly more than painting them – I don’t feel shame at the grey in the slightest), but making sure I’m building them is something I want to do every year.
One thing about this year is that my list is going to be relatively small. I didn’t buy a lot of models last year, primarily because… …playing miniatures games has been a bit of declining hobby for me. Not for lack of trying, and I could just as easily see this coming back to the forefront any day, it’s just that it hasn’t worked out. I’m curious to see how this one will turn out in 2025 as it will be one indicator I use to see how important the miniatures hobby really is to me.
Miniatures Inventory
As an addendum to my miniature assembly, I want to take some time to inventory my war gaming miniatures. Specifically, what I have for Warmachine/Hordes, Warcaster, Warhammer 40k, and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. I also want to check in on my print-and-play miniatures (even if I haven’t printed them): Grand Admiral, Grid Wars, Nebula, and Pocket Tactics. At one point, I knew all that I had and how it could be combined into different units with the various gear options, but there’s been enough thrash with editions and rule changes (part of the inertia I’m struggling with in playing miniature war games) that I’m not entirely sure how it all fits together in a collection anymore.
The other reason for the inventory… …Is that I may get rid of some things. We’ll see.
NxN Gaming Challenge
In 2024, I wanted to play more of my games, so I devised a resolution to play 52 different games over the course of the year. This was fun, but I found near the end of the year that I wanted to play some times (gasp!) twice. This is obvious now, but was problematic because I only had so much time, and this meant I may fail my resolution even though I was doing what my goal was – playing more games. So, this year, I’m going to try something a little different, and hopefully, I’ll get to play more of my favorite games more.
This year, my goal is to play five different games at least five times each; in other words, a five-by-five gaming challenge. That said, I also want to strive to see how far I can push that – can do I six different games six times each? Seven? More? We’ll see – I’m not promising more than five-by-five, but I want to see where this leads to see if it’s more fun than last year’s goal.
Dune
I love Dune, so this year, I want to enjoy some Dune stuff. I’ve got some things in mind, but for this goal, I want to do three things: Read the book (audiobook will be allowed), watch the movies (1984 David Lynch movie, the 2000 SciFi mini-series, and the 2021-2024 Denis Villenueuve movies), and play a game based on Dune (one of the computer games, the 1979 game, Dune Express, Dune: The Dice Game, Dune: Imperium, Dune: Imperium – Uprising, maybe Dune: War for Arrakis [though I don’t own this one], the Dune role-playing game [hm, could be interesting]?). I’m excited by this as it’s been long enough that I’m ready to refresh my memory, knowledge, and generally enjoy this one again – for me, returning to an old favorite novel is comfort that I find helps me refresh.
Journaling
I bought a journal last year with the explicit plan to write in it this year. My resolution, which I don’t typically do, is to write in this journal every day in 2025. What I write is flexible, but a minimum of a couple of bullets about what went on that day is enough. I’ve done this in the past, and I found it very valuable – it helps me focus and think about my day, put it away, then move on; so it’s good for my mental and emotional health.
2025 Themes
As I look into 2025, a lot of the themes that I chose for 2024 are still relevant. All but one, actually.
First on the list still is to be excellent at my new job. I’m always looking for opportunities to be better, and, as I look at how I’m doing at my job, I’m finding opportunities to do better. This, for me, is great – it means that I have more to learn, I have more to reach for, and, hopefully, more to eventually grasp. If I do caveat one thing with this, it will be to be excellent without working quite as many Sundays.
Next, and moving up on the list, is to continue my trend of more reading and writing. I made some good space for this last year, so this year, I just want to continue to use it for that purpose. I have some space for writing, mostly about the role-playing game that I’m in, I want to continue to carve out some more space for this still – I do believe there is still good opportunities for me to write, I just need to execute on it.
Finally, I want to continue to make healthy choices, and, ideally, make more, better, healthy choices this year. I’m going to be a bit blunt on this one – I’m not really comfortable talking about my health in any kind of public setting, so, don’t expect to see anything more specific than that here. That said, if you’re reading this, and you’re curious, we can chat, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be cagey then too.
That’s it for this year’s resolutions – we’ll see how it goes!