River: Where did the year go?

[mdlbear]

... and as usual, even a lot of things that should have been easy didn't get done. I'd say that I blew it completely, but that's probably letting myself off easy.

Let's look at the goals for this year:

1. Find the money for 2016 taxes and the garage room remodel. This will almost certainly involve a loan, rather than pulling it out of my retirement savings, because of the tax hit.
   -50% -- The only thing that got me through 2016 taxes was the fact that we actually had negative equity in the house. I ended up burning up my Amazon 401K to finish the garage remodel, and it might have been enough if I hadn't had to live on it too.
2. Get the garage sufficiently cleared out to serve as a workshop. Work some wood.
   20% -- it actually looked fairly empty until we dumped the rest of the stuff into it. Plus L's stuff. The only woodwork I did was a cutting board for the YD's wedding present.
3. Do some real programming. Find an interesting open-source project and get involved, maybe. Write a DW client that works the way I want it to.
   10% -- Quite a few started projects. Very few finished ones.
4. Learn Wordpress and Joomla. Maybe Drupal. Build the website that N is going to need for her business.
   30% -- I did a little WordPress, getting N's business website started just in time for things to collapse. I built a couple of Jekyll sites, and learned enough JavaScript, React, Elm, and Ruby to pass for a rank beginner if one doesn't look too closely.
5. Do a lot more music. Continue lessons, play at some open mics and farmers' markets, record a CD or three.
   33 1/3% -- I kept up the music lessons, and did a little singing with N and her kid. No gigging or recording. So, 33% if you go by numbers. Going by effort, maybe 5.
6. Do a lot more writing. I wrote a book once; it's not impossible for me to do it again.
   10% -- I think I did more writing this year than last. But not enough more to get anything salable out of it.
7. Attend Worldcon in San Jose. There are a lot of people in the Bay Area who we haven't seen since we left.
   1% -- total fail. That's a third bucket-list item blown. The only reason it's not a zero was that C's health issues were the main thing keeping us from even trying, and in fact she was in the hospital over that weekend.
8. Take care of myself Self-care is still my weakest point. Walk. Find a therapist. Eat more green stuff.
   10% -- I still don't take care of myself.
9. Do things that get me out among people. I'm still something of a loner, and very much an introvert, but I need this.
   1% -- I got to an all-day seminar on starting a consulting business. I've lost contact with all the people I met there, and it was abundantly clear that I'd be worse at consulting than I was at working for Amazon.

There were also a bunch of WIBNIFs, none of which actually got done. Three of them, "Get back into recording", "Do a lot more writing", and "Do a little woodworking", are included above. That pretty much leaves:

• Record an album, either Amethyst Rose, Lookingglass Folk, or preferably both. Last year's version of this, "do some recording", is included in "do a lot more music". See above.
  0%. Didn't happen. I ripped an LP this month; that doesn't count.
• Do something that will bring in a little money. I'm not sure I'm up for contracting again, but writing could do it. So could an album or two. And maybe I could start a patreon.
  -20% -- I'm considerably farther in the hole, and the year is littered with unfinished projects.

45 1/3 out of a possible 1100. Average: 4.1%. Not one of my better years. Possibly my worst.

On a perhaps more encouraging note, here are my posting statistics by month:

Posting stats:
all of 2018 by month:
  14297 words in 11 posts	 in 2018/01 (average 1299/post)
   9412 words in  7 posts	 in 2018/02 (average 1344/post)
   8753 words in  5 posts	 in 2018/03 (average 1750/post)
  11671 words in  7 posts	 in 2018/04 (average 1667/post)
  11813 words in 17 posts	 in 2018/05 (average 694/post)
  14436 words in 15 posts	 in 2018/06 (average 962/post)
  19415 words in 17 posts	 in 2018/07 (average 1142/post)
   7579 words in 10 posts	 in 2018/08 (average 757/post)
   9339 words in 12 posts	 in 2018/09 (average 778/post)
  12017 words in 11 posts	 in 2018/10 (average 1092/post)
  15617 words in 30 posts	 in 2018/11 (average 520/post)
  12774 words in 18 posts	 in 2018/12 (average 709/post)
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 147123 words in 160 posts total in 2018 (average 919/post)

It looks as though I've been posting about every other day most months, and nearly every day in November. Not sure what happened in February through April -- those were little more than the done posts. Okay, that wasn't really very encouraging.

I'm not really up to writing a narrative summary of the year. I prefer stories with happy endings and, preferably, not too much bad stuff getting there. I also hate cliffhangers, and this year certainly counts in that category.

Comments

[mdlbear]

Thanks