Happy New Year 2026!
So one year ago today, on January 1 2025, I made a blog post in which I listed some New Year's resolutions I hoped to fulfill over the next year. I'm going to revisit those revolutions now and we'll see how many of them I accidentally succeeded at keeping. I'll give you a hint: it's the only real number that has no reciprocal.
- Get regular exercise
- Um... okay, I sort of did this during the beginning of the year, but then not so much at the end, and there were reasons I won't go into why I wasn't doing it for at least part of that time, but... not for all of it. I don't even have to go to a gym for this; I have exercise equipment in my bedroom; but it's still a bit of a challenge to find time for exercise. My general plan was to get up early and exercise first thing in the morning (except perhaps on days when I have to be at work particularly early), which, all things considered, isn't a bad plan, but... I haven't been doing it.
- Start filling the Wongery's RPG space with stats and content
- Okay, I did spend a fair amount of time in September trying to get the Automatic Taxobox that was supposed to give taxonomic information for all the living beings in the Wongery working, which not only was something I wanted to get working for its own sake but also was preparatory to getting the proper templates working for the RPG space in that it would help familiarize me with how MediaWiki modules worked. But while I made some progress there I didn't succeed in getting that template completely working, let alone start on the actual templates for the RPG space, so, uh... yeah, this is another goal I failed to meet.
- Register the Wongery as a private limited company
- Nope, didn't do that either. Next.
- Make the Akinetic Media License a thing
- Or that.
- Ha ha ha no wow no
- Rewrite the first hundred articles on the Central Wongery
- Well, I've rewritten the first seventeen articles, but, uh, seventeen is significantly less than a hundred.
- Write at least a hundred new articles for the Central Wongery
- How many new articles did I write for the Central Wongery in 2025? Let's see... hm... Three. Yikes. Okay, I knew I hadn't come close to a hundred, but I hadn't realized the number was that low.
So, yeah, I... did not do very well with keeping the resolutions I set for myself in 2025. In the sense that I kept absolutely none of them. Or I kept maybe 0.2 of them, if you're willing to grant me partial credit one the ones about writing and rewriting articles. (Maybe a little more if you also grant me partial credit on the one about making content for the RPG space, but I mean not much more.)
What happened? Well... I mentioned before that the last few months I've been very busy with my job... and sure, that's true, but that wasn't true for the entire year. In fact, at the beginning of the year I had just the opposite problem... I wasn't getting enough work and was under a lot of financial stress. In fact, I could argue that maybe that was a bigger factor, in that I was so busy trying to figure out a way to pay my bills that I fell out of the habit of working on the Wongery, and never really get back into it. Or maybe procrastination and otiosity are inherent aspects of my nature and I am dooned never to finish anything. I hope that's not the case.
Still... I think the resolutions I set last year were good ones, and the problem wasn't the resolutions themselves, but my failure to keep them. And I hope—I cling to a vain and foolish hope—that maybe this year I can do better, if I make more of a point of setting myself schedules, if I develop a habit early on of finding time to work on the Wongery, if I somehow manage to muster whatever fallow scraps of willpower I can dredge up from somewhere in the deepest reaches of my psyche. So I'm going to set myself the same resolutions again as last year, and this year I'm determined to do better at fulfilling them. (Which, I mean, shouldn't be hard; I can definitely write four new articles this year. No, but seriously... a hundred new articles won't be easy, but it may be doable.)
I had really hoped during this holiday time when I'm not working that I would be able to get a lot done on the Wongery and some of my other creative projects—I mean, I definitely wasn't going to get ninety-seven new articles written over the holidays (and eighty-three more old articles rewritten), but I thought I could at least get a few, and maybe finally finish those templates for the RPG space. But as it turned out I was still working until right before the holidays, and then have spent most of the last week being sick. After recovering from whatever I came down with at the beginning of the holidays, I then managed to make myself sick for an extra day by eating rancid oil. (Not on purpose; I didn't realize it was rancid. Though I definitely should have; I am very stupid and it is frankly astonishing that I have managed to stay alive this long and not accidentally killed myself somehow long before now.) I'm feeling better now, though, and probably won't be working for at least another week, so... I'm going to make good use of this coming week and get some things done on the Wongery.
But not just on the Wongery because, while I'm going to carry over my resolutions from last year, I'm also going to set some new resolutions (because when I fail completely to even come close to meeting the goals I'd already set, obviously the logical thing to do is to add even more goals and make it even harder to meet them all, right?) I keep blaming my work schedule for my failure to get more done, and honestly it's probably not entirely to blame for it, but it definitely does get some of the blame. I've discovered that I'm most productive when I can set myself a specific schedule and block out times to work on different projects, but I can't do that if I don't know what my schedule's going to be, which is very much the case with my current job; my work schedule changes from day to day, and I seldom get much advance notice of it.
Which, honestly, has other major downsides beyond making it hard to schedule time to work on the Wongery and my other projects. It likewise means I can't commit to meetups with friends or recreational events, and makes it hard to have any sort of social life. It means I can't even have a regular and consistent sleep schedule, which I'm sure isn't great for my already less than stellar health. There are things to like about my job, but the unpredictable schedule is a major downside.
And honestly there are other reasons to look for another source of income. The industry I work in is doing better now than it was a few years ago when it was at a particular low point... but it still hasn't recovered to where it was before that, and there are indications that it may be on a continued downhill trajectory, at least where I live. Many people who did what I do have already pivoted to other careers or at least taken on second jobs; I'm personally still getting enough work to pay the bills for now, but if the industry continues to decline I'm not sure how much longer that's going to be the case. So that's another strong reason I probably ought to look for some other source of income.
I've said in the past that while my job may have some disadvantages, at least I enjoy it (or can tolerate it) a lot more than I would some office or retail job... but honestly, in some ways, I wonder if maybe I would be better off in an office job. At least I'd have regular hours. It's moot, though, because honestly I don't think I could work in an office job even if I wanted to. Not because I couldn't handle it psychologically (though that may also be true), but because I don't have any experience, education, or references that would get me hired for any sort of office job. I have no idea what a pivot table is (I've looked it up before but I've forgotten); I am not a professional-level programmer; I have no degrees that would be relevant to any office jobs I know of; I do not know how business works or how anything else works for that matter. I guess I can type relatively quickly, but I do not think that is as sought-after a proficiency as it may once have been. I have no marketable skills or qualifications except for the very specific certification for the very specific job that I do. If there's no demand for that very specific job (and again, demand has been decreasing, even if I personally have been lucky enough to be working regularly lately), then I'm... kind of in trouble.
So then, what kind of other source of income should I be looking for. Well... as I've written about before, what I'd really like to do is make a living with my creative pursuits. So it's probably well past time to make a more serious effort to get that to happen. Aside from the benefits of allowing me to set my own schedule rather than be beholden to the erratic schedules of my various employers, this would give me a lot more free time, because yes, I'd be spending time on those creative pursuits, but that's something I've been doing anyway, fitting it in around my work schedule when I can.
But by "creative pursuits", what specifically do I mean? Well... I guess probably mostly writing. I still have that novel I wrote years ago that I think with some rewrites and editing I may actually be able to get into something approaching publishable, and I have ideas for other novels I also want to write.
Am I really a good enough writer to make a living at it? Probably not, honestly. I mean, I can put sentences together. I think I'm reasonably imaginative, even if I've come to accept that I'm not the wondrous creative genius I thought I was as a child. I am very good with spelling and grammar[1], but honestly that's really not that important for a writer; that, after all, is part of what editors are for. But I don't know that I really have my own style, my own voice; I don't think that there's anything about my writing that's particularly evocative or memorable. (Unless one counts the endlessly digressive and meandering pratery of these blog posts as a style, but that's something I more or less consciously affect (or at least exaggerate) for this particular venue; it's not something I carry over into writing fiction. At least, I hope not.) Furthermore, good works of literature say something about the human condition. I... don't think I have any particular insights about the human condition worth saying.
But if not writing, with what other creative pursuits could I possibly hope to make a living? As I've said before, I'm a terrible artist. I enjoy drawing, but I'm very bad at it. Acting is very hard to break into, especially at my age, and I don't think I have the talent for it (and certainly don't have the looks to get in that way). Creating video games is... actually something I think I could do; I may not be a professional programmer but I think I'm capable of hacking a game together; but creating a full video game as an indie developer (and I would be an indie developer; I don't have the money to pay anyone to help) takes a lot of work and a long time, much longer than writing a novel. It's something I'd like to try to do, but it's not going to happen in the near future. So by process of elimination, writing is the one creative pursuit I may possibly be able to make a living at. It's a long shot, but anything else is a sheer impossibility, unless for some reason there's someone out there who really wants to hire someone to churn out terrible drawings with inconsistent line width and nonsensical anatomy.
So anyway, there's another resolution for 2026:
- I mean, there's a lot more writing I'd like to try to get done, too. I'd like to write that young adult science fiction novel I've been planning. I'd like to finish the novel set in the Dreamsea that I wrote fifty thousand words of in November of last year. But I don't want to go overboard with my resolutions; finishing the rewrites and editing of that one novel is something that should definitely be doable this year.
It's not just narrative fiction that I like to write, though. I've also been working on various RPG supplements and adventures too, and it's high time I focused and finished one of them as well. In fact, that's a lot less work than a novel; I think I can shoot for more than one. So let's add this resolution as well:
- Complete and publish at least four RPG supplements or adventures
- I'd like to (and think I probably could?) complete more than that, but again let's keep the resolutions realistic. I'm certainly not going to be able to make a living writing RPG materials, but it could bring in a little extra income and, again, it's something I enjoy doing and would be doing anyway; may as well actually get it out there and start making some money with it.
Now, there are some things I want to do that I don't quite have the skills and knowledge for yet but I'm trying to develop them. I mentioned before that I surprised myself by being better at pixel art than I expected, but I never did finish that pixel art course that I was taking on Udemy. And there are a lot of other Udemy courses I've purchased that I haven't taken or haven't finished yet that I hope will help me with some of what I want to do with the Wongery and other creative projects. (Including, speaking of making indie video games, some on the Godot game engine.) I ought to carve out some time for that, too. Which should be doable. I mean, I've been finding an hour or so every day to keep my streaks and my league status in Duolingo[2]; I should be able to find at least a half-hour a day for Udemy. So... let's add that to the list.
- Spend at least a half hour a day on Udemy
- Okay, let's say an average of a half hour a day; if I miss a day here and there I'll still count it as keeping the resolution as long as I make up the time on other days. But I'll try not to miss days, or at least to miss as few as possible.
Let's see, anything else?... Ah yes, well, here's a small thing, but it's something that I've been trying to do for the last couple of blog posts and that I hope to continue:
- Get straight to the point in my blog posts on the Wongery
- I have had a habit of starting my blog posts with multiparagraph apologies for not getting more done on the Wongery, or with other lengthy digressions unrelated to what is supposed to be the main point of the post. I have brought this up within the blog posts, and explicitly said that I recognized this was something I probably shouldn't be doing, but I've kept doing it anyway. Well, I'm going to finally stop doing it. That's not to say I may not include lengthy digressions later in the posts, but not at the beginning; I'm going to start the blog posts by getting right into what they're supposed to be about.
Yeah, all right, that's kind of a trivial resolution, so maybe at this point I'm kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel and it's time to stop. But anyway, those are my New Year's resolutions for 2026. The same resolutions as last year carried over because I didn't actually fulfill them (though I hope not to repeat that failure), plus an additional quartet of new ones.
Oh, and you know what? To give myself some accountability and better gauge how I'm doing at keeping myself on track, I'm going to make quarterly blog posts about these resolutions, and my progress on them so far. So... look forward to the first of those on April 1, 2026. Where I hope to be able to say that I've written at least twenty-five new articles, rewritten at least twenty-one old ones, and published at least one RPG supplement. We'll... we'll see how it goes.
Anyway, Happy New Year 2026, and may this year be happier and more productive than the last.
- ↑ In my last year of primary school, I so consistently aced English spelling tests that the teacher exempted me from the regular tests and instead kept a list of all the words I misspelled in writing assignments in a small notebook, with the intent that I'd take a test on those words when I filled a page. I never filled a page. (The notebook did not remain entirely empty, however; I did misspell a few words, piranha and villain among them. I do not now recall in exactly what context I used the word "piranha" in a primary school writing assignment, but when I did I misspelled it.)
- ↑ I have to admit, though, I currently still use Duolingo pretty much entirely due to the sunk-cost fallacy. Duolingo advertises itself as "free, fun, and effective", but I don't feel it's really been effective for me. (For that matter, it's not really fun, either, and I have a paid subscription so it's not free, so that's zero for three.) I've been on Duolingo for years; I've completed all the lessons for ten different languages (there are many others I've also been working through; those are just the ones I've completed), and I don't feel that I know more of any of them than a handful of words and some basic grammar concepts. But I have a streak of well over three thousand days that I'm reluctant to lose.
(It is, of course, entirely possible that Duolingo is perfectly effective for everyone else and I'm just too stupid to learn new languages. But even if that's the case, it still means I'm not getting much benefit out of it, whether that's Duolingo's fault or mine.)
And yes, I am aware that Duolingo has started making use of generative "AI", which I am not a fan of, and I am not happy with that. And I know other people have stopped using Duolingo specifically because of that, and I understand and sympathize, but again, 3000+-day streak. I'm not made of stone. (I admit, there is a part of me that kind of hopes Duolingo goes out of business just so I have an excuse to stop using it without being responsible for losing my streak.)