2018

The start of a new year is always a good time to try and cultivate new and/or better habits.

Having finally switched computers, hosting platforms, houses, marital status (unmarried & co-habitating in a nice apartment to married in our own house) I’ve kicked the tires here and gotten a publishing workflow set up again.

The last time I was writing here in the opening weeks of 2015, I was still in my 20s and full of misplaced ambition that I would write here once a week. I did pretty well in January I have to say, but like many a New Year’s resolution, it fell off and wasn’t sustainable.

In 2018, I’m going to write here when I can, as I’d like to and on topics that happen at that moment of be of interest but are unlikely to stray very far from history, science fiction, home cooking and perhaps rockets.

I’m working on this draft again, started on the 2nd and continuing here on a quiet Sunday morning. Chessie and I drove down to Albany and did a bunch of errands, returned some things, exchanged some others. I got some new kitchen tools, a new phone case.

I’ve been committed to budgeting more carefully this year. Not just this week or this month but for the long term.

  • Financial Goals 2018:
    • Build up a month’s expenses in our main checking account: stop living paycheck to paycheck.
    • Add at least 15% to out savings.
    • Pay off at least half the outstanding balances on our credit cards & debts.

If we can manage all of those things, or really just keep our eye on the ball more I think a little constant attention will yeild a better, more stable and less stressful tinge to our finances.

In other areas I’d like to continue to work toward getting our home settled, making it a peaceful, relaxing space for both of us and our friends. With the help of my Mom and step-dad we painted two rooms in the house: the living room and dining room and we bought some new furniture from IKEA toward the end of 2017. Those things all put together will mean that two more rooms in the house will be a lot closer to feeling finished. We’ve got a fair amount of paint leftover, so I think some door trim and a hallway or two will be getting painted in 2018, along with the trim on the exterior of the house.

I’ve spent most of the time I might have writing this post getting Jekyll up and running, but I think I’ve nearly got it working 100% on my main office desktop computer, and hope to also get something working well enough on my little amazon tablet. (Though I ought to just set up a VPN into this machine here at home since I always leave it on, instead of running an entire different mobile environment for writing & website deployment.)