These were my ambitions for the year as published on December 30th 2017 and as I am want to do I have assigned a grade to each. All in all that was a pretty solid year I reckon so a [B] seems fair. I might need to be more ambitious next year!
Lose 20lbs.
In the end I am about 12lbs lighter than I was when I wrote this. Basically I lost 4 stone give or take and then decided to try and maintain that. Mostly I’ve managed that with the occasional blip.
[B]
Complete the 100 Pushups challenge.
Got to a point in early-summer where I was able to do about 50 in a single session but stopped dead with it around the time I went to New Zealand. Rubbish really. I was quite enjoying it.
[D]
Take up Yoga (or maybe Pilates — whichever has less of the ‘affirmations’ etc) and do at least one session a week (even if at home.)
Total fail.
[F]
50 editions of my jobs newsletter with a target of 700 subscribers.
50 editions and 758 subscribers! Yay!
[A]
40 editions of a new weekly newsletter / blog to replace my #weeknotes.
Only managed 10 editions of my new newsletter but returned to #weeknotes (though it really didn’t work as well as it used to in my new role so I think I’ll need to rethink it), also did #NaBloPoMo and wrote a record number of blogposts in a single year. So I think that went pretty well.
[B]
Go to at least 6 evening meet-ups.
Pretty sure I managed this — I can remember meet-ups in London, Swansea, Leeds, Cambridge, Bristol, Bath and Wellington, NZ.
[A]
Travel to the Pacific Northwest in May (Vancouver → Seattle → Portland → Eugene by train).
Did this. It was amazing. Perhaps my favourite ever holiday.
[A]
Travel to Malaysia** in December.
Didn’t manage this but I did manage a random trip to New Zealand and a visit to New York so that is a pretty well travelled year I think.
[B]
Read (or listen to) 50 books.
Looks like I might make it to 42/43. So not bad but not great.
[C]
Some kind of drawing challenge (tbd)
Didn’t do this really. I did discover #inktober so that is going to be a future ambition. Some of my doodles were OK though I think — especially my weird little robots.
Digital by Default 