We'll Take A Cup of Kindness Yet, For Auld Lang Syne

*blows off dust* Check, check, this thing on? Sibilance, sibilance.

Back in the year 2012 I decided to make my first set of NewYear's Resolutions. I made one for every year I had been alive. Since then, other than the ones I made for Gamerstable in 2013, 2014 (here's how we did with those), and 2015 (and the scorecard for those) I have not made any personal resolutions. The year 2012 was a great one for me. A lot of that is owed to the list of resolutions I made. I did not even complete half of the resolutions, but just half of that list greatly altered how that year turned out. After all of the life changing things that have happened in the last few years, I have decided to make a list of resolutions/goals/bucket list/whatever again (and the world is not even scheduled to end this year!). So, 2016 get ready, we're going to kick some butt.

1) Go to Colorado.

-Last summer my little brother Chad and his girlfriend Jackie acted on a huge decision they had made, they packed up all of their stuff and made the move from Illinois where we have lived out entire lives to Colorado. Chad has wanted to live in Colorado since our first family vacation there when he was 8. Since then I have been to Colorado a handful of times, but not since my aunt and uncle married back in 2007. So this year, Colorado, I am coming to see you and your beautiful mountains.

2) Go to a gaming convention.

-This resolution was originally "Go to GenCon" but I did not want it to be entirely hung up on one event because something could come up that particular weekend. Back in 2012, I first started hanging out with the Gamerstable crew (for those who do not know, this is the podcast I am on, and my weekly gaming group), that year I went to my first convention in Collinsville, IL. After that I went to GenCon the next two years. Last year, I was not able to go due to our upcoming move and the new job I had just started the month (or maybe it was two months) before. As I watched all my friends' texts and social media posts come in I was devastated. Friday I even spent a good portion of the day plotting out how I could get there and spend at least Saturday there. I ended up missing GenCon, which truly is the best 4 days in gaming, and stayed at home being a responsible adult and saving money for a security deposit and all the other expenses included in moving (which still ended up being more than we had expected). This year I would LOVE to get back to GenCon, as long as a major life event or bodily injury or going bankrupt does not happen, I plan on being there. If I can't make it due to one of those things, a smaller convention will do. St. Louis has Geekway to the West which comes highly recommended by my buddy Kevin aka Melvin Smif (that's his blog) aka @SharnDM (that's his twitter). I also found a con in Wisconsin called Gamehole Con that looks quite spectacular. We will see which the winner is, and I may even get lucky and be able to go to multiple.

3) Learn something new.

-This was one of my favorites from 2012, it led to me playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time and meeting some of my dearest friends that I still have 4 years later. This year, I think it will not be something quite as epic as my lifelong headfirst plunge into gaming but it is something very close to my heart. Growing up my siblings and I would spend the majority of our days in the summer at my grandma and grandpa's house. My grandma was the one who taught me how to cook, how to garden, and how to sew among many other things. This Christmas she got me a sewing machine. Other than a few minor things here and there, the only thing I have sewn was a quilt and my grandma was there to help me every step of the way. This year, I am hoping to learn to sew clothes. I have watched her alter clothes and even did some of it myself (this falls in the minor category), but I have never done anything from the ground up. With my lifelong love of costumes/dressing up having a new (3 year old) outlet in cosplay, I would very much so love to be able to sew my own costume to wear to a con (or Halloween or Tuesday). Mind you, my resolution is to learn something new and this goal may change to something like spelunking, for now, this is what is on my mind. Just think of all the cute new dresses I will be able to add to my closet!

4) Finish 12 paintings this year.

-2015 was the year I fell in love with painting. It started with a paint night with some of the best people I know, hosted by the wonderful Nancy. (Seriously, if you live in my area, you should click her name and sign up for a night of painting with her.) After my first night painting with her, I knew I was hooked. The very next night I went to Michael's and bough canvas, paint, and brushes and I've been painting ever since. I had a pretty long streak of painting once a week, most of which I would finish the painting that day. Here recently, however, I have been trying to stretch myself and do things that are a little more challenging. More complex backgrounds and things that I am really not sure I can do prior to starting. That, plus I no longer have a roommate with a blow dryer... that slows things down A LOT. So my goal is one a month, I think that's attainable.

5) Karaoke.

-This is one that was leftover from 2012; I STILL have never gone to a place to karaoke. At my last job, we would talk about it all the time; we never got around to planning it. This year will be the year of karaoke. It will happen. I will not chicken out.

6) Continue updating my budget.

-Around the same time I had to miss GenCon due to not saving any money other than what we needed to move, I decided we should have a budget. There should be somewhere, written in stone, how much money is coming in and how much money is going out, along with how much money it is ok to throw away on stupid things like Cat Foot Mops if the mood strikes. It took awhile to turn that decision into a reality, we ended up not moving until October, and as soon as we moved into that place, we had to move out and into another. But finally in November, I had pretty decent estimates of all the outgoing dollar amounts for bills, and I had known since I started my new job all of the incoming, so I was able to sit down and make a budget. I had not planned on actually starting a budget until January, but to have the most accurate budget, you need to start a little early. My spreadsheet for November is pretty much a mess, December is better, but there were still changes and updates to be made for January. I'm sure I will have to continue tweaking my budget through the year; I already have a few things that won't be able to take effect until February. But the important thing is continuing to update my budget and remaining mindful of that incoming to outgoing ratio, especially when it comes to things like savings.

7) Run Deadlands.

-This one was not one I came up with on my own. If you could not tell from the first paragraph of this post, every year on my podcast we do a resolutions and challenges episode, where we make our resolutions for the year and the other members are free to challenge us to make some change or another in our lives. Being a gaming podcast, these are all gaming related and not many personal ones make the show (though there have been a few). This year Eric challenged me to run a game of Deadlands. This was a really good challenge for me. I borrowed Eric's Deadlands books for about a year, reading them, taking notes, wanting to play and never getting a chance to. This year, I still may not to be on the player side of the screen, but running it is a good alternative. For the people who are not gamers reading this (or even the people who are gamers, but are not familiar with Deadlands), Deadlands is a tabletop roleplaying game (tabletop roleplaying games are best known by the game Dungeons and Dragons). Deadlands is set in the old west, it is a slight off shoot from history as we know it, the civil war did not go the exact way we know to have gone among many other things. I mentioned previously those summers at my grandma and grandpa's house, and the love of sewing and cooking my grandma infused in me, well, the love my grandpa handed down to me was of Westerns. Maverick is one of the first live action movies I remember seeing (after looking at the release date, I have come to the realization that it was most likely not, but the memory of a child is a wobbly one and things get mashed together). In addition to Maverick, we would watch things like McClintock! and Tombstone and pretty much anything in the John Wayne collection. There were two settings on the TV once my grandpa got home from work, Westerns or News. While I was still in film school I always wanted to make a Western, as I have chosen a very different path in life, it is about time I run a game set in one. If you want to listen to Eric's challenge and the rest of the gang's resolutions/challenges go on over to the Gamerstable site and give it a listen.

8) Get back down to my Weight Watchers goal weight.

-I know losing weight is a cliché resolution. It kills me to put this. Actually, it does not kill me at all, because I had to come up with sixteen resolutions and that is a lot. Back in 2011 I started Weight Watchers for the umpteenth time, but this time it was different. I was bound and determined to stick with it and I wasn't just joining up because I felt I should or because my mom was doing it. I had decided to start going to meetings and I drug my mom, my Aunt Sharon, and my friend Evan along. That round of Weight Watchers did end up being different, I lost nearly 50 lbs. and I kept it off for several years. Meeting my boyfriend and dating him and moving in with him has not been conducive to continuing this weight loss maintenance (yeah, yeah, more stereotypes and clichés), and I've gained a lot of the weight I lost back. After Thanksgiving of this year and getting all the stress of moving and job-hunting, and the health issues I had been having out of the way, I started Weight Watchers up again. It's been a little over a month and right now my total lost sits at 12 lbs., post-Christmas weigh in was a bit of a setback but I'm hoping to get back on track and I would like to get back to the weight I know I feel most comfortable in sometime in the year of 2016.

9) Do another 5K.

-I was reading through my old 2012 resolutions and thinking of the ones I did not complete. In 2012 I wanted to run a 10K, I did not end up doing that, I ran 2 separate 5Ks, but that does not count. The last 5K I ran (as an actual race, not just that distance), was probably back in 2014 or 2013. This year I want to run a 5K again. I used to love running so much, but since moving away from my hometown I have not done much of it.

10) Volunteer twice.

-This is another 2012 reject. I thought it would be so easy to volunteer two times that year, in the past I had volunteered way more than that, with girl scouts or my church, so I was certain I could do it, I set a low bar of twice, after all, that should be easy. Well, it ended up not being nearly as easy as I thought it would, back then I was working about 70 hours a week, so in order to volunteer I was going to have to make it happen, not just wait for it to fall in my lap. This year, I know to be more proactive about it. That being said, this is a little front loaded as my good friend Kelsey, who I have talked about on this blog before, has already organized an evening/afternoon volunteering at The Ronald McDonald House later this month. 

11) Start Brandon's campaign.

-This is another one that generated from the Gamerstable Resolutions and Challenges episodes (again, feel free to give it a listen). Awhile back our Wednesday night crew started playing 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, Brandon was a little bummed he could not join us, so I started planning a one on one campaign just for him, with me running it and him playing a monk. Well the aforementioned move and then getting ready for the holidays really slowed us actually starting this campaign down, so I'm hoping to get back in the saddle and finish planning our first chunk of adventure soon. 

12) Read 12 books.

-Yet another failed 2012 goal. As I said, back then I did not have a lot of free time to read. In the two months I had Kindle Unlimited I read 6 or 7 books, so I am hoping that is an indicator that it is okay to make this a resolution again.

13) Purchase 6 disposable cameras, take pictures with them, and get them developed through the year.

-This was originally a disposable camera a month, but with how much easier it is to just whip out my iPhone and take pictures, I thought that was a little more than I could handle. Back in 2012 I had a resolution to take more pictures and do something with them. I succeeded on a technicality, more than nothing is not much at all. However, part of the way through the year I fell in love with the idea of using disposable cameras and I applied it. Honestly, I probably went through more than 6 in the short span I was still working hard at that resolution. But I loved how all the pictures came out, and actually having physical pictures again. So this year, buy and use disposable cameras, at least six of them, and get them developed.

14) Take at least one trip (trips to fulfill other resolutions do not count).

-I used to travel all the time, then somehow I got down to just one trip a year (GenCon), and last year I did not take a single trip (aside from a couple of out of town weddings, that I am not counting because we were only there during wedding event thing and to sleep afterwards). This year, I am going places! You know, literally going places.

15) Do something new and/or risky.

-This is kind of a remix of several of my 2012 resolutions. I could not come up with specific things I wanted to do like ride an elephant, or going skydiving. I have been lucky and have been able to do a lot of really cool things, I try every year to do something new, but I do not yet have plans for anything this year, maybe I will finally get around to learning to rock climb? Perhaps skydiving and me will have another date? Or maybe there's more white water rafting in my future? My cousin offered to teach me to surf... I'll think of something to fill this generic slot.

16) Get another year older.

-I could not resist adding my favorite resolution to the end of my list, for the record it gets completed in May when I age, not a year from me making this resolution.

So there we have it. I am rebooting the same blog I started back in 2012 for the same reason I initially started it. Cheers 2016, I'm looking forward to you.