My resolutions for 2018: The year-end assessment

It’s the last day of the year—time to revisit the resolutions I made at the beginning of 2018 and assess how I did.

1. Drop below 180 pounds.
Didn’t happen. I weighed 208 on Friday, two tenths shy of my heaviest weight this year, so I ate too much and moved too little in 2018. A lot of that has to do with the fact I did not run at all this year, but for a good reason.

The first time I weighed myself this year, I weighed 195.4, so I gained nearly 13 pounds despite resolving to lose weight. My weight on Friday reflects overeating at Christmas and nibbling on sweet leftovers ever since, so it’s an outlier. The lightest I tipped the scale at is 189.4 on March 16—a far cry from my goal.

2. Get stronger and stay loose.
Despite not losing any weight, I gained strength and flexibility. Both were imperative to solve the crippling pain in the ass. Though I’m not setting personal records while weight training, I feel stronger and much more solid (though that might have to do with the fact I’m heavier). I can bend at the waist and easily touch my toes, something I thought impossible at the beginning of the year, so consider this resolution met!

3. Visit a state I have yet to visit.
Didn’t happen. I’m still stuck at 29 states.

4. Freelance.
This did not happen, either. I did not have time in 2018 to freelance. I did do some freelance copyediting for my boss and a student of his, but I did not freelance on the scale I intended.

5. Watch more sunsets.
I did not do this, either—for the third or fourth straight year despite resolving to do so. What a sad testament to my life that I have been unable to watch more than two or three sunsets over the past few years.

I guess I watched one sunset this year, the one pictured above. It happened August 31 during the first Liberty High home football game.

6. Improve my penmanship.
I did this!

Reporting and the need to write as quickly as possible in college destroyed my already bad handwriting, but it has improved ever since. I think it improved this year as well. My handwriting is not what it could be, and I still have a bad habit of writing too quickly, but it’s readable. I need to remember to slow down and exaggerate the strokes. (Yes, I still use cursive. I forgot cursive capitals long ago, but everything I write by hand lowercase is cursive.) I’ve been writing a lot more by hand recently, something I will likely resolve to do more of in 2019.

7. Cycle more.
I did this too! I rode Leigh, my Raleigh Merit 3, a lot this year. I rode Day 6 of RAGBRAI with Cover and Bobblehead. Unfortunately, my long-distance cycling season ended when I wiped out and fractured my left forearm at the end of September.

I’ve also done a lot of stationary cycling on my grandparents’ trusty, old Schwinn Exerciser because of my running moratorium, so it was a good year for cycling.

8. Write creatively.
I didn’t do this. I think I’ve blogged more, but I did not sit down and write anything else. Shame on me! I did, however, revise the long nonfiction piece centered around Bobblehead’s wedding, so I got that going for me.

9. Camp more.
I think I camped two or three times in 2018, so I’m unsure if that is an improvement from 2017. However, I did not camp as much as I should have; my sleeping bags (one for cold weather and one for warm weather) and tent were stored in my closet for much of the year.

10. Say no.
I did not do this enough. I’m still a yes-man who caves into peer pressure. That needs to change.

11. Listen to more Led Zeppelin.
I’m happy to report I listened to more Led Zeppelin. It was not a lot more, but I listened to more. I resolved to listened to whole albums and have only made my way through Led Zeppelin III.

12. Continue to purge.
I’ve done this. I have less stuff now than I did at the beginning of the year, but I still have way too much stuff. I purged DVDs, old calendars, and a lot of miscellaneous paper from high school and college.

But I did not purge enough. My dead iMac is still in my closest, as are two footlockers and a whole bunch of stuff I don’t need or want. Do I need to keep the results of my first ACT test? Do I need to keep the cloth book cover I made in seventh grade? No, but both are still wasting space in my life.