I’m sure you’ve read Reflecting on 2018 by now. One of the lessons I learned is that making goals and looking back at what I accomplished helped me appreciate how busy my year was. To keep the stakes high and the momentum going, here are 19 goals of varying shapes and sizes for 2019:

Fitness

• I want to get my body fat down to 15% by the end of 2019. I dropped it from 22% to 17% in 2018, so this will be hard work, but it should be within reach.
• I’d like to cut back on gross-tasting diet soda beverages dramatically—maybe even eliminate them from my diet entirely. Switching from delicious, full-sugar pop in 2018 will hopefully have made this easier.
• I’d also like to cut back on eating mammals. Sorry chickens, I’m still coming for y’all.
• I plan to track additional body metrics more consistently this year. The number on the scale was far less informative than the waistband of my pants, so I’ll take a cue from that and start wrapping a tape measure around myself every once in a while.
• I’ll go to the beach of a hot day and swim in the ocean.

Homework

• I intend to sell or donate a bunch of my stuff (clothing, games, movies, books, furniture, electronics). I’m neither a hoarder nor a minimalist, but I’ve got to keep a good flow going
• I plan to finish cleaning up the last of the basement boxes and use the extra space to set up my miniature gym.
• I’m going to get a comfy new couch! When’s movie night?

Consumption

• Earn 5 platinum trophies in PlayStation games. Which ones? Not sure yet. Monster Hunter: World will probably be one of them. I’d be happy if Spider-Man were one of them as well.
• Beat 3 Nintendo Switch games. Which ones? Not sure yet. Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will probably be two of them.
• Watch Ran and The Godfather Part II. Which ones? Ran and The Godfather Part II. I literally just said that.
• Find a brand new 2019 album that I really like. Polygondwanaland by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and is this the life we really want? by Roger Waters were my two favourite albums of 2017 by a long shot, but I didn’t manage to find something released in 2018 that grabbed me in the same way. I have to make a concerted effort to prevent that from happening in 2019.
• Finish watching Deadwood OR The Wire OR Black Sails OR Band of Brothers. If I watch more than one, that’s great, but I’m only committing to at least one of them.
• Read 18 books. Which ones? Not sure yet, but Patrick deWitt’s French Exit, Peter Watts’s Blindsight, Stephen King’s 11/22/63, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, N. K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate, and John Patrick Leary’s Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism are all high on the list. Other than that, I’ll be guided by my unpredictable whims!

Production

• Spend less time editing Plot Threads, holy fuck. Maybe the 2019 season is going to be a bit looser and noisier.
• Publish 12 more articles on This Old Neon. If you’re a developer and you’d like us to review your stuff, drop me a line.
• Do an art. Any art. Maybe I’ll draw Baby Savvy again. Maybe I’ll take some photographs again.
• Finish #KongsTdayTunes and replace it with another fun list. Hey, speaking of fun lists…
• Launch the 2019 “BEST GAME EVER!!!” Project at This Old Neon, with new features, user-submitted side-events, and public voting. The “BGE!!!” Project is a gigantic community-driven event where users nominate games they think are the “best” by various metrics (cultural impact, overall quality, personal favourites) and then everyone votes in tournament-style elimination brackets until one game has been crowned as the “BEST GAME EVER!!!” The current reigning champion from the 2015-16 event is Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES, 1988).

These aren’t grand, sweeping “resolutions.” For the most part they’re small, achievable goals that will make me happy throughout the year. Some are ridiculously easy. Some are intentionally vague. I probably won’t complete them all, but that’s alright.

Do you have any big plans for 2019? Little ones? If you have a resolution you don’t want to commit to in public, but you’d like some support to stay accountable, feel free to contact me!