gemini://dira.cc/gemlog/plans-for-2022/

I know new year's resolutions are somewhat controversial. It is easy to try to do too much, become overwhelmed, fail, and then give up entirely. Nevertheless they have worked for me in the past at least to some extent, and even if I can keep up with my plans for just a few weeks that's still better than nothing.

So I am currently deciding what to expect from myself in 2022. There are a number of things I want to do, and some I have set out to do before but stopped. To list a few:

Play more video games. While I do often play them, I noticed I tend to replay the same games over and over, specifically the Elder Scrolls and Dark Souls series. But there are so many good games out there, from indie to AAA titles, so I'm thinking about playing at least one game a month that I have not played before.

Make video games. Becoming a game dev has been a dream of mine since childhood. I have fiddled around with Godot and other game engines occasionally, but I only ever finished making one game in my life, and that's because it was made within the constraints of a school project. It's clear that I need time limits, so I am thinking about doing the "one game a month challenge" that I read about somewhere on Gemini space. Although going from 0 to 100 might not be a good idea, so I'm unsure about this for now.

Draw. Drawing is another thing I want to do but just don't for some reason. This year I had a challenge going where I tried drawing one picture every day, but most days it devolved into scribbling something dumb at midnight, and it became tedious after a few months so I stopped. If I do it again I need to modify the challenge somehow.

Do physics. Ever since the pandemic started it has become much more difficult for me to focus on studying. It improved somewhat when university opened up again after one and a half years, but I still don't have good study habits. Don't know what to do about this one.

Clean my room more regularly. This is perhaps the most important one of all my goals. I hate cleaning so I don't do it as often as I should, even though I know how good it is for my mental health to be in a clean environment.

Write more on my gemini capsule. There are two reasons for this: One, I need to practice writing and communicating thoughts clearly, for my career and as a general life skill. Two, as many geminauts have pointed out, keeping a sort of diary is extremely helpful for organizing your thoughts. I think one of the biggest obstacles to my goals is that my mind is often hazy, and I hope this will help with that.

And of course the usual stuff: exercise, eat healthy, yada yada. My exercise plan that has worked well for a long time is dead since my Switch started to overheat during Fitness Boxing 2 (at least that is my current excuse).

I have known myself for many years now, so I know I won't be doing any of these without being held accountable. I'm thinking about posting at least once a week and report how I'm doing on these fronts. When I play more video games I might do game reviews, as I have done for The Sims 2 (Nintendo DS). If I go for the one game a month challenge I will post devlogs (or at least make a post about each release). I'm not sure about publishing practice drawings, but that is also an idea. Regarding physics, I would like to try to explain what I am working on in simple to understand ways, as I said in a previous post. All of this helps with the writing part. Also maybe one day I will write the final chapter to The Theory of Anything.

If any of these goals become a habit it would be great. I'll count 2022 as a success as long as a good chunk of the time I spend staring into empty space is replaced by doing something I want to do.

2021-12-29 | Thank you! I should have mentioned it above but I already decided I would be using Godot for making games as it seems to be the most promising engine (+ it's free software). But this looks cool too! Would probably help with keeping the scope manageable in small projects. - Rie

Plans for the new year

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