If you're not part of the resolution, you're part of the reprecipitate

There were really two (or maybe three) big project-style pop resolutions I made for 2012. That theoretical third aspiration was simply to post as much as possible on the blog, and hopefully exceed 250 posts for the year, setting a new high-water mark for myself. I may or may not have posted as much as possible, depending on how one quantifies possibilities, but the fact is I fell a bit short of a record-setting number of posts.

The two main resolutions, in addition to being things I wanted to accomplish in and of themselves, helped me along in my blogging quest by providing fodder for post content (again, in theory). Those resolutions were (1) to re-read the constituent books of three fantasy series, The Kingkiller Chronicles (two volumes published so far), The Dark Tower (eight volumes published, including the newest one in February of ’12), and A Song of Ice and Fire (five volumes published so far); and (2) to watch and review 20 of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die for the Blog Club of the same name.

The 1001 Movies Blog Club endeavor was an unqualified success; I actually reviewed 25 films from the master list and shared them via the Club portal. When I decided to sign up for the Club last January I wasn’t sure if I could keep up for a whole year (and technically I was dead right about that, as the Club tears through 52 movies a year) but I found it really enjoyable to do so, and I don’t see myself leaving off the project any time soon (paternity leave notwithstanding). Of course, at the rate of 25 movies per year, it would take me decades to get through the remainder of the flicks I haven’t seen; longer than you’d think, actually, because revised editions of the eponymous book come out every year and add anywhere from eight to thirteen new movies, which bump off other movies to keep the total at 1001 but the hardcores of the Blog Club keep a super-master all-inclusive list which stands today at 1103 entries. But, it’s the journey, not the destination, and it’s an entertaining and edifying one at that. Plus, it’s essentially absorbed my usual “watch 12 Netflix movies to justify my yearly subscription” resolution, so there’s that.

My epic re-reads, on the other hand, did not pan out exactly as planned. The Kingkiller Chronicles segment, obviously, was the easiest and didn’t pose any problems. The Dark Tower ended up taking much longer than expected, with various delays and distractions spreading it out across most of the year, but I did get the entire series read, and found the whole saga more enjoyable the second time around, to boot. (I probably owe the entire experience a full post of its own, which may be in the offing.) I didn’t touch A Song of Ice and Fire, unless you count physically carrying the first two books upstairs from my basement library and handing them to my wife, after we watched the first season of Game of Thrones together and she was hankering for more. But the delay on re-reading George R.R. Martin’s magnum opus turns out to be a blessing in disguise: originally I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the first four books I had already read once so that I could then continue into the fifth volume when it came out in paperback. Except that A Dance With Dragons never did come out in paperback in 2012, and at this point its publication in that format is expected in late May of 2013. I’m content to roll over some of last year’s best intentions as one of this year’s to-do’s, and hopefully this time everything will align properly (either that or I’ll end of buying the book twice, once on my Kindle to finally read it and again in the same format that will match the first four installments’ editions on my bookshelf).

So it was a year of modest ambition and modest success; I could have striven for more, but I could have wound up accomplishing less, too. Will this year be more of the same? I haven’t completely settled on what I’ll be aiming for, so it’s entirely too early to say. But one way or the other I expect to be talking about it here in about twelve months or so, assuming teh interwebs as we know them continue to exist in 2014. Time will tell!