40 for 40: January

 If you’ve been following my social media, you’ll know that I’ve set myself a few challenges for 2025, the year I turn 40: try to achieve some goals related to that number through the year. I’ve been posting weekly updates, but now that we’re at the end of the month, I thought I’d give a more detailed breakdown on how I’ve been getting on.

Weight

Target weight loss: 40lbs. Net total weight lost so far: 3lbs.

I’ve been trying to make a few small changes to help me lose weight, rather than throw myself into a heavy exercise and diet regime that I know I’ll never stick to. Aside from trying to achieve at least 6,000 steps per day (although I tend to lose more weight when I don’t do this than when I do,) I’ve tried – more successfully than not – to limit the amount of Coke I’ve been drinking. While I very much doubt it will stop completely, I have been trying to make sure that if I have a drink of Pepsi Max, then my next one must be either water or squash. This has helped up to a point, but as my total weight loss indicates, if I’m going to lose 40lbs, I’m going to need to be doing more. I need to take some initiative over this, because Lent doesn’t start this year until the first week in March.

Board games

Total played so far: 11.

Through a combination of various family engagements and a games night that we sometimes do around our house on roughly a monthly basis, I managed to play the following games in January:

·        Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza: An energetic card game that I’d describe as Snap turned up to 11.

·        Kingdomino: A nice board-building game using domino concepts to build the richest possible kingdom, with some risk / reward style mechanics when choosing your next piece,

·        5 Second Rule Relay: A variation on Five Second Rule, where you’re all answering the same question, and passing the baton (which counts the five seconds) to the next person after every answer,

·        Timber!: Jenga with a different name,

·        Trivial Pursuit: Family Edition: A small version of this game that Jessie got for Christmas, with the font size to prove it. I enjoyed it, but if Trivial Pursuit is a game you’re interested in, you’d be better off with one of the bigger box editions!

·        Harmonies: A lovely game about building habitats for various animals,

·        Green Team Wins: If you’ve ever played Herd Mentality, it’s that, but with the fat chewed off, and without the cow gimmicks. We really enjoyed it!

·        Zombie Dice: A good push-your-luck experience that does what it says on the tin and doesn’t outstay its welcome,

·        Poetry for Neanderthals: An amusing game about trying to describe a clue using only one-syllable words, and getting bashed with a bat if you don’t.

·        Dixit: Odyssey: I’ve now played some iteration of Dixit three times but not the copy I own. Odyssey is a good version of it, designed for larger groups and trying to find a less-than-obvious way to describe abstract art is always fun!

·        5 Second Rule… I don’t know which version this was, but it comes in a small cylindrical container that is very light on the rules. We weren’t really playing, we were just trying to answer the clues on the cards, but we enjoyed it so I’m counting it here.

Interestingly, very few of these games were the heavy “Euro” board games that I got into this hobby to play. Board games don’t always have to be battles and war, and they have a decent range of experiences! And in any case, I now own enough of them to be able to cater to almost anybody who turns up, which is always a good thing.

Gigs

Total played so far: 2

I only managed two this month; owning to recent developments in my personal circumstances that I won’t go in to here, it didn’t leave a lot of time for going out and playing gigs. But it’s always a pleasure to be able to come to my mate Richard’s open mic at the Round Oak in Wombourne when time allows! I’ve also got a regular gig at a local assisted living centre, which is a really nice thing to be able to do. But some of the people I’m still in contact with from my regular gigging days still ask me to do open mics from time to time, so who knows.

Video Games

Total beaten so far: 2

Again, there wasn’t a lot of time. And the ones that I did beat were fighting games – my stipulation for beating these is to get through to the end of the Story / Tower / Arcade mode with all the fighters. I managed that with Mortal Kombat X and Tekken 2, and had a cracking time with both, although in the case of the latter I was ready to move on by the time I reached the end.

I also spent a lot of the time I had playing WW2K24. I love wrestling games, and in the absence of GamePass or PS+, this was a game I was really excited to play;I’m thoroughly enjoying it. The wrestling is great, all the best game modes from previous editions are in it, and the create mode has got just the right amount of depth. I’m mentioning this because games like this don’t get “beaten,” in the usual sense. If I manage to get all the achievement trophies, that would be brilliant – but it’s a long-term goal at the very least, by which time I expect 2K25 will be released…

Models

Models painted so far: 0

I have made a small amount of progress on the Votann Hearthkin I was working on before Christmas. The problem is that I’ve now reached the point where I have to do a lot of shading on the models, mixing some Contrast paint with the medium and getting it into a lot of very fiddly cracks on the models. Nothing I can’t do, but it’s going to take me some time, and I rarely have a long-enough gap in my day where I can do it. I find it hard to motivate myself to start a project knowing that I’m going to have to stop before I’ve finished, which given what else is going on in my day is a virtual certainty, so the ten models I’m painting now are still awaiting their shade! Hopefully I can pick up some of my own slack next month.

40 for 40 in 2025

Happy New Year Folks!

Most of you probably know that 2025 is the year that I will turn 40 years old, and while some people have been asking me how I want to mark the occasion – a question that I am almost completely unable to answer, I don’t really do birthday parties anymore – there are some things I would like to achieve for myself based on the milestone age. 40 achievements for 40 years, within certain aspects of my life. 40 for 40, so to speak. I’ve started many of these already, as they are ongoing projects, and they are things I’m interested in doing so it’s not like I feel I have to wait until new year to make a start. I’ll be updating these on roughly a weekly basis as we’re going along, but I’ll describe them in some detail now, so you know what I’m aiming for:

Lose 40lbs.

Yeah, we know. Chance would be a fine thing. But here’s the thing: Most people who know me know that I haven’t been going in the right direction physically for years now; roughly half of my lifetime if I’m being honest with myself. Damage like that doesn’t get fixed overnight, but it does need to get fixed; my doctor warned me a couple of years ago that I need to lose weight and, while I’ve kept it around where it was, I’ve not lost any substantial amount of weight, nor keep off the weight that I lost.

Here's where I want to change it: I want to make a few small changes in my lifestyle that will mean I can drop some weight at a slow but safe rate – no point losing 40lbs in a month, as some Facebook adverts have been cheering about, if I go ahead and put it on again the week after. I’m starting off at 18st 5lbs, so if I lose all the weight I’m hoping to lose by the end of the year, I’ll be 15st 7lbs. Will I manage it? Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but any progress on this at all would be a step in the right direction.

Play 40 Board Games.

I have a stack of board games in my spare room that, yes, do get played, but not often enough. Over the next year I would like to play at least 40 different board games with friends, family, and people who I meet out and about in gaming shops and conventions. It doesn’t matter what the game is – board games, card games, table-top roleplaying games or war games – or even whether I own the game in question. But I’m only allowed to count each game once.

Can I do it? Quite possibly, yes. This year, I managed 42 different board games, and I didn’t even count my Dungeons and Dragons campaign that wrapped up in May, or the two games of Warhammer 40K I managed to play. It will depend a lot on the UK Games Expo, where I try lots of different games. Either way, it will be a laugh finding out how many different games I’ll get to play.

Do 40 Gigs.

I’ve not been hugely active on the music scene over the last few years, mainly due to work and childcare commitments, but it would be great to get back out and do some more shows. I’m thinking small, here – most of the ones I sort out for myself will be some sort of open mic, as none of the bands I’m currently in are particularly busy or even active. But I’ve got a gig at a local residential care home that I’m hoping to take into the mid-long term, I’ll hopefully manage a few shows with Sam Draisey and the Revolt, The Fakes if we can manage it, and all the shows that I do for work - there's usually around seven or eight of these per year.

Is this achievable? Well, if I keep an eye on what open mics are around, and when, I reckon it is, but I’ll need to be on it for the year to get up to 40. As other commitments get in the way of me being able to go out and do a gig or open mic whenever I feel like it, some forward planning may be needed here!

Beat 40 Video Games.

I like video games. I’ve always liked video games, and always will. I’ve got a huge backlog of games I need to play through and hopefully beat, but doing this will be a challenge for me – I average out at about 12 a year, so I’m going to need to put some effort in to beat more than that!

For this reason, I think I’m going to be getting a lot more use out of my Switch this year. I’ve been playing a lot of games on Nintendo Switch Online that were originally released for the NES, SNES and Gameboy, and while those games are usually quite hard, they are also often quite a bit shorter than their contemporary counterparts. So, I imagine I will beat some of those, which will make up some of the numbers to offset the long-form Role-Playing Games and Strategy games that I play for most of the rest of the time. Also, I’m going to allow myself some free passes here: I don’t have to play the game from the start, and I’m allowed to come back to old save files. Also, I am allowed to play through games that I’ve beaten before, because in most cases, I beat them years ago, and if they’re enjoyable enough to come back to, then they’re worth my time to attempt to beat again. This is my insurance against the fact that I’m almost certainly going to want to play XCOM: Enemy Unknown again at some point.

Will I beat them all? Er… well, we’ll see. Let’s hope so.

Paint 40 Models

This is probably going to be the easiest target to achieve, because I tend to paint in batches of five or ten models at a time. I’m also allowed to come back to ongoing projects – the aim is to get them done, after all. I’ll probably paint 40 models and then some, so this is a challenge I’ll likely put to bed quite quickly.

Can I paint 40 models? Almost certainly.

There are some other things I want to achieve for the year:

I’d love to get a band going that writes and performs original material. Since I first picked up the bass guitar, my aim was to be in a band where I’d made some significant contribution to the music that the band is making, and while I’m long past the point of being able to make any substantial amount of money doing this, I might try doing it for fun – certainly, at this point in my life, it would be a massive achievement!

Also, I’d like to do another Dungeons and Dragons game. This year saw the end of my Tomb of Annihilation campaign, and while the ending was somewhat bittersweet (two of the players dropped it for life-getting-in-the-way reasons,) I have missed running the game since then. It would even be nice to play every now and then!

Unfortunately, there are barriers getting in the way of both of those things, mostly stemming from the fact that they rely on other people to make it happen, and most of my contemporaries live very busy lives. Asking people to drop everything at a certain point every week for what is essentially someone’s hobby is a fairly big ask, and experience has taught me that it isn’t something I can necessarily rely upon, nor should I expect to be able to. That is why I’ve stuck to challenges for the year that I can accomplish by myself.

I’ll keep everyone updated with my progress on my social media sites, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter.) Not YouTube, though. I may upload some videos if I feel like it but doing that in any kind of structured format is something that I’m going to need a lot more time to do than I really have! Hopefully, by the end of the year, I’ll have achieved some – if not all – of my goals. If not, well, hopefully I’ll have had some new experiences and achieved some things along the way.