So I’m making two this year. I held off sharing them because one of them was impacted by the steam sale that’s ending today.

My first resolution: no beer in January, with an option to extend it through the end of March if it has the effect I hope it does on my weight. Basically, doing what workouts I can has allowed me to get to 170 and more or less keep it there, but no lower. I’m not able to bring more activity into my life with a toddler and baby in the house, but I can experiment with my diet, so I’m going to forgo 300+ calories of delicious beer for a while to see if it works. So far the signs are promising. The goal is to get to 165 if I can. If I do on this no beer diet, I’ll assess next steps at that point. If at the end of January it hasn’t worked, back comes the beer 😉

My second resolution has two parts. First,  no buying of videogames until April 1, with 2 exceptions. The first I mentioned – I waited until the end of the Steam sale, and I did buy a bunch of stuff on sale in the first week of January. The second is that I pre-ordered Nuni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch as a Birthday present for myself. Studio Ghibli teaming up with a Japanese game producer to make the jrpg of this generation (maybe…Xenoblade certainly makes a play for the same honor…I’ll draw my own conlusions after I’ve played both) was something I could not resist, nor risk allowing it to go out of print and become ridiculously expensive/out of my reach. The second resolution comes about because my game buying habit has become ridiculous. I have a backlog so long that I could play games all year and not finish all the ones sitting unfinished on my shelf and various hard drives. I’m going to stop buying them for a while, play what I have, and see how things go. The second part of the resolution extends through the whole year: after March, I cannot buy a new game until I have finished one I already have. This year I’m going to try and bring balance to this. We’ll see how it goes.

To help things along, and to make this fun, I’m going to use a trick I learned back when I was trying to quit smoking. I’m going to take the money I would have spent on beer and games and stick it in a jar, then use it to buy something fun for myself or the family once enough has accumulated. I’ve decided that amounts to $30 a week. I haven’t yet decided what I’ll spend the loot on, but I’ll report back here once I have.

Bonus content since I can’t resist hyping Nuni No Kuni – some footage: