Lifestyle New Year's Resolutions

[Jumpheart]

Hello everyone! Happy new year! I looked briefly for other iterations of this thread and wasn't able to find anything, so:

If you're seeing this not long after the new year, do you have any resolutions this year? If so, what are they? What are you going to do to try to keep them?

If you're seeing this later in the year, how are your resolutions going? Is there any you'd like to start?

For me, I have two! First, I am going to try to do a better job of staying in contact with people this year. I am very "out of sight, out of mind", so I'm going to try and be intentional to reach out to people. My personal goal is to reach out to a friend I haven't talked to for some time at least twice per week, hopefully more.

I'm also going to cut back on sugar and other unhealthy foods. I'm not ever going to be a health nut but I know that with my upcoming shift from college to a desk job that my health will suffer for it so taking steps to offset this now is important! I don't have a distinct, measurable goal for this, but some steps I am planning on taking are no sweets in my apartment, cutting out what little soda I still drink, and decreasing sample sizes of unhealthy foods. I'd love to work out more but this is a stretch goal

 

[McGrrr]

Getting old, so it's simply eat healthier and exercise more. Not trying to quantify either goal as it'll be obvious if I'm making progress.

 

[chimp]

Resolutions don't work for me unfortunately- I need to gamiefy everything. So instead I am making a Bingo board with various goals I want to complete by the end of the year. The goal is to complete just a single Bingo but if I can complete the whole board.... that's great.

 

[Pengu]

for me my main one is to work out more often, but trying to convince myself to get another pet is another big one.

 

[Mr. Uncompetitive]

I actually was doing pretty good on exercise last year (managed to get a low 27 min 5K ), so just need to make sure I keep up a nice schedule for it into next year lol

Based on what my therapist has told me, my main issue is that despite being on the job hunt (which by itself doesn't consume as much time as one would think, like a few-several hours a day), I also need to "be busier" / "do more things with my life" and have a proper schedule, including pursuing meaningful hobbies and going out and socializing more. So this is the first year I'm having a proper list of New Years Resolutions and they're pretty long, so we'll see how far we get lol. I am indeed noticing it helps to have a specific "deliverable" to aim for with these goals

1. Get a solid full-time job obviously, but I also need to find some tutoring / teaching jobs for the short-term since I love doing that stuff
   
   
2. Spend about 10-25 hours a week teaching myself programming skills I've always wanted to learn but never got around to. This month I'm learning SQL, next month it's Flask so I can hopefully host a website (since I mostly use Python I imagine Flask will be a lot easier than relearning a JS framework for now), month after that it's the more intricate details of GenAI (i.e. understanding the math and current literature), and then C++, ROS, R, Spark, PHP, React JS, etc, etc. Admittedly I will most likely cut this goal if/when I get a full-time job lol.
   
   
3. Get back into developing the game I was working on this past Summer/Fall; I'm blessed that my team (online people I met during a jam) is still wanting to work on it and that my local city also has a pretty solid dev community, so I'm aiming to do progress showcases at monthly meetups and have a 30ish min demo ready in mid-October that we can submit to a local indie game expo (I do not expect the full game to be done any soon, I'll be shocked if it gets done before Trump leaves office)
   
   
4. Spend a few hours a week on (getting better at) video editing. Can also learn Photoshop while I'm at it.
   
   
5. Spend some time each week (maybe an hour or two total?) learning piano. Alfred's book for adults was the main recommendation I saw, so I just want to finish that book by year's end.
   
   
6. Continue learning Japanese, I've been using Duolingo to practice kana and Genki for everything else. My goal for this year is to finish the first Genki book and pass an N5 level test. If I have time/energy, hitting N4 would be a cool stretch goal, and getting good enough to do a fan-translation of Wagyan Paradise is my eventual goal (probs 2026 lol)
   
   
7. Get a more organized sense of what games / mangas / animes / movies / albums I want to get through and make a media thread for it on twitter or something; would be nice considering I spend a disproportionate amount of time just dabbling through my backlogs rather than actually playing or watching something lol, and I like to write and talk about what I experience. Aiming for an album a week, about one of every other category per month (aiming for animes that I could watch while doing basic exercise on the days I'm not going for a run or doing something long at the gym), and being able to write about what games I've played on a monthly basis for the vg thread because I love getting better at writing. Eventually I'd like to host a site for all of my reviews lol.

Have some other looser goals like trying out more social events and hanging out with friends (though I'm admittedly fairly happy with the bimonthly writing clubs and software dev groups I've found so far), making sure to go to therapy (I think I'll aim for monthly at this point), and contributing to a cool Python package I saw someone starting development on, but in the coming weeks I just gotta experiment and see what works best for my schedule and energy levels (WOW this post was longer than I expected)

 

[War Incarnate]

My new year's resolution is to prepare myself for college.

Yes, college apps for me are already done. No, that doesn't mean my preparation is done. In addition to my last year of high school, I also have a lot of other things to deal with - it's definitely a lot of work, and here's hoping I don't get crushed under all of it.

 

[Local Dog]

I'd like to get stronger, that's my resolution for every year
And I'd like to get back into uni with a new major after graduating a while ago

 

[Dead by Daylight]

work out at least once a day, reduce salt intake, and not fail uni

 

[Ununhexium]

My goals for 2025 are to lose a few pounds bc I wanna be in good shape for my friends wedding in October, enjoy whiskey, and cook more seafood

Not shooting super high I guess but they’re goals I can accomplish

 

[adjectivenoun]

My foremost goal is to cut down on my consumption of unhealthy snacks. They cause me stomach pain/discomfort, and I have healthier snack options available to me, so I really don't have an excuse not to. I'm not one to quantify or gamify such things — I simply want to get in the habit of making different choices, which is how these things ought to be framed, I think. Part of the problem with these resolutions is that they invite us to imagine our lives as a series of big decisions, but we really just do what we're in the habit of doing most of the time. Recognizing that and making change in habit your goal produces better results, I think.

 

[McGrrr]

Actually, my resolution is to set my Skype status to "appear offline" more often at work.

 

[MrHands]

Mine is to draw as little as possible and not buy a house.

I literally always fail my resolutions so I'm trying something new.

 

[Mr. Uncompetitive]

Bored, quarterly update

1. Get a solid full-time job obviously, but I also need to find some tutoring / teaching jobs for the short-term since I love doing that stuff

2. Spend about 10-25 hours a week teaching myself programming skills I've always wanted to learn but never got around to. This month I'm learning SQL, next month it's Flask so I can hopefully host a website (since I mostly use Python I imagine Flask will be a lot easier than relearning a JS framework for now), month after that it's the more intricate details of GenAI (i.e. understanding the math and current literature), and then C++, ROS, R, Spark, PHP, React JS, etc, etc. Admittedly I will most likely cut this goal if/when I get a full-time job lol.

Recently got a small part-time gig that I can work on at my own pace which is nice. I'm putting these two together because I also have a very big interview I'm still waiting on getting scheduled, so all of that "learning new skills" stuff has been on the backburner and all that time is instead being funneled into grinding leetcode problems (though admittedly I did indeed learn Postgres and I'm still making time for other job app-related work). I anticipate my new part-time gig will probably get me to start learning GenAI just for the hell of it (or at least general dev tools), so we'll see how that goes I guess. I still kinda want to get into tutoring now that I'm reminded of it, but I feel it might be too late into the school year...will make a note to self for next week.

3. Get back into developing the game I was working on this past Summer/Fall; I'm blessed that my team (online people I met during a jam) is still wanting to work on it and that my local city also has a pretty solid dev community, so I'm aiming to do progress showcases at monthly meetups and have a 30ish min demo ready in mid-October that we can submit to a local indie game expo (I do not expect the full game to be done any soon, I'll be shocked if it gets done before Trump leaves office)

Taking this very slowly but I've been getting back into this over the past couple weeks; I've been doing some scriptwriting to hammer out the intro to the game lately in the hopes of submitting a draft for my local writer's group this week. We'll see how that goes. I'll need a big push if I'm planning to submit something to the expo tho

4. Spend a few hours a week on (getting better at) video editing. Can also learn Photoshop while I'm at it.

a few hours a week

LOL.
On the bright side, I'm pretty satisfied with the projected workflow of Smogon's YT content and I'm finally making plans to create videos for my own channel, so I foresee myself spending a healthier amount of time on this in the coming months rather than what the fuck January/February was.

5. Spend some time each week (maybe an hour or two total?) learning piano. Alfred's book for adults was the main recommendation I saw, so I just want to finish that book by year's end.

Book's going a bit quicker than I expected and I'm currently averaging closer to 1.5-3 hours a week, though I have slowed down on it as of late. Still, I'm about halfway through it so I'm pretty sure I'll finish the book by the end of the summer. There's two more volumes I can buy after this, so I'll be aiming for those once I'm done with this.

6. Continue learning Japanese, I've been using Duolingo to practice kana and Genki for everything else. My goal for this year is to finish the first Genki book and pass an N5 level test. If I have time/energy, hitting N4 would be a cool stretch goal, and getting good enough to do a fan-translation of Wagyan Paradise is my eventual goal (probs 2026 lol)

At this point I'm done with Duolingo kana, but the app very nice and easygoing so I'm still using it a lot for vocab and kanji. I got back into Genki earlier this month and have caught back up to where I had stopped last year, but I still have a looooong way to go if I'm planning on finishing the book. No shot we're hitting N4 this year, but I'm definitely still gunning for N5.

7. Get a more organized sense of what games / mangas / animes / movies / albums I want to get through and make a media thread for it on twitter or something; would be nice considering I spend a disproportionate amount of time just dabbling through my backlogs rather than actually playing or watching something lol, and I like to write and talk about what I experience. Aiming for an album a week, about one of every other category per month (aiming for animes that I could watch while doing basic exercise on the days I'm not going for a run or doing something long at the gym), and being able to write about what games I've played on a monthly basis for the vg thread because I love getting better at writing. Eventually I'd like to host a site for all of my reviews lol.

Averaging a movie a month which is great, album listening is still a bit slow but probably average to 1 every 1-2 weeks. Everything else has been very inconsistent lol, after finishing like 20+ games last year I haven't properly finished any games this year...but it looks like I'll be finishing my first one soon, and I hope I'll be using it as my first video topic. Additionally, I need to find a simple game I can play in Japanese just to practice my skills, maybe Earthbound or Undertale since they have the Fangamer pamphlets?

Have some other looser goals like trying out more social events and hanging out with friends (though I'm admittedly fairly happy with the bimonthly writing clubs and software dev groups I've found so far), making sure to go to therapy (I think I'll aim for monthly at this point), and contributing to a cool Python package I saw someone starting development on, but in the coming weeks I just gotta experiment and see what works best for my schedule and energy levels (WOW this post was longer than I expected)

Still doing social events and those are going nicely, though I didn't go to much last month so I wanna do some more to make up for it this month. As for the Python package...I completely forgot about that lol, but yeah maybe I'll look into it again next week just so I can polish up my dev skills.