Year in Summary

This year has both been awesome and it has sucked. Some goals were achieved, others not so much.

I was drugged out of my mind for a good chunk of Christmas since Jennifer and I were both sick, but we got better. Jennifer had to go to the doctor a second time because she got a sinus infection though. The current medication she's taking is helping a lot. I got a lot of nice Christmas presents including a small book with photoshopped animals with encouraging phrases, a shirt with a devil burying dinosaur bones that says 'teach the controversy', a book on how to make videos, a mole skin notebook for New York, a mole skin weekly planner, an MP3 player (which will make work MUCH more tolerable), and candy :)

Goal Review.

Physical: Reduce my weight to 225lbs. Losing 30lbs, at an average of 1800 calories a day for diet with 1-2 free days a month, exercising aerobically 4 times a week for 300 calories each session for 22.5 minutes, lifting weights 2 times a week using at least the 30 pound weights. Currently at 180 calories each session with the goal to raise 20 calories a week until I reach 300. The goal is to start with 1 weight lifting session in Jan and then adding another in Feb.

**Status. Fail on the weight. Succeed on the exercise. I've also joined the YMCA and going 2-4 times a week.

Mental: Read 1 Good non fiction book a month + 2 slowly over Wed. I plan to start with Fast Food Nation. The two slow books will be "Search Engine Marketing" and "Philosophy and Super Heroes."

**Status. Success. All books read. Plus many others that were worth reading.

Graduate Grad School with at least a 3.0 average (preferably with honors) in May.

**Status. Success.

Spiritual: Continue scripture study, prayer and other activities.

**Status. Prayer has continued. For now we are reading out of Jennifer's spiritual quote of the day book. Success.

Read at least one major spiritual work belonging to another religion.

**Status. In progress. Reading the Dhampala. Est completion two weeks.

Emotional: Be kinder. Have Less Anger.

**Status. Success.

Social: Get involved with a service project at least once a month starting in April.

**Status. Success. This has largely consisted of helping Mythic Journies and Grandma with her house. Not what I originally had in mind, but it has worked well and been quite fulfilling.

Writing:

Write a status update of all writing (prose) projects once a week.

**Status. Partial. Pretty darn good though.

Begin writing high fantasy in September of 2009, at 1000 words a day for four months to create 120,000 words for the novel so I can still have 100,000 words and cut 20,000 of them.

**Status. Partial. Only 16000 words written so far, but I'm not satisfied at all with it and may start from scratch.

Write 12 short stories, 1 every three weeks until then to flesh out the world. Outline the short stories here but write them off line so I can submit them for publication (Thus forcing me to improve the stories to publishing quality standards.)

**Status. Partial. 4 were written. Never submitted for publication.

I am also considering writing a science fiction story once a month, but I will wait until after Grad School in May 2009 to do this, which would make the goal to submit 7 non novel related short stories for publication in 2009.

**Status. Never started.

The novel short stories (fantasy) must NOT be part of the novel itself or involve its characters. This is designed to flesh out the world and make it more livable.

**Status. Success.

Film: Write two film scripts.

Status: Success. Other People's Musicals + Assist w. Architects of Fear.

Produce two films.

Status: Partial. Just one. Lack of funds + Chaos precluded.

Submit at least one of the two to a film festival this year. The film should be no shorter than 4 minutes and no longer than 10.

Status: Incomplete. Still being edited but it will be kickass when done.

Invention: Buy and read at least two Law School text books on Patent Law.

Status: Fail.

Economic: Maintain my job.

Status: Laid off twice, let go once by telephone. However, employed 8 out of 12 months in the technical writing field in the worst year since the Great Depression. I call that success.

Pay off more of Credit Card.
Status: Success.

Make preparations for child.
Status: N/A

Obtain 5 most important items as determined by Jennifer and I.
Status: 2 out of 5. Video Game Computer. Furniture. Funds have been severely limited.

Make Red Anvil Productions Gaming have its first profitable year.
Status: Success. By about $150.

Family: Improve relations. Be slightly less annoying.
Status: Success. (In my opinion.)

Friends: Have at least 3 non game related social events over the course of the year.
Status: Success.

Children: Have 1. Have all physical preparations made at least 2 months in advance of birth.

Status: N/A

Other:

Create at least one podcast a month (probably short stories already written)
Status: Success.

Create a fourth blog by March involving unknown quantity or subject for fun and/or profit.
Status: Success.

Create a group of new life goals by March.
Status: Partial. It took another 6 months.

Ensure that all selected items in the Christmas Coupon Book I gave Jennifer are delivered/fulfilled.
Status: Success. All but one and that one will be done tomorrow.

Go to Gencon 2009.
Status: Success.

Go to DragonCon 2009.
Status: Success.

Go to Boston for my Graduation.
Status: Success.

Learn to Juggle.
Status: Started to learn and after about 20 hours discovered, 'Why the HELL do I want to do this again?' I stopped. Total success.

Learn to Shoot a Pistol.
Status: Failure.

If Brett is sent to a Spanish Speaking Mission, Refresh and Brush up on my Spanish.
Status: Success.

Christmas Thoughts

Tis midnight, and it is now Christmas. We attended two parties over the last weekend, one with Jay and Dee on Saturday and one with Jennifer's company. I admit that her company party was kind of hard for me, because I miss having a job that takes me seriously. Case in point, this last Sunday afternoon, RBS World Pay, a company who I thought I had a perfect working relationship with, called me up on the phone via my contractor to tell me that I would not need to come in for the last two weeks of my contract. I give them two weeks notice, and still had plenty of work to do, and they decide that I'm not needed.

Apparently turn about is not fair play. The thing is, that I have strong reason to believe that people who I had known for several years and trusted decided that they would let me go in this fashion. Thus is the life of a contractor.

We've also been quite sick this week. Jennifer has had some worrisome coughs, though we went to the doctor on Monday. She's been getting better for the most part, but it still isn't gone for either of us. And yet despite all of the negativity, I feel overwhelmingly positive. Want to know one reason? Because Jennifer Loves me and I love her. We each opened a present and the one I opened from her was this silly little book that had animal faces photoshopped into grins and smiles with all kinds of truly nauseating positive expressions.

And it cheered me up considerably. In the grant scheme of things, I have a lot to be grateful for. Hell, despite being let go early, I still have a job lined up at the beginning of the year that is going to pay me decently, for at least a few months. I have friends, family and a spouse that love me, and I have my health, as imperfect as it may be. :)

Merry Christmas, and God Bless Us, Every One.

Life

Well I have a new job. I start on Jan 4th. It is a three month contract. I will be in my current contract until the end of the month so things are working out rather nicely. :) There are few snags on the wording of the contract which I'm a bit worried about, but they sent me an offer letter and I signed it. We'll see how things go. The weekend before last we saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was quite good. This past weekend I ran my shadowrun game (the third installment.) Sunday we watched a lot of TV and had a very relaxing day. Last night Julie, Mom, Jennifer and I went to watch Niel Gaiman read from two of his books and get some autographs. It was awesome. He autographed EVERY single person's book. There were over 600+ people there. We were toward the end of the line and got out at around 1am.

Thanksgiving Etc

Thanksgiving was a nice break. Didn't do much, which was just they way I like it. Jennifer and her mother went shopping most of Friday so I had the whole day to myself. Surfed some on the net, but also finished reading Conversations with God and The Unbehead King trilogy. Saturday we saw 2012. Bleh. I will say this though, Joyce lays down a MEAN Thanksgiving day table. It was delicious. The turkey was the best I have had in years. It was Jennifer, myself, Joyce (my mother in law), Dick (her husband), and two of their friends who lived near by. There was also football watched. I am not a football fan, but I watched with them to be social. Despite some misgivings about A&M, I was still pleased that they performed as well as they did against UT. Right now I consider myself more an alumni of Boston University than any other school (that is, it hasn't kicked me out because I missed a single test or made me so angry I would want to spit nails at faster than the speed of sound)...but I never physically attended...and so far as I know, they have no major sports teams. But the more I find out about them, the more I like them. I attended an alumni networking event recently that was quite cool.

This week has been redonkulously busy. Monday night I played board games at a friend's house. Tuesday night I ran a MUSH event on the internet and last night I went to a Christmas party for the people I did the grant writing for (Mythic Imagination Institute)...but there must have been some kind of miscommunication because no one was there...'s OK really, I brought the chips for the potluck home and Jennifer and I ate them. :) Wednesday, I spent the night with Ken hammering out the last portion of the 4th novel.

The job market is definitely improving. I've had a lot of recruiters contact me recently. I think that might be why my current contract has been extended again to Feb 30th. I guess they (mostly) want to keep me. There are a few other issues I won't disclose on a public blog (yet anyway) but I get along great with my boss and my boss's boss.