What are your New Year's Resolutions?

I love New Years- it’s actually my very favourite holiday of the year. Not because of the parties, (I never attend), or the fireworks (those can be tricky to handle sometimes), or the boozy drinks (I don’t drink)- but because of how happy and hopeful and glow-y people get, delighted with the prospect of a whole year up ahead of them and a fresh start, dusting off aspirational goals and hyping themselves up into following through: where everyone is anticipatory and determined and cheerful, because congratulations, we made it another year!

I like the resolutions bit a whole lot. I tend to lowball myself on the goals, to help encourage myself to follow through on them and then some- it’s a lot less intimidating to dive right in if it feels manageable. I love hearing what other people are planning too! For me, the goals are less of a strict ‘do-or-die’ and more of an opportunity to examine what might be important to me on a personal level, and what I’d like to generally encourage in my life in the year ahead, while allowing for the flexibility you have to carry when life is so unpredictable.

I also have a little ritual for New Years- every year, I’ll listen to ‘This Year’ by The Mountain Goats in such a way that it’ll wrap up right as midnight strikes. It’s sort of a personal gritty-hopeful anthem to help set the tone for the year ahead.

Anyways- what’re your resolutions this year? Do you set any at all? What do you think of the practice, either way? Mine are as follows:

  • I’d like to release at least one interactive fiction game this year.
  • I’d like to draw a completed piece I’m happy with at least once every three months.
  • I’d like to foster a space for gratitude journalling in my life on a weekly basis.
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Mine is (so far) to release my first IF at the end of next year. It’s not much, but for me it means devoting myself to the game.

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I just want my game to be good in time for… well, whenever it’s coming out.

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Now that I’m old as dirt, I don’t make resolutions anymore. I never kept them anyway. But my plans for this year are to reconfigure our business plan, write a puzzle game, keep my back in reasonable shape, try to keep my mother functional for a little while longer, and be good to my sweetheart.

I sincerely hope this year is better for everyone everywhere. It’s been rough.

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I’m going to make my next game better than my last game.

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I want to release another interactive fiction game of some sort, get more practice with drawing, and actually finish some of my luthiery projects. I’ve got a lot of old unplayable instruments that I pick up very cheap secondhand, then try to get back in working order, and some are right on the verge of something great.

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I like your NYE playlist! I actually usually listen to set of songs on New Year’s Day itself:

(Re that last one, funnily enough 2021 was a good year for me, albeit magnified a bit because 2020 was so awful).

I usually listen to Christmas by the Who on, er, Christmas, as well – who knew Tommy was such a good holiday album?

Anyway re resolutions, I typically don’t make 'em, much to my wife’s frustration since she loves them and makes like dozens every year. But for 2023 I have a couple. First, I do want to put out a bigger piece of IF, after taking this year off (I’ll get StingComp and probably something for SeedComp done, but those’ll be easier; my two WIP are trickier beasts so those are the ones I’m focused on). And second, I want to read at least 15 books – this is kind of sad because in previous years I’d easily get through 50-60, but between losing my public-transit commute and gaining a baby/toddler, I need to be much more intentional about reading!

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So, there’s this thing in the Netherlands, where every year Dutch people vote for what they think is the best ever made song: the Top 2000. The radio organising it takes the 2000 most voted songs and creates a playlist that they broadcast between Christmas and New Year, with Number 1 coincidenting with the strike of midnight. This year: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen (95% of the time, it’s that one anyway).

I usually don’t have resolutions anymore, but I try to write down hopes for the next year or just stuff I’d like to do in general. My hopes for 2022 was to be happy and healthy (check), submit to the IF Comp (check), and have fun creating (check). I was really happy to be able to read quite a bit too (like 20-30 books? reading 30min every night before bed helps a ton) even with life going back to a more busier pace.

For 2023, I just want try to finish my too-many WIPs (at least half of them, some are too large) and not start more side-projects (I have too many ideas). And trying more things in person (I’m going to my first theater play in like 20 years in the spring!).

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IF-wise, my resolution is to release my first ever game (which some incredibly kind folks are currently beta testing). It’s been such a fun ride learning Inform/PunyInform for this project, and it should be ready to release in a couple weeks. Fingers crossed.

I’m also hoping to continue my ongoing IF podcast project (“Eaten By A Grue”) with my buddy Kay Savetz. That continues to be incredibly enjoyable, and I think we both want to keep it going as we dive into more modern IF games.

And outside the world of text adventuring, my goals are the usual ones: appreciate my friends and family, try to stay healthy, and cram some shiny new knowledge into my poor old brain.

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My goals for the year are a bit more geared towards being social! I want to find an lgbt group of practicing Jewish folk locally so I have people to celebrate the holidays with and help with my conversion. I’ve come to find that religion for me mostly means community, finding G-d within the faith and kindness of others around you, so it’s rather important I try to do this for myself so I can finally start my religious journey properly.

I also want to seriously sit down and begin work on some creative projects! For one, my IF game, and for another, I want to get into digital painting and also expand what I draw traditionally! I want to be able to create more, since I think it’d be a nice thing to feel like i’ve done a lot of creative work just for myself and no one else.

Outside of that, hopefully get a job! I need funds to be able to start spoiling my friends and make some personal changes to myself physically and all! Either way, I have high hopes for this year! So, wishing you all a great coming new year!

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I had never heard of Danny Vera or Rollercoaster. It really is a good song! It was #2 on the list, very fun to check out.

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Just the usual resolutions for me: try to eat healthier, read more books, more regularly ritually sacrifice hapless tourists to our lord Zgurblurg prince of eternal darkness, exercise more, …

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In 2023, I’m finally going to build that ladder to the moon.

I’m tired of walking all the way to the kitchen and opening the fridge for a nibble of cheese.

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New year’s is my favorite holiday too! I used to avoid new year’s resolutions because I can’t keep up a streak of anything longer than three days. But then I discovered Making a List of Things to Do in 20XX and it’s a lot more useful for me. This year I completed 11 out of 22 things, which feels much better than zero.

So far I have 12 things on my list for next year, including finishing the game I intended to enter into IFComp this year (which I’ve barely touched since September) and writing 12 reviews on IFDB. I always appreciate when people take the time to review games, and I often jot down my thoughts anyway, so I want to make a point of sharing them in case they’re useful to someone else.

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I’ve never done resolutions, but the last few years I’ve had annual projects that are sort of just intended to get me to focus on a larger task (like “eat as many new mushrooms as possible this year”). This might be indistinguishable from a resolution for some people. 2022 was the year of watching every David Cronenberg movie; I’m still ironing out 2023’s details.

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What was your favorite? Dead Ringers is mine.

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It’s funny, I DO make commitments to myself to change habits but I NEVER do it on New Year’s Day. Why?

Because New Years Resolutions are a literal joke. It’s a joke about commitments you make to yourself that only last until March at best. It’s a joke about fooling yourself about the power of your own ambition.

I make commitments to myself when I’m ready and I can feel serious that it’s a “no-exceptions-we’re-doing-this” type of thing, and doing it at the New Year seems like a bad time for that… culturally and historically.

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Dead Ringers is mine too!

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Good choice of song!

I don’t do resolutions, I try to do yearly themes. I have not yet decided on my theme this year.

Creatively I’d like to finish my IF game Hand Me Down and put it in IF Comp. That’d be nice. I’d also like to finish at least one nice bit of 3D art per season. That gives me a lot of room to succeed but also fill in with the other madness that life (and I myself) give to me.

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I’m checking in a bit late here. I try to make resolutions of various ranges, which can be done in a month to a year, and some might seem odd or incongruous.

Also, anyone who subscribed to this, voluntarily or involuntarily–well, here’s a poke to ask how things have started or get things started if the first weeks of 2023 were slow.

One goal relevant to this forum is where people reminded me of a site I forgot existed: the Solutions Archive at https://solutionarchive.com/. I didn’t have it on January 1, but I do now.

My goal is to hit 150 points and achieve the rank of “Dungeon Master” both for my own vanity (I’ll probably submit information for my own games) and so maybe I can help other people stuck on a specific puzzle in a good game they want to see to the end. This means a walkthrough and map roughly every 5 days.

Another one is to hit 3rd in Frequent Fiction Points at IFDB. I have backlogged IFComp 2022 reviews and fount a raft of fun new games worth sharing. The goal is the end of the month. I’m trying to touch up one IFComp review per day and add one new review. It took me a while, but I got to #4, and Verityvirtue at #3 got there while (I believe) in medical school, which is all kinds of impressive re: time management!

I’m very close to one outside goal–hit 10 million points on Chessable and achieve the “hero” title. (I was at 8 million to start 2023.) My other goal is to hit 100 million and get the “Legend” title. There’s a way to do that if I buy a pro account for a few months.

I’d also like to try NaNoWriMo for real, and I have some projects lined up for the various comps. We’ll see how it goes. I like to be flexible as sometimes I say “Oh, this would’ve been a good new year’s resolution” in, say, April, and then I go and do it in a month. And it feels good.

One thing I want to do less of is write in my weekly files. I’d rather convert them to actual writing. My microphone and Windows speech to text let me hit a new high in daily file text size, which was a 2022 resolution, but that’s a pace I don’t want to keep up, because chasing numbers for their own sake is counterproductive.

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