It’s time to talk about how my New Year’s Resolutions went in 2019 and what I plan to do for 2020.
2019 Results
I made seven resolutions for 2019. Spoiler alert: I failed all of them. I was way too ambitious. To make the failure feel less failure-y, I will indicate the percentage of completion.
1. Refine my website: 66%
I had planned to make three main improvements to the site: 1) create a Resource page, 2) increase the site speed, and 3) fix the site’s run-off mobile header. I completed the first two tasks, but I failed at that last one.
In August, I fixed my header with a plugin called WP Mobile Menu by Rui Guerreiro. WPMM replaced my theme’s header with a plain banner-type header. From there, I customized it with my color scheme and site name and set it to only appear on resolutions that fit phone displays. I don’t like how the menu slides from the side of the screen, but the plugin was otherwise a perfect solution.
Then I launched my Resources page in November. Originally, I arranged the information into cute tables using the TablePress plugin by Tobias Bathge. Then I switched to a list format because I was worried that the tables weren’t accessible enough. I think the page is a solid version 1.0.
I was not able to increase my site’s speed, though. In fact, I made it slower. The last time I ran the tests, my Pingdom score was 70 (down from 74), while my Google PageSpeed scores were 88 on the desktop (down from 94) and 52 on mobile (down from 78). That’s unacceptable. Clearly, I still have some work to do.
2. Name my blog: 0%
I didn’t brainstorm any blog names. The blog will be a part of my main site for the foreseeable future, so there’s no point in investing time and energy into picking a name when I can’t follow through with it yet.
3. Write in my journal once a week: 57%
I wrote in my notebook 30 weeks out of 52. The weekly schedule did not come naturally to me. I wrote my required pages on schedule for the first few months; by march, I was skipping weeks.
At that point, I changed my tactics. First, in the spirit of bullet journaling, I made a chart to track how many times I wrote. I drew each week of the year as a square, which I labeled with the date of that week’s Saturday for clarity. Whenever I wrote in my journal, I X’ed out that week’s box.
Second, I gave myself free passes. Instead of trying to write every week, I aimed for at least 70% of the weeks, meaning I could miss about 16 weeks. Every time I thought about skipping a week, I would look at the chart, tally up my remaining free passes, and ask myself, “Are you sure?” Usually the question motivated me to write.
And yet, I still missed my goal. My entries got repetitive, which made the task tedious. I just don’t have enough going on in my head or in my life to write that often.
4. Do one Camp NaNoWriMo session: 0%
I didn’t participate in either 2019 Camp NaNo session. I skipped the April session because I burned my brain out preparing my April post. And we all know about the knee shenanigans that happened during the July session.
Even if I hadn’t had issues, I probably wouldn’t have participated. I had no new ideas, and my folder of old drafts didn’t turn up anything good.
5. Complete a full draft of The Magical Vessel: 3%
I got as far as 3,600 words on my TMV draft before I quit. That’s…not quite the 90,000 words I was shooting for.
I began a sixth draft from scratch, editing and importing pages from previous versions as needed. But there were numerous problems that I just couldn’t figure out a way to resolve, especially in the magic system area.
I’m closing the door on TMV for now.
6. Take one Lynda.com course a month: 16%
I completed two courses out of the planned 12: “macOS Mojave New Features” and “WordPress 5 Essential Training.” That was in March and April respectively.
I used some of the same tactics I tried for my journaling to help me get this done. I made a course count on my existing chart and changed the rules to “12 courses in total” rather than “one course a month.”
The resolution failed because of a logical error. I was thinking of the courses as hour-long videos that I could easily knock out in a day and that would only cost me about 250 MB of data each. In reality, most of the courses I had planned to take were between two and five hours long, which would have required a lot more time and data to complete. Time wasn’t an issue, but I did not have the spare data to stream that many hours every month.
7. Finish Bleach and Naruto: 38% and 0% respectively
Despite my best efforts, I didn’t finish watching Bleach. Once I determined the non-filler episodes, I started picking up occasional volumes of the anime from the library. I’d seen most of them before, so they were a much-appreciated refresher.
Eventually, I hit a brick wall. The library only had up to volume 32, presumably because the individual volumes were bundled into seasons after that. I could have watched the the rest of the episodes through Crunchyroll or some other streaming service, but I would’ve run into the data problem again.
The manga volumes, on the other hand, are always readily available on the library shelves. My plan was to finish the series through the manga wherever volume 32 of the anime left off, which, according to my research, roughly correlates to manga volumes 26-28. For various reasons, however, I wasn’t able to get to the library to pick up the volumes.
As for Naruto, I tracked down where I’d left off in Shippuden, but I quickly realized that I wasn’t feeling the show anymore. Either I’ve outgrown the show, or it’s been too long since I watched it. Oh well. I will always have fond memories of the series.
2020 Resolutions
For 2020, I made eight resolutions. I know, I know. This time, I made sure to tone down my goals. I picked things that were somewhat challenging but not too out there.
1. Participate in one Camp NaNoWriMo session
The same deal as usual stands: I’m going to write a new story of 20,000-25,000 words. I’m going to try a contemporary story this time, as I don’t think I’m ready to tackle more fantasy right now.
2. Pass one LinkedIn Skills Test
I’ve taken six LinkedIn Skills Tests lately:
- Microsoft PowerPoint (pass)
- WordPress (fail)
- HTML (fail)
- Adobe InDesign (fail)
- Microsoft Outlook (fail)
- C programming language (fail)
While I wasn’t surprised by the failures—I’m a beginner in most of those subjects, after all—I feel like I should have done better on a few of them. Therefore, I would like to retake and pass at least one of my failed skills tests. It would also be nice to pass a new test or two.
3. Switch to WordPress’s Block Editor full-time
Although I’ve experimented with (and enjoyed) WordPress’s new Gutenberg interface, I’m still using the Classic Editor. There were issues when I copy/pasted Markdown-formatted text into the Blocks Editor the last time I tried it.
Nevertheless, it’s time for me to find a way to make my current workflow jive with the Block Editor. The Elementor plugin, which I’ve been thinking about using to redesign a few of my site’s pages, works best with the Block Editor. Plus, the Classic Editor won’t be around forever. Better to rip off the band-aid now.
4. Publish three Medium-exclusive Posts
My first few months on Medium have been good. I published one original post that performed well enough to push my Medium profile to the top of my Google search results. A few republished posts have been picking up steam too. It’s a decent start.
This year, I want to put more effort into my Medium posts. I plan to write three completely new posts for my profile in addition to a few older ones. Based on the performance of those posts, I’ll decide whether I want to continue using Medium.
5. Fix my main laptop (finally!)
I’ve noted many times that my main laptop, Envy, has issues (most recently when I wrote about my setup last year). Well, Envy has become more unstable since then. Sometimes it’s fine. Other times I will grab an older laptop or my iPad to work on because I don’t feel like dealing with Envy’s problems.
I’m dead set on setting things to rights. I intend to complete two main tasks.
Task 1: Get Envy upgraded to the latest version of Windows 10. I’m using such an old version that I can’t even access the Windows store anymore. Every upgrade attempt I’ve made thus far has failed.
Task 2: Upgrade Envy’s RAM. This will suck because it involves removing the entire bottom plate and the screen’s bezel.
6. Try Joomla and Drupal
When I recently installed WordPress locally on my laptop via XAMPP, I noticed that I could have also installed Joomla or Drupal, two other available content management systems (CMS). Later, the thought hit me: I totally should do that!
In an effort to become acquainted with new CMSes, I’m going to study Joomla and Drupal. I’m going to install them both locally on my computer (I’m slightly ahead on this one because I already installed Joomla). Then I’m going to work on improving my understanding of them through experimentation, library books, and if the data is right, Essential Training courses on Lynda.com.
7. Read 10 pieces of classic Black literature
When Toni Morrison died, I was sad to have lost another Black icon. We have so few left. Unfortunately, the loss wasn’t as personal for me as it was for other people because…I’ve never read any of her books. Man, I feel awful admitting that.
So, 2019 will be about reading some famous Black authors like Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, and of course, Ms. Morrison. I already have an extensive list of titles to try thanks to the Well-Read Black Girl book that I read last year and a recently published list from the Zora Medium publication.
8. Visit an Apple Store
It might surprise you, but I’ve never been to an Apple store. Ever. My hatred of malls has prevented me from setting foot inside any of the several locations nearby. The closest I’ve ever been to an Apple Store is the pseudo one inside Best Buy.
This year, I’m going to brave the crowds to see what the big deal is. I’ve been wanting to compare the iPad screen sizes in person to see which one I like best. Maybe I’ll take a class or attend a keynote event.