Well, the year is half way gone already, can you believe it? If you remember at the end of last year I did a series of blog posts reviewing the various things I did throughout the year. I won’t be doing a lengthy “series” like that right now, but for the half way mark (July 1st) I will give some quick updates as to how the year is going. Last year’s topics were: Books Read, Movies Watched, Writings, Wake Up Songs, and The Hours. If you’re interested, here is the year thus far.
Books – although this is shaping up to be a fairly productive year in other regards, quantity read is not one. At this point I’ve only read 12 books. 6 of which are “new” (i.e. I’ve never read them before), and 2 of which were on paper (both “old” books). Only 2 of the books were of “significant” length (i.e. over 20 hours). One of those “lengthy” books was “A Dance With Dragons” which we all know is quite long, and with finishing it, I have now read the entire Song of Ice and Fire (of what’s available) twice, I am less than thrilled that “Winds of Winter” is still not out yet. I’ve been thinking of taking the Ice and Fire audio books and making a sort of “Anthology” out of the best chapters, and then reading this “Best of Ice and Fire” at the beginning of each year, it will be quite a project. I’m currently working my way through another massive book, James Michener’s “Hawaii.”
Writings – I set a big writing goal for myself at the beginning of this year, each month I am to write/edit: 1 new story, a thorough edit of the previous months story, 1 storyline edited from last year’s novel, 1 thorough edit of a previously unedited story, some fine editing, send some submissions, and (hopefully) get a few pieces published. In review I’ve done: 4 New Stories Written, 2 edited old stories, 6 Trail of Blood storylines edited, 36 submissions, and 6 published pieces. I’m a little behind in some goals, but not too much, considering the quantity at hand. Also I’ve done a total of 13 blog posts so far this year, that includes this one, I need to get better on that front.
Movies Watched – if you read my post back in march, you would see that my winter was spent watching a healthy amount of movies, a lot of “new” movies too (see books for explanation of “new”). I’ve continued because of my “Mega DVD Marathon”, but most of these movies are “Old.” Regardless, so far this year I have watched 38 movies, 22 of which are “new”. This is well ahead of pace for my goal of watching 1 movie every week, even without including the “old movies” I’m only slightly behind pace. The last movie watched thus far has been “Fritz the Cat”, and in another 3 days I’ll be watching annually viewed favorite musical of all time… 1776.
Video Game Playing – Video Games were not included in the end of the year series last year, but I think that this year they will be. I’m trying to cut back on the amount of video games I play, and I’ve made progress, notably because other things are getting done, but I’ve still played a lot. So far this year I’ve beaten (all for the first time): Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Contra, the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, and Shovel Knight (all three regular campaigns). I have played a healthy amount of (but not beaten): Yoshi’s Woolie World, 100 Best NES Games (subject of a forthcoming ongoing review), and Toy Blast (on the iPhone). As of the spring I’ve also taken up the Yoyo seriously again, which is good because it’s physical in nature and keeps me moving more than just a video game would.
Video Game Collecting – the records I’ve kept for collecting are not as thourhough as they should be, so im not sure how this year (so far) stacks up with other years w/r/t collecting, it’s certainly more than last year. So far I have picked up 17 games: 3 for the Wii U, 1 each for the Genesis, 3DS, and SNES, and 11 for the NES. I’ve also picked up a new system, the Sega Genesis Classic (long story more about that later). I would have picked up several more I’m sure if my game store had not closed. My collection as a whole now looks like this: NES (34+3) SNES (11+2) N64 (0+3) GC (20) WII (24) WIIU (10+1) GB (14+6) GBA (4+2) DS (18+1) 3DS (12+2) GEN (29+3) DC (10) PS1 (1) PS2 (13)
Wake Up Songs – You’ll have to wait for the end of the year for the full list, probably December 30th. but I can inform you now that I’ve been keeping track of my wake up songs all year, so far I’ve logged 70 songs. They are so all over the place with theme and genre that I couldn’t even try to give a good breakdown right now, so you’ll have to wait. But just a teaser, the first wake up song of the year was: “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” by Jackie DeShannon, and the most recent song is: Salieri Strikes Back by Warmen.
The Hours – as you know I keep track of the amount of hours I spend doing just about everything, so far here is time spent this year: Reading – 285 hours, Writing – 259 hours, Video Games – 237 hours, Working Out – 108 hours, watching films – 50 hours, making videos – 36 hours, Making Music – 4. I’m glad to see that reading and writing are averaging almost 1.5 hours a day. Video games are up there too, but as long as they aren’t well over writing time then I’m fine. Watching Films is a little skewed, because I do watch Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and about an hour of YouTube every day, but I don’t log that time because it’s too ingrained with my routine (like working), also if I have the TV on while I write or play video games, I’m not logging those hours either. Music is quite low, unfortunately (due to technical problems) MoonCandle is on hiatus, but we will be back, and as for other music projects I haven’t been feeling the bite this year, but I don’t consider this a bad thing, it will come back and I have plenty to write in the meantime.
And that is the summery of half the year, I hope you’ve enjoyed and that your half year has been as productive.
