Promises, promises...

Ah, yes. New Years Resolutions... typically unfulfilled promises made at a mostly artificial deadline.

The cynical bit being said, this is a good time to revisit things in your life that could stand some freshening-up. Or maybe change completely. As for most people, the following goals pale in comparison to the important parts of my life – family/work/health.

My general philosophy with New Years resolutions is to keep them realistic. There's no point in saying “I'm going to work out every day” when you know you can't, break the resolution before Martin Luther King day, and don't do anything about it the rest of the year while constantly feeling guilty. THERE's a healthy way to run your life. (and it's way too common...)

Be that as it may, let's take a look at the areas I'd like to improve in my gaming life.

Play more wargames. According to my records, I played wargames 30 times in 2005. 23 of those were DBM miniatures games (as mentioned last week.) That leaves 7 board wargames played in 2005, none of them twice. This needs to change. As Dave mentioned at the tail end of his post yesterday, the Hillsboro gaming session has been put on hiatus. This leaves me with alternate weeks open for gaming. I think I've got a wargame partner lined up for those off weeks. Hopefully it works out, as we share a lot of common interests in topics.

Play the unplayed games. I want to finish the task of playing every unplayed non-wargame I own. I started this last year, and I'm about 75% through the list. If I haven't played a game by the end of 2006, it's going to be sold.

Write the game already. I'm going to finish the first draft of my Great Northern War hex-n-counter wargame project. I've got the basic outline done, just have a few design decisions to make around command-and-control and flesh out the rules into something appropriate for a playtest.

Painting projects. I want to finish more painting projects than I start. I managed to finish two painting projects last year, but I started three others. This year, I'm going to (at worst) reverse that statistic. Being able to go an entire year without starting a new project would be a novel concept, as well. I'm not sure I'm actually ready to commit to that, however. I've got six projects currently underway – it's not inconceivable I could complete all six this year as only two of them are of any significant size.

Winnowing Down. I need to get realistic about cleaning out my board game collection. I'm going to go through the games I haven't played since early 2003 and decide if they're worth keeping.

Less lead. Do the same with my miniatures. I have WAY more miniatures than I could ever possibly paint. I need to get just as ruthless cleaning out the miniatures as I do the boardgames. The secondary market for these isn't very good, but I'm hoping I'll be able to trade figures for ones that still have my interest.

Gather with gamers. I want to attend at least one boardgaming gathering outside my group. The most likely candidate for this, Gamestorm, isn't going to happen as it's the weekend of my daughter's birthday. In fact, I seriously doubt I'll ever be able to attend Gamestorm as long as it's the last weekend in March. This means traveling to something – I'll have to check out the calendar.

---

For me, most of this will need to be done by the end of July. My wife and I have recently discovered we're having a second child in late August. If past history is any indication, I won't exactly get much gaming done in September or October at the very least. Any gaming that happens in November and December will be gravy. It's obviously a secondary priority at that point. The collection thinning goals are definitely there with a second child in mind - there's simply going to be less space to store my stuff. Therefore, only stuff that will actually get used should be kept around.