[Yearly Review] Part 2: did I achieve my goals in 2015?

As part of my traditional New Year restrospective, I set myself a series of personal goals for 2015. These covered a range of hobbies, my work, sport, etc., and were designed to be at least vaguely achievable. In 2013 I did pretty well, but 2014 was a bit of failure. So how did 2015 go? Well........in a word, poorly.

General

0/6 for my general goals is not a good start!

• Recover my savings back to where they were when my PhD stipend ended. Not even close, again. This is the second year I've tried, and failed, to get my savings back to their original levels, and at this point I'm almost ready to give up.
• Get my weight back down to 12st. I'm not sure about this one, as I've not had access to scales for a while. I haven't put on any visible weight though, so I'm calling it a wash.
• Go swimming twice per week for more than half of the year. Hahahaha. Oh dear. I only managed to swim twice a week three times, and I'm not even sure that I made it to the pool once for more than half the year!
• Catch-up with backlog of blog posts. The blog pretty much died on its feet in 2015. I've still got a whole bunch of blog titles and draft posts, but some of them I'll never be able to write now.
• Continue blogging. See above.
• Buy a house This was always a bit of a pipe dream for 2015, but I did start investigating the market. It's on the cards for 2016 though, but will need some work putting in.

Work

3/5 for work, not too bad. But the really important one, publish more, was a failure.

• Publish at least two peer-reviewed papers I managed to get one paper submitted in October, and had the referee report back a few weeks before Christmas. I'm still working on it though. As for other papers, I had several projects that wouldn't take too much work to turn into publications (he says), but PLATO took up all of my hours for months at a time.
• Attend at least one international conference. Success! I made it to the EPSC in Nantes in October. Not the conference I wanted to go to, but money ended up being a bit tight, and I had lots of other work-related travel.
• Go on at least one observing run. My trip to La Palma at the summer was my first trip to the observatory there, and one that I'm keen to repeat. It was nice to get some observing in again.
• Propose (and run if accepted) an exoplanets session at NAM 2015. In the end it was a jointly organised session, but it seemed to be a success. The participants all seemed to enjoy it at least.
• Arrive at work before 9:15 for more than half of the year. Abject failure. Even if I counted 9:30 as my cutoff, I would still fail. There were just large portions of the year where I struggled to get up in the mornings, and I wasn't staying up that late either!

Reading

0/3 looks really bad, but I was very close on a couple of these, and read a decent number of books again this year.

• Read 35 fiction books. So close! I read 34 fiction books in 2015, not too shabby.
• Read 5 non-fiction books. Close again! Four non-fiction books read.
• Buy fewer than ten physical books. Yeah, no. I failed this in June after a bout of madness in the Oxfam bookshop in Leamington Spa where I bought ten books in a single purchase. After that it was downhill, and I've had to add more bookshelves to the flat.

TV and film

0/3 for TV and film as well! Again, I actually saw a lot more television this year than in any of the previous five years (and possibly all of them combined), it's just that none of it was from my collection. Ditto with films.

• Watch two TV shows from my collection (that I haven't previously watched). (*)
• Watch at least 3 films from my collection (that I haven't previously watched). (*)
• See more than 15 films at the cinema.

Wargaming

A poor showing on the wargaming front too. I played lots of games, but didn't manage to get much else done towards these goals.

• Paint 26 models.  I painted exactly zero models this year, and I don't even remember the last time I picked up a paintbrush. I bought and built new models that I was excited to paint, but the weather was never kind enough to let me get the spray undercoat out.
• Finish painting a full 35pt Warmachine/Hordes list.  I played fully painted several times, but that was with stuff that was already painted.
• Paint my MERCS miniatures.
• Build my WW2 tanks.  Still sitting in their boxes, many years after I bought them.
• Build my Battlestar Galactica Viper Not quite so old, but just as much NIB as the tanks.
• Play at least one game of at least two different systems.  Success! I played a lot of Warmachine / Hordes, three games of Dreadfleet, and a few games of X-Wing.
• Place in the top three at a tournament. Tournament success continues to elude me, not least because I spent 2015 with a new Warmachine faction
• Win a tournament.  Hahaha. Well I said it was ambitious...
• Buy some X-Wing models. I'm giving myself partial credit on this one. I didn't buy any, but I am now the proud owner of the new "Force Awakens" starter box thanks to my brother.

Board gaming

Finally, some success. These were always going to be the easiest ones to complete thanks to the Wednesday board games night at Warwick Sci-Fi.

• Play at least fifteen new games.  I actually played 20 new games in 2015. Some have become staples, others I don't think will get much play.
• Buy at least three new games. I bought four new games and was given two more as presents. Most are on the lighter side compared to many of my games, but that seems to be the niche my collection is leaning towards at present.

Computer gaming

Much like painting, it's been a quiet year on the computer games front for me. I've not turned on the XBox for months, and didn't made much progress on any games when I had time to play.

• Finish 2 games single-player.

Lifesaving

I continue to fail at these more community oriented lifesaving goals. My involvement with BULSCA has increased again, but I'm starting to feel the age gap a bit. I just don't know how to get started with the RLSS.

• Attend a local Lifesaving Club training session.  Another failure, but I did at least get to the branch AGM.
• Maintain my Survive & Save TA status.  I actually need to look into this one, as I've not got an LS3 equivalent again. But I have a feeling it lapsed.
• Teach a lifesaving course.  Nope, but then I don't think I'm qualified to do so any more.
• Compete with an old boys' team at a BULSCA competition.  It's been talked about a lot, but so far no progress.
• Get involved with the RLSS I was tempted to award myself partial credit for the branch AGM, but that wasn't really what I had in mind.

Overall then I completed 6/34, with two partial credits: a terrible showing. So much for doing better than 2015!

However, there's one major mitigating factor that plays a role in many of these failures - since April I've been in a new relationship, which has meant that the weekends I would have previously spent by myself on my XBox or with paintbrush in hand have been spent with my girlfriend instead. It's also been a very busy second half to the year; I think there were two months where I had no free weekends!

In any case, looking back perhaps I got a bit ambitious with my 2015 goals. Or maybe my priorities are changing, who knows. Check back tomorrow to see what impossible aims I'll have for 2016.