40 for 40: December

 And so, we have come to the end of my 40 for 40 journey! Some goals I achieved, and some I didn’t, but I learned a lot a long the way so let’s have a look at the final scores:

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 233lbs. Weight lost this month: -1lbs. Overall weight lost: 24lbs.

I’ve managed to lose 24lbs for the year. Was it the 40 I was hoping for? No. But by any measurable standard, it’s progress. The most I got my weight down to was 230lbs – that was back in July – and since then, I’ve managed to keep my weight somewhere between 230lbs and 235lbs. The big push, of course, was Lent – that was when I lost most of the weight; the six weeks or so I give myself to do that was a major factor, it always is. But this year, I did a much better job of keeping it off – by this point in the year I’ve put it all back on again.

I guess the main thing I’ve learned over the last year is that keeping a weekly record of my weight is no bad thing at all: It does a good job of letting me know when I’m slipping, and when I need to “reign it in,” so to speak. It’s a journey that I’m hoping to continue into next year, so we’ll see how that goes!

Board Games

This month: 1. Final total: 54

My brother received The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9 for Christmas, and on Boxing Day we opened it up and gave it a go. It’s a really interesting take on the trick-taking mechanics of games like Hearts, by making it into a co-op game with limited information. We played it with Kirsty and enjoyed it; I’d love to play the campaign through!

Of all the 40 for 40 goals, board games was the one that I had the most confidence I would succeed. There were two major factors in this: The UK Games Expo is, as ever, a fine place to try games we’d never even have thought of playing, and I managed quite a few over that weekend! Also, Kirsty has been organising fairly regular games nights with the usual crowd, which is where a lot of my games get played. In addition to this, as Jessie is getting older, her ability to find her way around slightly more complicated games is improving, so she’s able to participate more regularly as well!

What I’ve learned – and this isn’t necessarily relevant to 40 for 40, but anyway – is more of a developmental thing, really; I have a much clearer idea of what people like and enjoy with board games. I have become much better at reading the room, and understanding what people like and what they don’t. With that information, we can usually get a good session in with games that work for everyone!

Gigs

This month: 3. Final total: 33

Ooh, not quite!

The three gigs I played this month were all for work – a Christmas Concert at Stourbridge Town Hall, the Mayor’s Christmas Concert at Dudley Town Hall, and a live-streamed Carol service from Cable Plaza. I was, in some capacity or another, on bass for all three, and they’ve become as much a part of Christmas for me as putting up the tree!

To achieve this goal, I was going to have to go out and play open mics a lot more than I eventually did. Sadly, I’m not at the point in my life where I can go out and play an open mic whenever I feel like it; whether because I’m on my own with Jessie, or because many of the open mics are on Tuesdays which are extremely long days for me anyway, or because a lot of open mics are now monthly rather than weekly meaning that if I miss one, I miss it – ultimately I didn’t manage to go to as many of them as I’d have needed to in order to achieve this goal.

Of the gigs I have done, a lot more of them were pre-arranged – whether that was the assisted living centre I performed at for the first part of the year, the run of shows we did for Live Music in Dudley over the summer, the various concerts, and the few gigs a year I do with Sam Draisey and the Revolt. In order to get more gigs, I’m going to have to arrange some more, i.e., commit to them ahead of time. I’ve just joined Blanco Negra, and we’ve got a few gigs lined up for next year. I’m really enjoying that band at the moment – it’s playing original music and I have some influence on the development of the songs, which I don’t take for granted. For the first time in a long time, attempting to improve on music doesn’t feel like chasing a dream I should have given up on decades ago!

I’m also going to try some solo acoustic gigs around the area; I’ve bought a speaker for that purpose and putting those commitments in might mean I get a lot more gigs done next year.

Video Games

This month: 0. Final total: 19

I’ve barely managed to play any games over the last few weeks, much less beat them!

This goal was always going to be a tall order. As I said at the outset of all of this, many of the games I enjoy are long-form strategy games or role-playing games, which take a lot of time and commitment to beat! Looking back through the games I’ve beaten this year, I haven’t actually beaten a single game in either genre – I made some headway with certain games, but never quite reaching the end of them.

I started keeping track of games I was buying and beating in 2014 – the original No Game New Year, for those of you who remember. I beat 19 games this year: by far the largest number of games I’ve ever beaten in a year, and certainly the first time since 2014 I managed to beat more games than I bought. Granted, many of those games were from online subscription services, but I’ve enjoyed them – and that is important because video games are something that I ultimately play for my own enjoyment; I’m not expecting anybody else to be invested in which games I have or haven’t beaten!

Models Painted

This month: 0. Final total: 70

This seems to have ground to a halt over the last couple of months, but I achieved the goal long before that. I’ve had a fine old time painting a wide variety of models, and I’ve even started an Instagram page where I’m putting up pictures of models I’ve painted, past and present. I think what slows me down – and I really ought to have seen this coming – is attempting to paint too many models at once. Squads of ten or more models, entire Blood Bowl teams; I batch-paint my models so that they’re painted more quickly, and while that certainly gets more done than if I’d painted them one at a time, putting even one colour on my models is a big job which takes a fairly decent amount of time. Over the last few months, it’s time that I just don’t have.

I’ve got away with it in the past with the Tyranids as the bulk of my models are the same colour, which isn’t usual for Tyranids but I quite like it. I think in future, I’ll have to stick to 5-6 models at a time, even if it is a Blood-Bowl Team or Necromunda gang – I’m just not getting anywhere when I have to find hours at a time to commit to a single colour!

This all sounds quite negative but I’m pleased that I’ve achieved my goal, and then some. Wargaming is a hobby that has been a huge part of my life for most of the last 30 years, which includes many of the trappings that come with it, like a huge backlog of unbuilt / unpainted models and while I may never get to the end of my so-called “pile of shame,” it is always gratifying to at least make a dent in it.

This also brings the 40 for 40 updates to an end. Of course, I’m going to carry on with what I’ve started this year, but I won’t do weekly updates as I have been doing. All good things must come to an end! I have some goals in mind for next year, and these are more personal to me than arbitrarily designated numbers of things I must achieve based on my age, so I’ll have to think very carefully about how I document them, if at all.

But for my 40^th year specifically, I’m pleased with what I achieved. Whether I achieved the goal I set for myself or not, the point is: I did it.