Some Goals, 1 Week In

It’s been a week since my goals post, and things have gone fairly well, I think:

  • I slept about 7⅓ hours a night, average, over the last week. By how it feels, and by the numbers, that’s better than usual for me — but it still doesn’t feel like enough. Maybe I should have aimed for 8, but I wanted my goals to be realistic 🙂
  • I made things on about 4 nights out of six:
    • a set of handy fold-over NPC sheets for the D&D game: these have the name and portrait upside down at the top, so I can fold them over my DM screen and have just that bit facing the players. It needs a few tweaks (I don’t care about optimal line length, LaTeX — just fit it all on one page!), but overall it worked pretty well.
    • plus a map and some extra NPCs for the game — most of which I didn’t use, but if I’d needed them I’d have been glad of it,
    • plus a short poem, unrelated to D&D
  • I finished reading The Cousin from Fiji, by Norman Lindsay. This was a “fun” book, rather than an “improving” one. I liked the vivid descriptions of the characters, but the book’s definitely a product of its time (1945), in a way that’d make me cautious about recommending it today.

This preparation stood me in good stead for yesterday’s session, which ran more smoothly than the last. The remaining hiccups weren’t things I could blame on a lack of prep time, so so far these goals are serving me well.

Let’s see how the next two weeks go.

Some Goals

I’ve lately started running a D&D campaign, and I’ve found my preparation leaves something to be desired. Each fortnight, I have plenty of time to prepare for the next session. Each session, I’m unprepared. For this and other reasons, I’ve decided to set some goals.

It’s been a long time since I’ve participated in A Round of Words in 80 Days, and my goals right now aren’t quite that writing-related, but the idea is similar.

Our next session is on Wednesday. By then, and each fortnight after that, I’m aiming to:

  • Sleep: at least 7 hours a night, on average
  • Make: something meaningful each day, whether it be D&D prep, writing, programming, or progress on a life thing I’m procrastinating about.
  • Finish: a substantial piece of media: a book, movie, or maybe a webcomic archive. Something that I can finish and move on from, not social media that will pull me into an endless loop.

I made this decision yesterday. So far, I’ve slept 6½ hours, and had no other progress, unless I decide to count making this blog post. Let’s see if a public set of goals changes that.