All right, 2015, it's just YOU and ME!!!

I don't much do "resolutions", because it always seems slightly unrealistic to suddenly expect to adopt an entirely new approach to life or something based merely on the flipping of a calendar page. I do, though, set goals. Here are mine for this year:

1. Watch 26 movies that I've never seen before. I have a few titles in mind, but others will be things I find along the way. (And I won't count Avengers II or Star Wars VII among them.) I feel I need to broaden my cinematic horizons a bit. Twenty-six movies is one movie every two weeks, which given my schedule should be doable! I'll track these on the blog, somehow.

2. Read 52 books. That might be a bit on the ambitious side, given that I'm not the fastest reader and some of the books I really want to read are dootstoppers, but we'll see. Some books I'll fly through, whilst others will take longer, so we'll see.

2a. Half of my fiction reading will consist of independently published books. This is important to me, both as an indie author and as a reader in general. There does seem to be a still-existent, if slowly-weakening, stigma against independently published writing, which seems more and more strange to me. We love independent musicians and independent film makers and independent comics creators, so why not love independent authors? More and more I'm of the view that a publishing contract should no more be an indicator of an author's quality than a recording contract should be of a musician's.

3. Read 24 short stories. I never read enough short fiction, so I want to get back to doing that. I own a lot of short fiction collections and I can find a lot more online.

3a. I may do this, actually (I just saw this on Facebook):

4. Rewatch Cosmos (the Carl Sagan original) and then the Neil DeGrasse Tyson follow-up. I meant to do this in 2014 and didn't get around to it.

5. Do more cooking, learn to cook more things. There's no reason not to. This is a continual goal of mine, and every year I do make some strides in the kitchen. This year I want to figure out gluten-free fried chicken, if nothing else!

6. Listen to more music. I'm not quantifying this, I'm just doing it.

7. Erect shelving in my library closet and create my "Archive" in there. I need to get my CDs organized, likely into binders. I also need to rip more of my CDs to the computer and uploaded to Google Music.

8. Hang the new light fixture above our kitchen sink. The fact that this item is number 8 on this list is not indicative of how important this one is; I'll be getting this done before the 18th of this month!

9. Finish moving in! If nothing else, the Living Room Box Pile must go.

And these aren't even my writing goals (you can read about those on the official site)! Wow!