My 2020 Blog Resolutions: Check-In #2

Every two months, I hope to do a New Year's Resolution Check-In here on the blog.  By doing so, I hope to keep myself on track for my goals (and in some cases, maybe remind myself of what it is that I promised myself that I'd do in 2020)!  Of course, the real world has thrown most (all?) of us a bunch of curve balls over the past few months but I figured a check-in was still a good idea even if I won't be too hard on myself for lack of meaningful progress on plenty of the goals!

#1:  Barry Larkin Collection

The goal is to get 775 Barry Larkin posts by the end of 2020.  As of the end of February, I was at 724 Larkin cards.  Now?  I'm up to 740 which is a gain of 16 more blog posts.  With eight months remaining in the year, I need to average just over 4 Larkin posts per month (or about one per week).  That's certainly doable (especially since I still have a bunch of Barry Larkin cards scanned that I haven't yet written about - it's the scanning, sorting, and paging that takes me the longest)!

#2:  Blog Trading

Trading is the biggest reason that I keep returning to my blog day after day.  Admittedly, I knew that trading would be slower this year (especially for the first half of the year) because I wasn't planning on buying any new product until Allen & Ginter's release in the summer.  So far, other than joining in a single group break I have stuck to my guns and not bought any other new baseball cards.  I did make an order on COMC but that was to fill some set needs (more on that in a moment) so I'm pleased with my (lack of) spending.  Amazingly enough, my lack of new inventory hasn't exactly stopped me from trading...it probably helps that I've also been slowly reorganizing my collection and finding "new" trade bait but still, it feels good to trade.  As of now, I'm sitting at 21 trades (my last check-in had me at about 10 packages so I'm still on track for my goal of 50 completed trades by the end of the year).

#3:  The Want List

My biggest goal of 2020 is to further whittle down my want list.  In particular, the goal is take the list at the start of 2020 (which had 99 different sets on it) and get that down to 90 sets or fewer.  I did make a rather large COMC order that will help me out...but with Covid-19 slowing everything down it's now been over a month since I ordered the cards and it doesn't appear I'll be getting them any time soon.  Even without that order, I have managed to knock off two sets from my want list this year including a doozy:  my 1889 original Allen & Ginter fish set is completed!  In addition, I had already completed one other set by the end of the first check-in so my want list now sits at 97 total sets. 

#4:  The Great Reorganization

I've sorted through all but the cards numbered 100-200 for my non-Reds Frankenset so that's nearly complete.  My table that I wanted to get cleared off has had a few things removed and sorted but by and large its still a disaster area.  Finally, I wanted to construct a list of every set that I've actually completed to date and that hasn't happened yet either (though I have gone through a bunch of my Allen & Ginter insert sets...but more on that in a day or two)!

#5:  The LEGO Blog

My goal here is to have at least 36 posts (or 3 posts per month) on my LEGO blog.  To date, I'm sitting at 11 posts which means I'm almost on pace to reach my goal. 

#6:  Reading

I kept the same reading goal as I had in 2019:  read 12 different books.  As of the end of April I've only read two books plus I'm 30% of the way through a third book.  Clearly, I'm behind pace here a bit but maybe I can make up some ground once summer (and summer weather) gets here.

#7:  Teaching

My original goal was to work on my Introduction to Robotics with LEGO course that I'll be teaching for the first time in the fall.  That hit a major roadblock with Covid-19...instead all of my teaching focus has been shifted to turning my in-class math classes to online math classes from spring break onward.  Overall, the shift worked out a lot better than I had originally feared - but it was time consuming and frankly, I haven't had the energy or ambition to work on any other courses.  This is definitely going to be a summer project.

#8:  Woodworking

Nothing to report here, it's still been too cold to work in my garage.  Maybe (hopefully?) by my next update I'll have something to say of interest.

And that does it for my 2020 Resolutions.  All things considered, I'm not mad about where I'm at given the turmoil of the past few months.  I also won't be too angry at the end of the year if I don't actually meet all eight goals...that was a lot even in the best of times and 2020 has certainly not been the best of times (to put it mildly).