New Year's Resolutions

January is already winding down, and in just a couple of weeks I will be yet another year older, still with no idea as to what or where I want to be working toward in my life. I'm not one of these people who have to have this huge, thought-out plan or anything that I'm constantly working toward. In fact, as long as I can go to work every day, come home and spend some time with my kids, play some video games, maybe watch a movie or read a comic book every now and then, I'm a pretty happy camper. That being said, it's still nice to have that feeling of accomplishment that comes along with setting a goal for myself and actually completing it. So I thought, why not do some fairly reasonable new year's resolutions, just a couple of little things that give my life some semblance of a purpose as I go forward into 2012. In no particular order, here they are...

- Finish Grand Theft Auto IV This one I'm taking personal. This goddamn game has been a thorn in my side for far too long. It's not that I don't like it, it's a good game, and I've actually enjoyed Niko's story and would like to finish it. It's the goddamn controls! I obviously don't possess the required ambidexterity that is required to both aim a gun and fire, while at the same time steer a car at high speeds through streets filled with heavy traffic. It's fucking frustrating attempting the same mission over and over and over and over and over....and over again. This is my year though, one way or another I will finish it. And then I will play The Lost and the Damned dlc because I bought it too and have never touched it.

- Draw more If you're keeping up at all, you will likely already realize that I'm well on my way on this one. I just did a Boba Fett for my brother this past weekend, I've done a few more of my stupid custom cd's, and I've got a couple of other things lined up as well that I will be beginning work on soon. It seems like I usually get back into drawing whenever I have something happen that really stresses me out, and I use it as an outlet to occupy my mind when I don't like what's going on in there. Whatever works, right? Plus while I don't ever think I'm going to be good enough to attempt to draw for money, it couldn't hurt to keep practicing and just see what I end up coming up with. I may even surprise myself.

- Get out more When I got married and had kids, going out sort of took a back seat to married life and parenting, as is the norm, or so I thought anyway. Time has told the story on that one, but what the hell, I'm different. Always have been, always will be. Anyway, I haven't been married for 3 years now, yet I'm still kind of living in that mentality. I never do anything, even on the rare occasion that I don't have my kids, I still usually sit at home. I feel like a senior citizen, and I'm only in my 30's. Part of my problem is I'm anti-social, and not because I don't like to be around people, it's because I have trouble finding anybody that I actually want to be around. Again, I'm different. I'm also socially retarded. You get me around people I don't know, and ask me to actually speak, and it's as awkward as watching a baby deer take its first steps. This will undoubtedly be the hardest of my resolutions for me to actually carry out, but as with drawing, I'm already working on this one too. I've got some outings coming up, including my very first trip to New York to visit my brother and meet up with some people that I've known for years online but have never even laid eyes on in person. So I'm pretty excited about where things are going for now. I just have to stay at it.

- Keep on writing I enjoy my stupid little blog, but have never really thought of it as "writing". I just sort talk about things the way I would if you and I were sitting on my couch, only here I'm typing. Late last year I was approached about actually writing something that would end up in a magazine, and I said I would give it a shot, but haven't because I'm a big chicken. This would actually be the second time I've chickened out of something like this, as a couple of years ago I was asked to write movie reviews for a horror website, and didn't feel like I had the ability to actually "review". I still don't. I read movie reviews at other blogs, and think, damn I just watch the movies. I don't have the skill to break them down on levels like this. The interest is there though, and I guess it always has been. I can remember writing little short stories as a kid, and wanting to write comics all through high school. Writing is something that I think I could potentially do, I just have to do it. The biggest problem is my lack of confidence, but then that comes into play in almost every single thing I do in life. I will always be my biggest critic, and as such, also my biggest obstacle to overcome. So don't be surprised to see more posts here this year that are actually honest attempts at writing, and when you do see them, for Christ's sake...be gentle.

- Get out of debt and STAY out I'm actually in way better shape that a lot of people I know, but still I could deal with some extra money every month. This single parenting thing is expensive, and as my babies get older, they're getting more and more expensive. School, Boy Scouts, sports, etc. and that's just for my son, my daughter will also be going into pre-K this year, so I know the added expense is coming and I know I need to be doing a little bit better before that time gets here. What this basically means is that I need to stop paying the minimum on my credit card, and actually get the bastard paid off for good.

- Shape up or ship out I go to the gym almost every day. I watch what I eat, I've cut back on soda, I go outside and play with my kids, and I'm still not happy with my appearance. I honestly don't think I'm every going to be truly satisfied, and that's ok as it just means that I will continue to work at it. I thought I wanted to build up some muscle, so I had been hitting the weights pretty hard, and even started taking protein shakes in the place of one meal a day, breakfast most of the time. That would've been great had it also not caused me to GAIN weight on top of the muscle. I'm thinking I should've done more to balance things out more evenly. It got to the point that I had abandoned any cardio completely, and I was doing weights at the gym then coming home and doing weight here too. I started to look like a bear with the weight I was gaining. So as of this month, I've gone back to just cardio, running, getting on the bike, etc. in the hopes that I can get back down to close to where I was, and then start over on weights, only doing things in moderation and continuing with cardio as well, alternating between the two during the week. And I'm not going to be using any sort of enhancers anymore, I'm gonna give it a shot all natural and see what kind of results I can get strictly from had work. I'll likely just finish the year out old, fat, and really tired. We'll see.

No more t-shirts Jesus Christ at the t-shirts! I have more clothes than your average teenage girl, and when you couple that with that fact that, as I mentioned above, I never go anywhere, well it becomes a little bit ridiculous. It's honestly not even about owning the clothes either, most of the things I buy, I do so because I dig the art. I've got to stop though, as it's becoming a bit of a space issue, in that I simply have no more for clothing. Last weekend I actually had to hang a rod in my utility room because my closet and dressers simply won't hold any more. I could wear a different shirt every day for most of this year without repeating. It's sad, and probably the one obsession I have that makes the least sense. I doubt I'll go cold turkey, and that's largely Fright Rags' fault, but I am going to be more picky when it comes to buying shirts, and I've got to stop looking at those damn daily tee sites.

So that's a few things that I plan on working on this year. It may not sound like much to those of you who are a bit more goal oriented, but life has pretty much beaten things like "hopes and dreams" out of  me at this point. I'm going to settle for making the life I have just a little more enjoyable, work on fixing the things that I actually can right now, and maybe when my kids get a little bit older I can start thinking about maybe going to school myself or what exactly it is I want to be when I grow up, because I still don't know.