todo for 2014
Huh. It looks like I haven’t written a todo list for the year since 2008. I don’t know whether I wish I had, but I’m a bit surprised. I’m going to list some things from my lists 2005-2008 that I did not accomplish and start there.
write more prose and/or poetry
I keep meaning to write more, and I don’t. In 2013, I wrote 145 opening sentences as part of my daily routine, but that’s less a success than it is a reminder of how easy it is to produce an opening sentence to keep that Daily Practice streak going. I need to find some other set of assignments to do, and actually do them.
I’ve also changed my Daily Practice goal to give me a larger set of exercises to do, including writing synopses for things to try writing later. Then later, I hope to make a second goal for trying to flesh out some of those ideas.
write a Cocoa application
I just didn’t do it. I need to find a project that’s doable. I think what I want to do is instead first work on a little web service I have been wanting to tackle. Then I can write a client as a Cocoa project. Like a number of other project ideas, I think part of what blocks me is solitude. I’d like to work on these projects with someone, for motivation, for company, and for second opinions. I just don’t have anybody local who’s interested, and doing this sort of thing remotely can be harder to sort out.
write more programs for fun
I spent a lot of time dealing with maintaining code that, for my purposes, already works. I want to spend less time doing this. I’ve been doing a good job at doing parts of it steadily, which hopefully means I can keep up with the existing work, but I don’t want to do more. If anything, I want to do less. Handling feature requests for a bunch of features that you don’t need isn’t very interesting, but on the other hand just accepting anything without regard for its impact on design quality isn’t any good, either.
Instead of spending more time on existing working code, I want to write more new (presumably pretty broken) code. I have a ton of ideas for things to do, and I just need to set aside the time to do it — but see above, regarding solitude.
spend more time with friends
I tend to go out for a beer with a friend only once every few months. This seems ridiculous. I also have a growing collection of unplayed board games. I just need to make more of an effort.
get my driver’s license
Yeah.
cook and bake more often
I’ve gotten pretty good at making pancakes and fried eggs, and that’s it. I want to keep working on the basics, and Martha likes helping, so I need to get her more involved in helping pick projects, and then doing them. I don’t know what we should try next, though. Maybe roasts.