December is upon us. Time to review those resolutions again. · 11:57am Dec 1st, 2017
Let's cut to the chase: I didn't get much of any of my resolutions done. But I got some progress, at least. In review:
At least four month-long programs for mental and physical exercise. Not done, mostly because I can't control my schedule.
Finish one show per month: not done, because the website I relied on for that didn't last very long.
Cut Read Later list in half: also not done, time constraints and distractions. For that, I am truly sorry. I wish I could promise I'll read more stories here, but apparently that's not a promise I can make.
Read one novel off Gutenberg per month: only did six instead of twelve: The Painting of Dorian Gray, Wind in the Willows, King Solomon's Mines, Treasure Island, Jan Zonder Vrees, and the Pony Boys In the Rockie Mountains. That last one kind of messed me up; it was an absolute slog to go through. Cannot recommend King Solomon's Mines or Jan Zonder Vrees enough, though.
Watch at least one full tutorial per month: done, ish. May have missed one or two, but compensated later on.
Make a finished deer for 2D proxy animation. Again, done, ish. I have one that I made earlier in the year, and one that I tweaked just yesterday that I can use for a base for my novel characters. Either one can be adapted for animating a profile easily enough.
Make a Synfig tutorial. Not done. When my laptop started rattling, it pretty much killed any chances of doing a decent voice recording.
Outline six episodes of the City of Tomes series. Outlines done, spent most of November writing out two full prequel stories. That led me to realise some errors in the worldbuilding that'll need to be addressed. If it ever comes out, expect it to have shades of Warrior Meet. Like, beyond Doldrum Whimper as a reindeer and The Boy in the Alicorn Armour having a female counterpart, along with Rumble.
3D model the novel characters. Not done, and even though I said in January I'd be fixing some issues, they remain firmly in place. I couldn't decide on a design for my characters, and that compounded into delays in getting anything done. I do still have bases saved, like a model of Disney's Fantasia unicorns, a more standard reindeer, all that good stuff. But I still can't say what my characters look like, exactly.
What else has happened this year? My month-long quitting of the site and gaming altogether following a pretty grievous mistake that, well, had quite a heavy emotional impact on my mother at the time. My laptop started rattling right around the time I came back, and, honestly, I feel like I'm still not quite recovered from that whole debacle. I've been talking about writing the Orphanhooves fic since April, at least, and I think I haven't had any real progress except for the past two weeks or so. I'm having to brute-force myself to write pony fics. Part of that is probably due to not watching it for so long, and that in turn is... complicated. I've also started and finished the Python course on CodeCademy, at least the free one. Planning to expand on that with 'Inventing with Python,' sounds like it might help in the jobhunting department.
Even if I don't have a set program, I do at least get semi-regular exercise in the form of walking, so that's good. I've got my weight under control, it now shifts slightly above and below a good threshold value whereas before it settled above the threshold consistently.
I'm going to make the Orphanhooves fic my priority for the next couple of weeks, hopefully I can still get that out before year's end, but if I can't, then, I apologise. I've been a letdown for the past six months or so, so here's to picking yourself up. Oh, and for those who missed it: while I have since started playing videogames again (short sessions of Reus and Civ IV for now) I have sworn off the online card games again, both Hearthstone and Duelyst. So those, at least, will no longer impact my productivity. I don't know if I'll post the designs for my reindeer characters once/if they're done. Seems like the sort of thing you'd link on a separate account, no?
Anyway, an early happy Saint Nicholas to you all, salutations from Flanders.
Cracker out.
I missed a few too. But as long as I end up better than last year, I count my blessings.
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As the mad scientist said when his creation exploded instead of collapsing:
"Progress!"
Seriously, though, any positive evolution is still a positive, indeed, even when it's not the amount we wanted.