New Year Resolutions 2012

I have being writing up my goals and achievements on this blog for a few years now, although I did miss last years due to health issues. I’ve decided to reduce how much work I do on them and combine it into one post combining the Start of the Year and the Close of the Year overviews. I’m also going to start restricting the number of areas I focus on, so I can get more done in each project even if I cover fewer over the course of the year; to avoid spreading myself too thin.

So without further ado here are my observations of 2011 in hindsight and resolutions to work towards in 2012:

CLOSE THE YEAR 2011

2011 has be an interesting year where a lot of new thing have begun to take form and some more familar things have changed. It started off with a Writing project with my Copenhagen NaNoWriMo group where five of us decided to do a 10 card tarot reading and use each card as inspiration for each chapter in a book. We split up the chapters so we did two each and a very interesting supernatural fictional story evolved. I was responcible for chapters 6 and the final 10th chapter, which took a bit of work to tie everything together and give it room to grow beyond either end of the book.

I finished the final chapter in October at the same time as my 12th anniversary with (and 1st paper anniversary married to) my husband Ray. It has been a very wonderful journey and I love how we have grown together over the course of our relationship. The other major thing to have happened to us is we finally completed the paperwork on all the loans needed to buy the house we love. The contract took 13 months to complete (which is a long time for Denmark).

We are starting to organise our belongings, now that we no longer need our cardboard boxes, ahead of an Idea Paint project in our livingroom that will convert two large walls into white board. This we want to use to design and work out any number of projects we want to do in our studio. The first of which will be a video game in Unity that I will be working on with my husband and friends. This is in it’s early stages but it is certainly starting to take shape and come together. It is certainly nice to have extended the group by another member in the last month

I have in my job as a System Developer moved into a more Testing and Quality Assurance role this year and it has been very interesting to see programming projects from this angle. Also with the video game I am taking on a more project manager role using Trello. So these, in combination with learning Unity, JavaScript and C# have allowed me to expand my horizons alot this year in my IT career.

I have had also reached a milestone in my guitar practise this year. I first started playing the guitar when I was 14 when I got my first guitar. I played for 3.5-4 years everyday non-stop, bar a few days due to ill health. I wrote 50 songs during this time too. I then stopped playing for over 10 years. I started again in September 2007. I realised not so long ago I have been playing longer now this time round than when I first started playing in my teenage years. So it’s nice to be returning to my former self, even if I don’t play daily like I used to back then.

My husband and I also started to face and deal with some health issues this year which we had been putting off, due to fear of the unknown. I am being seen by a Gynacoloist (as I may have Endometriosis and fertility issues) and a Neuroloist because I am getting more of the werid nerve spasms I talked about in my blog For The Hole Inside Everyone back in 2007 called Literally Losing Control.

Also my husband is waiting on a biopsy result and will be seeing a plastic surgon in January. I find now I have made the move to face these things I am relieved that the process has begun and it can finally be dealt with (instead of letting it niggle at the back of my brain, causing me to dwell on darker fears). Now I spend alot of my day sending myself and my husband good wishes to be well. It has been a long time since I allowed myself to cultivate such feeling of well being towards myself due to issues of self worth. It feels like this is starting to unravel unenough to begin the process of letting go. It will be what it will be in the end.

I have also just started using this month the Pomodoro Technique, to help manage my time and to do lists. It also allows you to track your progress easily and get into a better relationship with time and work. It has only been a couple of weeks but already I can see an improvement on my perception of how much I can really get done in a day. It is easy to feel like you have done nothing all day, when really you have undervalued yourself and your work, and not paid attention to how much you’ve actually squeezed into the day. Sometimes work does not yield concrete and obvious results everyday, sometimes it needs to perculate and you need to graft, before it can bloom into completion.

Speaking of perculation the other Writing accomplishment I had this year was getting the start right at last for the first book of my 6 book Sci-Fi series (it has taken me over 11 years to get it right!) Also, quite by surpise, I found myself writing the start of the third book which I have always been itching to write as it involves some interesting characters at different points in their lives that I find fascinating (hence why I’m writing it heh). I put off starting the 3rd book because I hadn’t finished the 1st, nor really started on the 2nd, but I decided not to let that stop me working on the 3rd book and I’m glad I did. I’ve got the first 2.5 chapters done already and the details of the story is starting to open up in my mind

START THE YEAR 2012

The first thing I want from the year 2012 is to make our video game a success. My husband and I have tried doing this once before, on a different gaming project, and were hit by a number of staffing and financial issues which caused it to come to a halt. It is now 6 years on from that and I think it’s time to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back into the gaming arena. The game concept we have is pretty sound and we are getting interest from people we talk to about it, so it feels like we have the basis for a popular game. In fact I am already at the point where I want to play it heh!

Then the next thing I want is to help our collaborative book to be a success (it is written and just needs a polish before it can be put into print). I want to use this as an oppotunity to learn as much as I can about taking a book from the final manuscript into a finished and book selling in print or in digital form. I also want to learn how to spread the word and market a book both in person, online and through other media outlets. This will be invaluable for when I want to sell my 6 book Sci-Fi series later on when it’s ready.

I want to start having a more motivating attitude towards my daily work routine. I have suffered some motivational issues this year in my job, until I started on the Testing and QA work. This is mostly due to the nature of patching large systems and keeping them functional. Sometimes you get left with a killer case that no-one has a clue how to fix and you just bang your head against a wall for days trying to figure it out. This has been one of my major complaints against coding over this long stretch of my life. Those moments when it all comes to a halt can be soul crushing.

This is why I like being involved in other parts of the development life cycle, where I’m not solely responcible for fixing problems and help to point them out before they are rolled out into production. So I want to make the most of the oppotunities in 2012 that I am given in my IT career to grow in a new directions, but that also transfer my technical skills so they are still relevant and useful.

The other thing I want to do is register myself as a Soul Trader for the work I do in my spare time arround my primary job. This is so that I can finally consider myself an artist, whather I create video games, books or music and whatever else I want to do in the future. This free registration application is the business seed that hopfeully it will grow into something bigger further down the line, or at least teach me more about business adminstration and finance which will be useful for any number of reasons.

AND BEYOND THAT

Here are the new passions I envision will become a part of my life sometime soon, but less likely to be within the next year. This is room for new seeds to be cultivated and given space to grow and perculate in my brain in the background:

I think I have had to admit in 2011 that Danish has been difficult to fit into my life, espcailly now I have a large project to start a business from to deal with on the side too. However, even when this wasn’t on the cards I have been struggling to learn Danish. I’ve decided to live with the fact that my Danish is abissmal when listening and speaking. The perfectionist in me doesn’t want to admit that, as it would have me burn out to do everything expected of me, but I have learned not to listen (in this case) this year.

I know one day I will wake up and find I had dreamt in Danish, or catch myself one day thinking in Danish, but it is not to be right now and that is OK. It will come when it is ready and if I need to delay that day alittle to help put me in a postion to better spend the time I really need learning the language, then that seems equally as worthy a route to fluencey as any other. As long as I don’t give up entirely, taking a break is not a crime. I have to remind myself of that every so often though

Then of course there is the Sci-Fi series. I expect that this will suffer a little in 2012 as the video game will come first and then the collaborative book will come before the series since it is done. However I have great faith that the series is going in the right direction and that I will squeeze in some work on it here and there as I always do

The other thing I expect will be near on the horizon is my guitar and singing practise. I am looking at getting a new Electric Acoustic Guitar so I can start practising with the intent to perform again. I’ve found a Cafe in Copenhagen that supports local artists and you can apply to play there. So I am thinking or working towards that with regard to my musical abilities in the long term.

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So that is all I have to report that I can think of, lets compare notes next year! I hope all of you have a great New Year’s (the fireworks have already begun here lol). I also hope you had a great 2011 and that 2012 will be even better than ever.

Niamh Brown
http://www.niamhbrown.com

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