2022 Resolutions Retrospective

Friday, December 30, 2022

It may not have been my intention, but these resolution articles have really showcased that I am absolutely horrible at predicting where the world is heading for the coming year.

I was so sure that Ontario was going to be in lockdown for at least six months. In reality, we were essentially back to "normal" in May and by September you wouldn't be faulted if you didn't realize that a pandemic had ever occurred. Based on what I've seen in Canada and my trips to the US, the pandemic is officially over. I know that is not what a lot of people want to hear and I am by no means recommending everyone throw caution to the wind. But with the troubles in the market and the skyrocketing interest rates, fretting over masks and vaccines seems to have taken a back seat.

So with that upbeat mentality let's go over my resolutions for 2022.

1. ✅ Beat Final Fantasy VI

I started playing the Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster via Steam in late April and beat it by early May. It took a little over 40 hours of playtime and I streamed the whole thing to Twitch. I also recorded the entire playthrough locally so I can say I'll be able to go back and look at it but we all know that will never happen.

If you'd like to read my thoughts on the game check out my April retrospective or my game of the year article.

2. 🙅🏻‍♂️ Take chess lessons

This is the resolution that I regret the most. I played 522 games of chess between January 1st and August 31st and yet I still do not believe it made me a better chess player. I continued to use the same openings that I was comfortable with and bounced around the same rating I had to start the year.

The whole point of this resolution was that I had acknowledged this shortcoming in my game and I knew a teacher could help me address it. But I just kept making excuses for trying to find one. At first it was "we're in a pandemic I'm not going to be able to find anyone to teach me" and then as I began to burn out on chess it became "I hate this game and there is no way I can improve" which are both bald-faced lies.

A single step towards completing this resolution probably would had an inordinate effect on how much I enjoyed chess and yet I could not convince myself to do it.

That is why I regret this resolution the most. In my heart of hearts chess is an entertaining game that I do want to play more of. But if I do not enjoying playing randos on the Internet why do I keep doing it?

3. 🙅🏻‍♂️ Play 12 games on Apple Arcade

This was easily the worst resolution I made this year. Every attempt to complete it just resulted in more pain. Apple Arcade is an absolute wasteland, at least in terms of the type of games I like to play. While I somehow managed to find 10 games, I discarded at least 50 just by looking at their poor App Store descriptions. These games are "free" with an Apple Arcade subscription and yet I still could not be convinced to give them 15 minutes of my time.

It feels like 90% of the games on Apple Arcade are either complete throwaway titles or horrible mobile ports from big publishers such as Football Manager 2023 Touch or NBA 2K23 Arcade Edition. The only game I really enjoyed was Dead Cells+ and that was a game that already existed on iOS and Apple just paid for exclusivity rights.

One thing I have come to realize is these resolutions that try to get me to play X number of games just never work. Going forward if I'm going to set any video game resolutions it is going to be to beat a specific game from my backlog that I absolutely believe is worth playing.

4. ✅ Spend 10 nights in a hotel

When I wrote this resolution I was so convinced that I would not be able to leave Canada in 2022. Places like Banff or Vancouver would be my only way to escape Toronto. Thankfully my pessimism was proven grossly incorrect and America was essentially open to all Canadians from May onwards.

I spent a week in Los Angeles visiting some friends and a week on the beautiful island of Oahu.

I hope 2023 brings a return to international travel for me with places like Japan, France, Scotland, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Iceland on the docket.

5. 🙅🏻‍♂️ Program something that is visible to the public

There really isn't anything to write here other than the prototypical excuse of when I finished work late every night the last thing I found myself wanting to do was program. I wish I had a better excuse but there really is no sugar coating it.

6. ✅ Read 20 books

I read 24 books this year beating the record I set last year, and read over 8700 pages which is still far from my record of 10,000 set in 2020.

If I had to call out a couple books to recommend someone read I would pick the Mistborn Era Two series, Band of Brothers, Tokyo Vice, Red Notice, and Into Thin Air.

Conclusions

This has been the sixth year that I have published these resolutions to my blog and after looking back at them all I am honestly not really sure what they were supposed to accomplish. The idea was that resolutions would help encourage good behaviour throughout the year but in practice that does not happen. The majority of my resolutions I either end up ignoring or completely forgetting about. Heck even the ones I complete happen almost by accident because I innately want to complete them, such as reading or playing video games.

As I said at the beginning of this retrospective, I have proven myself utterly incapable of being able to predict the coming year. So I think for 2023 I am going to skip making any resolutions. My pessimism is probably at an all-time high and I do not believe that 2023 is going to be any better than 2022. So rather than waste my time waxing poetically about what I wish I could do, I am going to focus each and every month on what I know I can do.

#Resolutions