A day late, mostly because I'd half convinced myself I wasn't going to bother. Then I see other people posting up there aims, resolutions and general intent for the year ahead and I can't resist it. It's not as negative this year, in fact, taking them as a holistic whole, it's a pretty grand set.

Become An Obsessive Note Taker

Not the biggest resolution known to man, but it's a problem I've known I've had for years and I know the solution and I never do anything about it. I have a prodigious long-term memory (for important things anyway), but a pathetic short-term memory for anything. I've lost count of the amount of nuggets, ideas, concepts, models and just stuff that enter my head and leave it at some point in the future. That's value I've lost. I did this with the personal branding. I wrote everything down that I'd done and achieved, along with hobbies, and mapped that to frameworks and transferable skills. Brilliant.

If something pops into my head I note it down. It doesn't matter how random it is. Invariably, I know it's something I should remember, a key skill of achievement in a new light, a visual idea, a model for looking at a specific problem, a sequence for a role-playing game and the issues explored. Whatever. Note. It Down. It works because it builds up momentum because what you've written down and not forgotten spins off into other things you'll not forget. I've lost count of the things I've solved with my pure genius which seems to peak between 0400 and 0600 am, or a walk over dinner. Now I won't forget them.

Sprinkle MBA Dedication Amply

In 2008, I made a resolution to adopt a strategy of time management on steroids. Though I didn't know it then, I would start the MBA in the second half of the year and time management would kick in big style. What has also happened over the last 24 months is the application of a level of dedication I've not applied to anything outside of work. Work yes, personal time, not so much. As can be appreciated, it's had fantastic rewards and has seen great results on me personally and my approach to certain objectives.

What can be achieved if I apply that level of singular dedication to other things? Okay, hard to do at the same level while still doing the MBA, but it's a mindset issue more than just a matter of pure time.

What's going to receive this dedication, it's not anything specifically, but certainly the rest of the things I mention here. It's also going to involve some aggressive time management. The plan is to be able to look back at any point in time in 2010 and see virtually zero temporal wastage. In work, I'm happiest when I'm 110% occupied, ideally weaving together multiple strands of work, all of which have a level of challenge, grandeur and achievement about them. This needs to happen in my personal life more, the MBA has it and as such it's a success.

Navigate To More Lucrative Shores

I undoubtedly entered the eye of the economic storm in late 2008, and I happened to enter it on a small, rubber dingy (a 4-man micro-company). The result, as you can imagine, wasn't good. It was a tumultuous year during which I learned a lot about myself. While getting all my work through connections previously is a great selling point, it did mean I never built up skills of selling myself effectively to people who didn't know me at all. This has now changed. The MBA, a personal branding exercise, an excavation of even further value within my experience and any murky territory with respect to selling myself, the language I was using and what I stand for, has been eradicated. While this is a continual exercise, the results have been significant.

Having secured financial revenue throughout 2010, the aim is to take things further now I'm standing on firmer ground. While the storm isn't over, it's probably safe to say I'm now in the severely choppy waters on the edge of the storm but I'm in a sturdier boat. The intention is now to navigate it to a more lucrative shore, whatever that happens to mean.

Resolve The Input Problem

There was a time when I was surrounded by gaming and genre related inputs. I lived it. Every breath I took was soaked with it. Computer Games. Role-Playing Games. Films. TV. Novels and, to a lesser degree, comics. Last, but by no means least, conventions and the synergy and fabric of them all woven together. While I'm certainly not looking to return to a pre-1996 orgy of such inputs, I do believe I have a lack of inputs problem, which in turn creates an output one. It's not coincidence that bursts of imaginative outputs coincide with periods of concentrated inputs.

One way I'm looking to address this is Mega Gaming Sunday, the aim being to do something genre and / or gaming related on Sunday afternoon. A proportion of this time will be taken up with the activities of the gaming group, currently the 4E Campaign, the weeks not doing that will be spent doing something else. Initially, this will almost certainly be computer games (a form of valid input), but I just hope to mentally grow into the space being used for that purpose and see what happens. It's in my Google Calendar for the foreseeable future, so now it's pre-destined to happen. I'm aiming for a 'force of habit' effect combined with applying MBA dedication to take me in interesting directions in the medium term.

Return To The GM'ing Chair

I've not came even close to running anything for the last 29 months. I've even resisted guest spots. A few things have changed though. I understand my gaming brand. It's big, heroic, brash and involves protagonists doing big things in exciting ways while undergoing a range of dramatic and personal crises. I understand my commitment level. I'm not going run the next 4E Campaign involving an 18+ month commitment. I'm firmly in the sporadic specials (think Doctor Who in 2009) or failing that the mini-series end of the spectrum, ideally quite intense ones. The MBA has given me God like expectations management skills. If you don't learn personal expectations management on the MBA you die a rabbit in the headlights death as things you've never done, about things you initially know nothing about, are thrown at you constantly. The 'take this all in your stride' policy can be applied to running games. I was guilty of trying too hard.

So, what, when and how? At this point I have no idea. The gaming group needs to settle into 2009. We need to finish the 4E Campaign. Possibly accommodate a model of less players, not entirely a bad thing. That's fine. It's not a grandiose return, it may end up just being a guest slot or something. It also depends on how we structure our gaming as a group post-4E. Personally, I'd be an advocate of 4-8 (average 6) session mini-series to stand a chance of getting three of them in a year (you could also come back to S2 of one after S1 of another, etc). We've done seasons (each Tier in 4E is analogous to a season) longer than that but I'm not sure the value has been much more enhanced (it's just stretched things out due to system specifics like encounter lengths and / or issues remaining in stasis for longer).

All I know is I used to enjoy it. I happen to think I was / am pretty good at it. I think my life is better for being in that chair, occasionally. We shall see what 2010 brings and build on that.

Conclusion

This was hard. I think was because there is an element of none of these resolutions being discreet. They are holistic in that their application as a whole may end up being greater than the some of their parts. It could also be I'm just shallow and had to kick a load of bollocks out of my head in order to do the obligatory early January resolutions post.

I guess I'll find out in December 2010.