I guess I'm just gonna do this on my birthday from now on rather than anywhere remotely near the first of the month? That's how it's been shaking out for a while, I guess? Sure!

Nothing new to add to AO today; I decided to just relax for my special day rather than scramble to get some frivolous project or other done because I am The Best at remembering deadlines. I do have plans, though! Plenty of stuff I'd like to see happen this year, ideas and concentration willing. Let's see...

  • Read at least one new fanfic a month. Recs are, as always, appreciated. Speaking of which, I really need to get around to updating the fic recs page but until I do please go read Arbitrary Execution it's amazing.
  • Finish one of the secret projects + keep playing with porygonfindsskitty. I've lost interest in one of the two secret project ideas, but I definitely still want to do the other, and I want to work on more coding and tool/game development projects in general. Gettin' kinda rusty over here, heh.
  • Do another thing with Arilterra. This was possibly the only 2017 goal I actually met! Now if only I could do more of it, eh? I do have... an idea? Could possibly work as a fanfic or maybe another text adventure. One that's possibly actually an adventure, even, instead of two minutes of an obnoxious pointy-eared teenager complaining about having to do his job. Astonishing!
  • Get back to updating the Phoenixdex at least once a month. (I guess excepting this month, oops.) Part of the reason for the earlier slowdowns was me wanting to wait until Sun and Moon came out before committing to anything, and technically there's a chance of that happening again thanks to the nebulous "Pokémon Switch" due to be announced sometime this year. All the same, I've still got plenty of ideas stuffed into my head that need to be dealt with. EDIT: Actually, I think I'm gonna have to take this one back. I'd like to keep working on the Phoenixdex, but this one doesn't usually work out for me, and I need to get better about not "forcing" myself to do frankly optional things if I'm not feeling up to it. There will definitely be new fakemon this year, and hopefully other stuff! Just not monthly, unless it happens to shake out that way anyhow.
  • Churn through the video game backlog, etc., etc.. Getting a Switch definitely helped with this and didn't contribute to the problem at all, no sir it did not. We'll see if anything comes of whatever I play this year, anyway.

There are dozens of things I want to do, honestly, and some that I even have some groundwork for, but reading more + coding more + fakemonning more + getting this fantasy garbage out of my head are the things that I suppose I'm most interested in plugging away at long-term, so there we are. Wish me luck, then, and good luck and good habits to anyone else out there who bothers with this silly tradition. Happy new year!