So, we're two weeks into 2026, and I had... kind of a lot of resolutions I'd been hoping to keep this year, so I figured I'd check in and analyze how I'm doing so far. Yes, I said I was going to do quarterly check-ins, and two weeks is not a quarter of a year—it is in fact approximately one twenty-sixth of a year—but I figured I'd do a check-in now for a couple of reasons, one of which being that I kind of added two new resolutions that I also wanted to discuss.
But first, how am I doing with the existing resolutions? Well, it's a mixed bag. A few of them I'm doing very well with so far; with others I'm not really on track. Unfortunately (for the purposes of this site), it's mostly the resolutions least related to the Wongery that I'm doing best at, and the ones most related to the Wongery that I'm doing worst at. But let's take a look at them one by one:
- Get regular exercise
- This one I have been doing! Every day so far this year! (Well, not today yet, but the day's not over; I'll have time for it after I submit this blog post.) So... off to a good start, I guess.
- Start filling the Wongery's RPG space with stats and content
- And on this one I have yet to make any headway at all. Still got to get those templates implemented. Well, this resolution isn't something I planned to do daily, just something I wanted to get done before the end of the year, so... I guess I've still got time.
- Register the Wongery as a private limited company
- Yeah, once again, I have not done this yet, but I just have to get it done before the end of the year, so it could still happen.
- Make the Akinetic Media License a thing
- Okay, pretty much the same applies here as to the last two points.
- And same here again. Although come to think of it this kind of includes the second resolution (start filling the RPG space), so... maybe these shouldn't have been two separate resolutions. Oh well.
- Rewrite the first hundred articles on the Central Wongery
- Well, as stated in the previous blog post, I have rewritten one article, so, uh, I guess I have made some progress toward this goal? Though not as much progress as I should have been making. Given that I already had seventeen old articles rewritten before the start of the year, I need to rewrite eighty-three more old articles this year in order to meet this goal, which means that in two weeks I should have rewritten approximately 3.2 articles. 3.2, you will note, is greater than one, so... yeah, I'm not nearly where I ought to be with this one. Of course, the year is still young, and it's still possible for me to meet this goal, but I've really got to pick up the pace.
- Write at least a hundred new articles for the Central Wongery
- And for this one I'm even worse off, in that I have zero new articles written for the Central Wongery so far this year. Again, it's still possible I can do this, but not if I continue at my current pace.
- This is yet another thing I have not started at all, but again it's just something I have to get done by the end of the year, so it is still possible to achieve it. But I haven't done it yet.
- Complete and publish at least four RPG supplements or adventures
- Urgh. I do really want to get this done, but I have spent no time on this yet this year. I'll definitely set aside some time to work on this tomorrow.
- And here we're back to something I have been doing! Hurray! Okay, I haven't actually spent a half hour every day on Udemy[1], but as I clarified in the post where I made this resolution, what I really meant was that I wanted to average at least a half hour a day on Udemy[2]. And that I have been doing. I did spend time on Udemy most days, but I missed a couple of days... but on many of the days I did spend time on Udemy, I spent significantly more than half an hour. So I have indeed been averaging at least half an hour a day on Udemy. We'll see if I can keep it up. In fact, I finished one Udemy course, on the open-source musical composition program Musescore Studio. Which, however, is not a course that has much to do with the Wongery. I mean, it's not completely useless for the Wongery, in that among the things I eventually want to do to bring attention to the Wongery is make some video games based on Wongery worlds, and I'll probably want to create original music for some of those games, but still, I really ought to finish the Godot course so I can start making those games, and some of the Blender courses so I can make content for the Asset space, and so on...
- Get straight to the point in my blog posts on the Wongery
- Wait, I said I hadn't been doing well on the resolutions most related to the Wongery? Well, this one's closely related to the Wongery, and this is another one I think so far I've been keeping! Hurrah! Yes, I've managed to avoid my traditional digressive openings and start the posts by getting straight to the point in every blog post so far this year. All... three of them.
Okay, so I've managed so far to keep some of my resolutions, but honestly one thing that's maybe made that easier is that I haven't been working. Well, I have been working, but only two days so far this year, and they were both relatively short days. Which has of course therefore left me more time for things like... I guess working out, and Udemy. But that might get more challenging once work picks back up after the holidays[3]. I hope to still be able to find time for these things, but... we'll see.
But despite not working (much) I haven't found a lot of time for the Wongery or my other creative projects so far this year. I definitely want to change that, but first I have to figure out why that's happening. And I guess that's not hard to figure out. All these things I want to do take time. And there's only so much time in the day. If I'm working out every day for an hour and a half, and spending at least half an hour a day on Udemy, that's two hours less for other things. Add in other daily things I'm doing, like Duolingo and the two new resolutions I mentioned but haven't described yet, and it all adds up.
So is it hopeless? Did I just bite off more than I can chew? Well... maybe, but maybe not. I kind of hoped that if I hit the ground running with some of these resolutions then they'd sort of become habits and/or at least easier to do. Let's take working out, for instance. I just said that my daily workout takes about an hour and a half. And that's true—or maybe slightly less—if you only count the time spent actually exercising. In practice, though, it's been taking longer than that because I really do not enjoy working out. It is something I want to have done rather than something I want to do. And so I keep finding excuses to put it off, and those excuses generally involve wasting time doing things I do not need to be doing. And even during the workout, between sets I've been kind of getting bored and wandering back to my computer to waste some more time before finally gathering the gumption to make myself continue to work out. So what should be an hour-and-a-half workout ends up taking several hours instead, if you count the time wasted procrastinating before and between.
But I'd hoped that working out would get more routine and more doable as I continued to do it, and... it kind of has? No, I haven't entirely kicked the desire to take breaks in between sets for no good reason, but I've been doing less of it, and the actual exercise has been becoming easier. The sit-ups, in particular, I was finding very taxing and difficult to do the first few days, but by now they've become much less of an ordeal.[4].
And there are some things I've been wasting time with (largely but not exclusively as part of the procrastination when I don't feel like exercising or doing the other things I need to do) that I think I can cut back on. It's been maybe a year or more since I've spent time watching TV (though I've said before that maybe it would be better if I did watch a little TV, and honestly I still think yeah that may be true). But I do spend more time than I should on Tumblr and Reddit and just randomly browsing the web. I need to focus. I am not sure I am actually capable of focusing, but I need to at least put forth a little more effort to do so.
Anyway, I said I was adding two new resolutions to the list (which is stupid because I mean I haven't really been doing all that well with the ones I already made but this is not the first foolish decision I have made and will not be the last), so let's maybe introduce those. When I say these resolutions are new, I don't mean I just made them right now; they're new as in I made them basically immediately after the blog post on January 1. Or at least I started doing them that day, but I don't think it occurred to me to "officially" consider them resolutions until later. But anyway, these, too, I have been keeping every day so far, so I guess that's maybe a few more tally marks for the win column.
- Draw something every day
- Yes, yes, I've said before (multiple times) that I clearly have no artistic talent and that despite my having spent a lot of time drawing and even for a time having my own webcomics my artwork was still awful, and there seemed to be no prospect of that changing. But I still would like to be able to draw, and I guess I haven't entirely given up hope. I absolutely should give up hope; if I were capable of developing any sort of artistic skills it would have happened by now; but I guess I am still quixotically determined to keep trying despite the obvious futility. And so I decided that this year I was going to draw something every day. Not something elaborate; again I don't have a lot of time; but every day I have been drawing a quick sketch of something. (Some days I have been drawing other things, too, but every day I have at least been drawing a quick sketch.) My hope is that if I keep up the regular practice, maybe eventually I will improve; maybe eventually I'll get to the point I can create illustrations that I wouldn't feel ashamed to show off. Again, it's obviously not going to happen; if it were going to happen it would have already done so long before now; but I retain a slim vestige of hope regardless, however ill-founded.
- City '26
- The founder of Garblag Games (which doesn't seem to have its own website so that link goes to their YouTube channel) introduced a daily worldbuilding challenge called City '26, where participants create a fictional city over the course of the year, focusing on one area of the city each week, and adding a little information each day according to the prompts provided. Since I really want to prioritize fleshing out the world of Curcalen (among other reasons because I do hope this November to get started on the fantasy epic set there that I meant to start on last November and didn't), so for the City '26 challenge I chose to develop the city of Lüm in the Curcalish country of Djarvin. Anyway, so far I've only been posting my City '26 work in the Garblag Discord, Gartopia, but within the next week or two I plan to make a place for it on the Wongery site, and I'll say more about it then.
So, that's how I've been doing so far on my resolutions for this year. Now let me do some counting and sum up. That's, let's see, thirteen resolutions total[5] (it is I suppose fortunate that I am not triskaidekaphobic). Of those, there are five which I have been completely meeting so far, one or two that I've made some progress toward (albeit very little), and six or seven[6] on which I've thus far made no headway whatsoever[7]. That's... okay, that's not great. But again, we're only two weeks into the new year; it's not over yet; in fact it's barely begun. I still plan to do a quarterly check-in on April 1, so... we'll see how everything's going by then.
- ↑ Which apparently has recently been bought by another online learning company called Coursera, and we'll see what effect that has on how it works...
- ↑ Which means I probably should have written the resolution accordingly. Well, I'll do that going forward; hitherto this resolution will be "Average at least a half hour a day on Udemy", and will be so worded in future check-ins.
- ↑ Which it really should have by now, and honestly I'm getting a little worried. I hope it will pick up soon. I mean, yeah, obviously I like having more free time, but... I kind of do need money
- ↑ I don't plan to intensify my workout routine as it becomes easier; I plan to stick pretty much with the routine I have and just... hope to have an easier time with it. My goal isn't to build up lots of muscle and a sculpted physique (which I don't think I could do if I wanted to); it's mostly just to get in better shape than I'm in. I mean, I would love to have a flat stomach with prominent abs, but realistically it ain't gonna happen.
- ↑ Yeah, maybe the resolution about filling in the RPG space should be combined with the resolution about having content in all the Game subspaces, but I guess I'll leave them separate; the goal for the other Game subspaces is just to have some content there, even if it's just for one or two articles, while the RPG space I hope to have a lot more filled out.
- ↑ I shan't say it.
- ↑ Why the fudging on "one or two" and "six or seven"? Because while I haven't yet posted any new articles this year, I have put in a little time writing new articles that aren't ready to post yet, and I'm not totally sure whether or not I should count that as progress toward that resolution.