A few times on the web I've come across lists made by adolescents or young adults detailing what they hope to accomplish in their lives. If I had made such a list a quarter century ago it would have included some things I've manage to accomplish since, such as getting married and raising children, some things I still might yet accomplish, such as writing a novel, and some things which just aren't going to happen, such as hiking the Appalachian Trail.
The arrival of a new century and a new millennium has inspired me to think more than usual about my past and my future, about what I've accomplished and what I hope to accomplish. Here, then, is a list of what I resolve to do before the end of the Twenty-first Century, which, unless there are some unforeseen medical breakthroughs in the next few decades, means before the end of my life.
(yearly updates below, including five more resolutions on 01/01/07, one on 01/01/11, five on 01/01/14, one on 01/01/16, and one on 01/01/23)
I started this novella, which was originally to be just a short story, in 1997 (I think). I had good reason to believe a year ago that it would be finished before the turn of the century, but it didn't happen. The first draft is mostly done; it shouldn't take too long to finish.
When it is done, I'll add it to the fiction section of my website. I'm not sure how people will like it. It seems to me to be less accessible than 126 Kisses (for instance), but the responses from those who have read what I have so far have been positive.
This is my novel. I started it in the mid '80's. I put it aside once to write 126 Kisses, and again to write A Diamond Found on Paradise.
The first draft was about a third done when I broke for Diamond. I haven't been ignoring it in the meanwhile; I've been thinking a lot about the story and the cultures involved, and, in fact, when I get back to it probably the first thing I'll do is tear apart and redo much of what I've already written.
The major part of this resolution is becoming semi-fluent in Spanish. I studied Spanish in high school and have tried to keep it from getting too rusty since, but I was never fluent. I can handle written Spanish much better that spoken Spanish, but, while I don't have too much trouble when I try to read the Spanish version of the handouts my kids bring home from school, I'm far from good enough to read García without so much of a struggle that the flow of the work is completely lost.
Gladilatian is a language I'm constructing. It may never have an extensive enough lexicon for fluency to really exist, but I want to at least become fluent enough that I can write notes to myself in it.
I'm not sure why, but Iceland has always fascinated me. It seems such a dramatic place. Even though I wouldn't want to live somewhere with so few trees, I'd like to visit it someday.
That's "the southern sky" as in "a clear night sky in the Southern Hemisphere".
I've seen plenty of shooting stars and rainbows and a few comets, but I've never once seen the northern lights.
I've seen total eclipses of the moon and partial eclipses of the sun (including one just last week), but I've never seen it become night in the day.
I'd like to be able to juggle clubs as well as I now juggle balls, i.e. not necessarily able to do any fancy tricks, but able to pick some up and start juggling without really having to think about it.
I used to know a bunch of string figures, which I taught myself out of a book when I was in college. I want learn them again. This will probably be the easiest to accomplish of any of the resolutions here.
My current USCF rating is 1711. The highest I've ever had was about 100 points above that. Expert is 2000 to 2199. I think I can achieve that if I set my mind to it.
The GHCC was once a very active club, with 20 or more regular attendees every week, simultaneous exhibitions by local masters, and periodic USCF rated tournaments, including the yearly club championship. That was back when we were meeting every Wednesday at a book store in West Hartford. However, we lost that place, and soon after lost Dave Aldi, who had run it for years. I took over from Aldi, but I was never able to find a good replacement for the book store and it eventually dwindled away to nothing. The club now exists as a box of equipment in my garage.
I grew up mostly in the outer suburbs, where there was at least a patch of woods between one house and the next. I now live in a city, where my yard and my neighbors' yards are really just one big yard delineated by fences. It makes me claustrophobic. Laura and I had not planned to live in the city this long. When we bought our house the housing market in Connecticut was near its peak, and Hartford was one of the cheapest places to get a decent house. Soon after that the market collapsed, and for a while we had negative equity. Now we're only three and a half years from paying off our first mortgage and starting to think about moving again. When we do it will be to somewhere much less urban.
My goal for this holiday vacation was to complete the first draft of A Diamond Found on Paradise. As of this writing (early New Year's Day evening) I'll either just make it or just miss it. In either case I am fast approaching a significant milestone in this project. There's still a bit of work to do after the first draft is done, but I feel like I'm making real progress. (I realize I said last year that the first draft was "mostly done". That was true in the sense that more was completed than remained to be done. Now I've got one scene left to write.)
I now know seven string figures. I do them every morning, and I'm to the point where I know these well enough that I consider them learnt. I want to add more to my repertoire before I declare that resolution fulfilled, though.
There's not much progress to report on the other resolutions.
Late in April I finished A Diamond Found on Paradise and put it up on the web. What reaction I've got has been very positive. I don't know if the silence from others I've told about it has been because they haven't read it, because they didn't like it and want to be polite, or because they just haven't mentioned it. I am pleased with it, at any rate.
I now know nine string figures. It's still not as much as I'd like, but I'm going to call that resolution fulfilled, because if someone were to ask me "Do you know string figures?" I would have no problem answering "yes".
Since finishing Diamond I've returned to working on my novel, Raisinbread. I have made embarassingly little progress in that time though. Still, some progress has been made. It's all in the form of revisions to what I'd already written, and the total word count has possibly even decreased, but I have been working on it, especially late in the year, so hopefully I'll have more significant progress to report next year.
Reviving the Greater Hartford Chess Club is beginning to look like it's not going to happen. I've joined the New Britain Chess Club, in a neighboring town, and it is a very active club. The Hartford club's equipment is now on loan to the Hartford Public High School Chess Club (founded by my son), and it appears that the best use of the GHCC's equipment is there. I'll have to decide soon, since my son is going to graduate this year.
There's not much progress to report on the other resolutions.
I now live in the woods. When 2003 started I had no idea that the silvan resolution would be fulfilled before it ended. My wife, Laura, deserves most of the credit. She initiated the process, finding a real estate agent and figuring out how we could use the low interest rates to manage it financially. A large chunk of the middle of the year was consumed with searching for a place, buying it, moving, and selling the old place. We're now all settled in Vernon, Conn., though. We have a simple house on 5.6 acres of land. The lot is only 150' along the road but goes back a long ways. It's wooded except for the house and lawns. The woods are mostly black oak and sweet birch (a.k.a. black birch). (The oak might be red oak; it's hard to tell them apart.) It also contains white birch, yellow birch, red maple, beech, hickory, hemlock, spruce, and probably other species. It's very peaceful here. I'm very happy with the place. It feels like going home; it's a lot more like the place I grew up in than any place I've lived in since was.
I continue to make slow progress on my novel.
I've given up on reviving the Greater Hartford Chess Club. I'm calling that resolution abandoned. Most of the equipment was donated to the Hartford Public High Chess Club.
In October of 2003 there was a huge solar storm and predictions that the northern lights would be seen in Connecticut. I kept going outside and looking for them, but couldn't see anything. The next day the paper printed a picture taken in a neighboring town showing the sky blazing red with the aurora.
So, three years into the Twenty-first Century I have three resolutions fulfilled, one abandoned, and nine still open. A couple things happened this year, though, which weren't fulfillments of resolutions but which just as well could have been. One is that I've become the Connecticut State Director of American Atheists. Not that becoming state director per se would have been a resolution, but becoming active poltically could have been. The other is that I put myself on a diet (of my own design) and lost 60 lbs. For years I'd been overweight and telling myself I should do something about it. In 2003 I did, going from 240# to 180#.
From the 19th to the 26th of September 2004 Laura and I were in Iceland. We spent a night in Reykjavík, a couple nights in Brattholt, near the Gullfoss Waterfall, three nights in Langaholt on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, and another night in Reykjavík. I got to see hot springs, geysers, glaciers, volcanic craters, many, many waterfalls, windswept moss covered lava fields punctuated by sudden mountains, and storm-battered cliffs by the sea. I had several great hikes, including one along the rim of the Hvítá River canyon, and another up from the southern shore of the Snæfellsnes to Arnardalsskarð Pass and back. I had a great time. It was all I'd hoped it would be.
Twice while we were there, we saw the northern lights. Once as a green stripe while we were in Reykjavík, and once as several bands of greenish white stripes while we were in Langaholt, including a band directly above us. I continue to make slow progress on my novel. An idea for another big writing project has been forming in my head meanwhile, so that could end up delaying it more. That leaves me, after four years, with five resolutions fulfilled, one abandoned, and seven still open.No resolutions were fulfilled this year, but the year still seems well spent. I've been hiking in the White Mountains every couple months or so. I'm still active with American Atheists. The "big writing project" mentioned in last year's update is well underway.
I've also made some progress towards some of the original resolutions, even if not to completion. I study Spanish (and also, for that matter, Latin) on my own, working my way through childrens' and young adults' books. My chess rating is 1822.Again no resolutions were fulfilled this year, and again the year still seems well spent. Part of the reason is that, as could have been predicted, new goals have arisen. In fact, I'm going to take this opportunity to add five more resolutions to the list:
This is the heart of the big writing project mentioned the past couple years. I'm inventing a constructed culture, along with a language, planet, and sapient species, and this story is intended to tie it all together, or at least be a starting point for someone to explore it.
When I wrote An Atheist Apology I expected that all of the arguments therein had already been made elsewhere, even though several of them had been invented independently by myself. That's essentially been what I've found, but the key arguments about the equivalence of "potential" and "actual" universes, and the incoherence of the concept of the "creation" of a universe have not, as far as I've been able to find, been expressed in quite the same way as I have, although similar ideas have indeed been proposed (for instance by David Kellogg Lewis).
I know, I'm proposing writing projects faster than I'm finishing them. I guess I'll just have to live forever.
There are 48 peaks in New Hampshire with an altitude of at least 4000 feet and a prominence of at least 200 feet. Hiking all of them is a thing a lot of people do. When I started hiking a lot in the White Mountains I didn't think I would be one of them, but I still kept track of what I'd done, and when I got into the 20s I decided I wanted to do all of them. So far I've done 27.
I still don't think I'm ever going to through hike the Appalachian Trail, but I might be able to manage the Long Trail, which runs the length of Vermont, some day.
This is the same as the Spanish resolution, but applied to Latin. I'm already to the point where I'm reading the unabridged Cicero in the back of Wheelock's Latin textbook with a lot of help from the footnotes. I'd like to change that to reading Cicero, and the like, with only occasional help from a dictionary.
No resolutions were fulfilled, but progress continues to be made on several of them. I'm now up to 37 of the 48 4000 footers in New Hampshire (summiting the 38th on New Year's Day 2008). I hope to finish on Moosilauke in late summer of 2008. I'm still studying Spanish and Latin. I'm making slow progress on The Tale of Tifa Walbatnuwa Siina, where, with all the footnotes and research, it sometimes takes a half hour to write a sentence of the main story. I'm saving up vacation days for a through hike of the Long Trail in 2009.
On the 31st of August both my sons, my brother Geoff, and several members of Rocks on Top accompanied me as I summited Mt. Moosilauke, bagging the 48th New Hampshire 4000 footer.
No other resolutions were fulfilled, but I continue to play chess, study Latin, and work on The Tale of Tifa Walbatnuwa Siina.
It looks like the Long Trail through-hike is going to happen this year.
From 28 June to 24 July of 2009 I hiked the Long Trail from end to end, starting in Massachusetts and ending in Quebec. My Trail Journals and pictures are online.
No other resolutions were fulfilled, but I continue to make progress on some of them.
Well, let's see.
In September I finished peakbagging the 67 4000 footers in New England. This was not an official resolution, so before I forget let me make one for the next peakbagging goal:
They're not actually all 4Ks, and the patch says "111", for historical reasons, but it's a well defined goal, that (as far as I know) only two people I know have accomplished. The 115 include the 67 4Ks in New England, which I've done, the Adirondack 46, of which I'd done 12, and two peaks in the Catskills, of which I've done 1. So I'm 80/115 of the way there.
In June 2010 American Atheists Magazine published an article of mine titled The Creator God: a Solution in Search of a Problem. This is the seed for the book I'm hoping to write.
I continue to study Latin. I'm certainly not at the point where that resolution is fulfilled, but it is something I think I have a chance of achieving before I die.
I worked on The Tale of Tifa Walbatnuwa Siina quite a bit early in the year, but not much recently. I hope to return to that. It's annoying; it shouldn't be taking nearly this long.
My chess rating has been in the low 1800's recently.
So, there have been no resolutions fulfilled this year, but I don't feel at all like I've been wasting my time. Things happen. Other things happen. Priorities change. I consider my current priorities to be activism, hiking, and writing, with chess and Latin as secondary priorities. I'm basically happy with how I'm doing with activism and hiking, and hope to ramp up my writing again.
See you next year.
Earlier this year I was at a Connecticut Valley Atheists meeting in an informal discussion about who should be our representatives to the Secular Coalition of Connecticut. I was asked whether I would like to be a representative myself, and before I could answer my friend Tanya, who was overhearing the conversation, said, "He doesn't have time in his schedule." It took me a day or two before I realized that she had said that as much for my benefit as for anyone else's. It was her way of warning me not to overschedule myself more than I already am.
I feel really busy these days, mostly in a good way. A lot of it is devoted to either hiking or Atheist activism, though, so many of these resolutions, especially related to writing, have not shown much progress, and none have been completed in the last year.
Here, in any event, is a listing of all nineteen resolutions, with reports on progress. Green is for resolutions completed. Yellow is for uncompleted resolutions for which there was some progress this year. Red is for resolutions which have been either abandoned or dormant.
Done in 2002.
There's been no progress on this for years. I'm still determined to finish this before I die, though.
This has been on hold. I probably won't get back to it until I first succeed in getting my Latin up to where I want it.
I haven't done much conlanging at all this year, not even for Seezzitonian, which is used in the Tale of Tifa Walbatnuwa Siina. (See below.)
Done in 2004.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
Done in 2004.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
Not only haven't I been learning to juggle clubs, but I haven't been keeping up on praticing my ball juggling as well as I'd like.
Done in 2002.
My rating is now 1890. It was briefly over 1900 this year. I'm making slow progress. My son George, on the other hand, is making swift progress, and will certainly pass me soon on his own way to becoming an expert.
Abandoned in 2003.
Done in 2003.
I've done much less work on this than I should. In fact, judging by file modification dates, I don't appear to have done any work on this since March.
I haven't even gotten around to put the article published in American Atheists magazine on my site. I really need to get on this. There's a lot of work in between where I am now and having a finished book, and this is something which would stand as my legacy after my death more than any other resolution here.
Done in 2008.
Done in 2009.
I've actually been working on this. I try to study Latin for at least half an hour each week, and read some for at least ten minutes every day I'm not hiking. I don't always meet those goals, but I keep reviving my commitment.
I'm up to 89, having done nine this past year.
A couple years ago I wrote, "I consider my current priorities to be activism, hiking, and writing, with chess and Latin as secondary priorities." That's still true.
This isn't tied to any of the listed resolutions. It's not a finished accomplishment type of thing. It's an important part of my life, though. I continue to serve as the Connecticut State Director of American Atheists, for which I always feel there's more I could be doing. I do think I make a difference, though. One measure of success is that the Atheist community in Connecticut is thriving, and I think I've had something to do with that.
There is one specific goal for my activism, a New England Regional Atheist Meet, which I've started to organize, and which I hope to have happen later this year. I would have put that as a new resolution, except that it's a group effort; I'm just guiding it.
I plan to finish the Northeast 111 this summer. I'm up to 104, out of 115, so far.
Other than that I continue to work on other lists, the Catskill 35, the Winter New Hampshire 4Ks, and the New England Fifty Finest (as well as the ADK46, which is a subset of the Northeast 111). I have other ideas for hiking goals as well, when I start fulfilling these.
Sometimes I even just hike.
The official resolutions include three big writing projects. I've decided that the one I'm going to concentrate on is expanding The Contradiction of Omnipotent Agency and Causeless Effects into a book. I think of it as the Modal Realism Project now. I've made some progress recently, although not as much as I'd like. I did write and deliver a talk on the subject to the Humanist Association of Connecticut in 2012. I specifically chose that subject for my talk because I wanted to try to make my presentation more accessible. Besides that, most of my work has been research, reading Krauss and rereading Lewis.
I continue to play chess most Tuesdays at the New Britain Chess Club, and sometime analyze games with my son George, but besides that I don't do much to develop my game. My rating is 1892, two points above where it was last year.
I've been reading a little Latin almost every evening. I feel I'm improving. Improving very slowly, but definitely improving.
On the 28th of July 2013 I summited Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks, simultaneously finishing the ADK46 and NE111 lists. My friend Whichway (Melissa) was with me, and my son George hiked up, but not down. My wife Laura met us at the top.
Very little was done for any of the other resolutions, although my chess rating is up to 1915. Nonetheless, I'm going to to add five more.
any place in between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn
either the arctic or the antarctic
This is the fifty most prominent peaks in New England. I'm currently at 35 out of 50.
This is the 35 peaks in the Catskills which have at least 3500 feet elevation. However, four of them have to be done twice, at least once in the winter, so there's actually 39 summitings required. The odd thing is that nobody knows why those four and not some other four. So far I've done 23 out of the 39, including all four winter requirements.
I know I've said several times on this page that this is unlikely to happen, but it's possible, and I really want to do this, so here it is.
A lot has been happening in my personal life these past couple years which I'm not going discuss here, but it does affect my priorities, usually away from the type of stuff I do discuss here.
Anyway, no resolutions have been fufilled. I have been making good progress on the remaining peakbagging ones. I have seven left for the NEFF list and six for the Catskill list. I could very well finish one of both of these this year. I'm still studying Latin regularly, and slowly doing research for the Modal Realism book (which mostly consists of reading interesting books on related subjects). My chess rating, however, has been going down.
Perhaps I should make a resolution to update this page sometime in the first week of the year.
Two resolutions were completed this past year, both hiking ones, and both in October. On the Third I finished the New England Fifty Finest list on Gore Mountain in Vermont. This is the most exclusive/obscure of any of the hiking lists on this page. As far as I can tell, less than twenty people have ever done it. Two weekends later I finished a much more popular list, the Catskill 35.
After I finished the Northeast 111 list I realized I had done them all in my 50s. So I decided to do them again in my 60s. This creates a new resolution:
This becomes the only resolution with a time limit.
I'm 61 years old now, and it's becoming clearer with each year that years are a finite resource. I actually, for the first time in my life, made a list of new year's resolutions, for things which I have a realistic chance of doing this year. I'm not going to post that here, since they include some very personal things, but they include both some fairly trivial things and some tasks which will further the resolutions listed here.
Looking over this page, I see I did my summary of where I stand for all resolutions in 2012. Every leap year seems a good pace for that, so I'll do it again. Here, therefore, is a listing of all twenty-five resolutions, with reports on progress. Green is for resolutions completed. Yellow is for uncompleted resolutions for which there was some progress this year. Red is for resolutions which have been either abandoned or dormant.
Done in 2002.
On hold.
On hold. I probably won't get back to it until I first succeed in getting my Latin up to where I want it.
On hold.
Done in 2004.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
Done in 2004.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
On hold.
Done in 2002. I added a couple figures to my repertoire this year.
Not only on hold, but slowly going in the wrong direction.
Abandoned in 2003.
Done in 2003.
On hold.
I've decided that this will have top priority among my writing resolutions. That doesn't mean I've made much progress, though. I've been slowly doing research, though, by which I mean reading a lot of what other authors (such as Max Tegmark) have written on similar subjects.
Done in 2008.
Done in 2009.
I finished Part I of De Diuinatione by M. Tullius Cicero recently, and put it aside to read Part II later. Cicero is a little more difficult than what I should be reading now. I've just started Book I of Ab Vrbe Condita by T. Liuius.
Done in 2013.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
Done in 2015.
Done in 2015.
This won't happen until after I retire, if then.
I was at 28 out of 115 when the year turned.
I mentioned last year that for the first time I'd made some resolutions for the coming year. There were thirteen of them. I did five. The other eight have been carried over, and I've added another five, one of which is a more ambitious version of one I accomplished.
As for the century's resolutions, none were fulfilled, but some were advanced.
I abandoned Ab Vrbe Condita fairly early on; it was more difficult than I'd expected. I decided to read what is probably the most common beginning book for Latin students, De Bello Gallico by C. Iulius Caesar. That was a good choice; it's about just the right difficulty for my current skills.
I'm now up to 49 peaks, out of 115, for my project of rebagging the Northeast 111 in my 60s, which means I'm well ahead of schedule.
My chess rating is 1863, so I've essentially been holding steady for the past five years or so.
I continue to do occasional research towards the Modal Realism book. One of the yearly resolutions which was not done but got carried over was to outline the book.
Looking forward to 2017, one of my big projects for the year is to through hike the Cohos Trail. I'm tempted to make that an official resolution just so I can check it off, but more realistically I should consider it training for eventually doing the AT. There's a good chance I'll see a total eclipse of the sun, though.
I always date these updates on the Kalends of January (New Year's Day), although they're usually a week or two late. This year I'm writing this on the Nones of March (the 7th). My life has been hectic most of this century, but that hecticness has kicked up several notches since last fall, and will continue to be very high until late spring at the earliest.
I don't know who reads these updates, and I certainly don't know who will read them in the future. (Hello historians researching the 21st Century!) For those of you who don't (or won't) know what else has been going on in my life I feel I need to give a summary. Laura and I split up, kind of, back in 2013. I moved to my own room, and we no longer considered ourselves a romantic partnership, but we stayed legally married, and lived in the same house. That's all changing. I found a new romantic partner, Maure, last fall, and so Laura and I are going to finalize what we started in 2013. She just moved out last weekend, Maure's moving in in a few weeks, and this spring Laura and I should be legally divorced. The relevance of that to this page is that dealing with all of this, and conducting a relationship where I'm driving at least three hours each week, has driven progess on anything else I want to accomplish almost to a halt.
Here's what I did manage to get accomplished, though, mostly before I met Maure.
I'm on book two of De Bello Gallico.
I'm now up to 56 peaks, out of 115, for my project of rebagging the Northeast 111 in my 60s, which means I'm still ahead of schedule.
My chess rating dropped down below 1800, although it's crept back up just past that recently.
I did through hike the Cohos Trail this summer, although that wasn't an actual resolution.
The only resolution I could have plausibly claimed was fufilled was to see a total eclipse of the sun. I was, in August, in the moon's shadow. However, it was cloudy, so it wasn't the experience I was aiming for. So I'm still going to count this one as unfulfilled.
There is light at the end of the tunnel I'm in, and on the other side will be a happy life with Maure, so this current stress filled life has a purpose and is bearable. I've just got to resign myself to the fact that not much else is going to get done in the meantime.
I did get divorced last year, on the 23rd of July. Maure's been living with me since spring. You'd think that I could have made some progress on these resolutions during the rest of the year. I haven't, though, at least not much.
I'm on book three of De Bello Gallico now.
I'm now up to 61 peaks, out of 115, for my project of rebagging the Northeast 111 in my 60s, which means I'm still ahead of schedule, but not as much as I was last year.
My chess rating has essentially been static.
We'll see what happens this year.
It's leap year again; time to give a review of every resolution. Unfortunately, I can do that this time by just copying what I wrote in 2016 and making minor changes.
I've decided to stop making the one year resolutions I've mentioned. It turned out that I never looked at them during the year they're supposed to guide me through. I have a task list I update every week which serves that purpose, anyway.
Here, then, is my quadrennial listing of all twenty-five resolutions, with reports on progress. Green is for resolutions completed. Yellow is for uncompleted resolutions for which there was some progress this year. Red is for resolutions which have been either abandoned or dormant.
Done in 2002.
On hold.
On hold.
On hold.
Done in 2004.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
Done in 2004.
I might be able to do this in 2024. There'll be a total solar eclipse in northern New England then.
On hold.
Done in 2002.
My chess skills seemed to have collapsed this year, or maybe I'm not trying enough. In any event my rating is the lowest it's been this century. In fact, I've hit my floor.
Abandoned in 2003.
Done in 2003.
On hold.
Officially I'm working on this, but with the lack of progress lately it might as well be on hold.
Done in 2008.
Done in 2009.
I continue to improve my Latin. Right now I'm on Book IV of De Bello Gallico C. Iulius Caesar.
Done in 2013.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
Done in 2015.
Done in 2015.
This won't happen until after I retire, if then.
I was at 72 out of 115 when the year turned. So I'm still a little ahead of schedule.
This has been quite a year. Like most people many of the activities which would normally take up much of my time didn't happen. I can't say I made great progress on the things I therefore had extra time for, but that time wasn't entirely wasted.
When it became clear how serious the disruptions of the pandemic would be, I decided that I would focus on my language skills. I've been more conscientious than I had been about studying Spanish and Latin, the former mostly by reading young adult books, and the latter by continuing Caesar's De Bello Gallico. I'm now on book six (out of eight) of DBG. I've also been learning the basics of French and Ancient Greek, but those aren't serious studies like Spanish and Latin.
I'm now up to 76 peaks, out of 115, for my project of rebagging the Northeast 111 in my 60s. Luckily, I had been ahead of schedule when the year started. I only bagged four this year, but that puts me at less that a single peak under schedule.
My chess rating has dropped. I've apparently hit my floor. It might take a while (if ever) to get that back up. I play a bit online these days, but I've been playing almost no slow rated games.
When it became clear I'd be spending a lot of the year at home, I thought I would be able to make some real progress in my several writing projects. That didn't happen, though. Maybe in this new year.
This year was more like last year than I'd hoped. I'm reminded of Bob
Dylan's lines:
And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice.
I've made some progress on some of the resolutions, but not much really worth reporting.
I'm only at 84 peaks for rebagging the Northeast 111 in my 60s. I may have to change that to rebagging the NE111 after turning 60.
I continue to study Spanish and Latin, but not as much as last year. Writing has been embarrasingly minimal. My chess rating is still at its floor.
I don't want to make a prediction, but there is a change in my life starting with this new year which might actually enable better progress next year. I'm now working part-time, 30 hours a week instead of 40. I hope to make good use of those extra 10 hours. I'll let you know next year how that goes.
As I mentioned last year, I went part time this year, working 30 hours a week. It might have been premature in terms of financial planning, but it was a big help in terms of my mental health. Having a three day weekend every weekend made an even bigger difference that I'd expected. As far as this page is concerned, it has given me more time for making progress on the resolutions.
I've actually been writing this year, and not just planning to write. My top priority is still the Modal Realism book, which is an actual work in progress now (although I still haven't come up with a good title yet).
The other writing project I've been making real progress on is a play. This has been knocking around my brain for a few years now, and when I finally started putting it down on paper I was surprised at how easily it's come. I'm going to make this a new resolution:
I added zero new peaks on my quest to rebag the Northeast 111 in my 60s. Once I realized I'm not going to make it by 70 it became less of a pressing goal. I concentrated on several trail completions instead. I still hope do finish this before I die, though.
I continue to study Spanish and Latin, making reasonable progress.
I'm still at my floor in chess. I play at a local club pretty much every Tuesday, but my skill level's isn't changing much.
At some point this past summer I decided that I needed to decide how to play the endgame of my life, and what I concluded is that my writing is going to be main focus of my remaining years. It's something which has a real chance of being a lasting legacy, and it's the thing which I'm most likely to regret not having accomplished when the game ends and it's time to put the pieces back in their box. I had been trying to devote at least a couple hours a week before then, and I decided to kick it up to four. I've met or exceeded that most weeks since then (although admittedly not all). This coming year I'll be turning 70, and will either retire or at least cut my hours back even more, which I will convert to more hours writing.
For most of this year my writing was concentrated on the Modal Realism book and my play. Lately I've added the novel Raisinbread to the mix. See below for details on each project.
Here, then, is my quadrennial listing of all twenty-six resolutions, with reports on progress. Green is for resolutions completed. Yellow is for uncompleted resolutions for which there was some progress this year. Red is for resolutions which have been either abandoned or dormant.
Done in 2002.
For most of the year this lay dormant, as it has for many years. When I finished the first draft of the play, though, I wanted another project to accompany the Modal Realism book. I like to be able to put something aside for a while when I'm not making a lot of progress, but I want to be continually working on my writing, so I have at least two projects active at a time.
When I returned to Raisinbread (whose title I'm probably going to change) I was worried whether it would be worth saving at all. I did end up throwing out a whole big subplot which wasn't working, but I was surprised at how good the writing was for the main plot. A lot of my work on it so far has been figuring out how to restructure the last half of the book. I feel good about making something I can be proud of out of this, though.
Before I decided to go full out on writing as much as I could I was spending a lot of time studying Spanish and Latin. That has dropped off quite a bit, but it's not been stopped.
On hold.
Done in 2004.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
Done in 2004.
It looks like I'll be able to finally do this this year.
On hold.
Done in 2002.
I still play chess almost every week at the New Britain Chess Club, and quite a bit online, but I'm still hovering just above my floor (1700), and probably will never get much higher than that..
Abandoned in 2003.
Done in 2003.
On hold.
I spent a lot of time on this (which I think of as the Modal Realism book) in 2023, and am nearing the completion of the first draft. It will probably go into several other drafts before it's finished, but there's a fairly good chance you'll be able to buy a copy sometime in 2024. I don't know what the title is going to be, though.
Done in 2008.
Done in 2009.
Before I decided to go full out on writing as much as I could I was spending a lot of time studying Spanish and Latin. That has dropped off quite a bit, but it's not been stopped.
Done in 2013.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
I don't know if I'll ever do this.
Done in 2015.
Done in 2015.
Realistically this is probably not ever going to happen. Lately I've been doing a lot of shorter backpacks, and that's probably what I'll be doing for a while to come. I've created a webpage to keep track of of trails I've done, trails I've partially done, and trails I'm interested in doing some day (not necessarily realistically).
Still, hiking the AT someday is not out of the question, and if so these shorter backpacks will be training for that, which is why this resolution is yellow.
This is not going to happen. I turn 70 in May and I'm only 87/115 of the way there. One I realized I wasn't going to make the cutoff I changed it to peakbagging the NE111 after turning 60. It might happen, but it's not a high priority anymore.
This September I finished the first draft of the play. Several people have reviewed it, and on Thanksgiving my family gave it a reading. As a result I know what I need to do to improve it. There's still a bit of work to be done, but finishing that draft was a major milestone, proving to myself that I can make real progress on a writing project. I will almost definitely be shopping this around to theaters before the end of 2024.
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