My 2023 Blog Resolutions: We are Nearly Halfway Through the Year!

For most of my blog's lifetime, I've posted New Year's Resolutions that typically have a heavy emphasis on my card collection (and my blog itself).  For 2023, I posted eight different resolutions and as we are now approaching the halfway point of the year, let's see how much progress I've made on what I said I'd do back at the start of the year!

1.  The Want List

My goal for 2023 is to get the want list down to 40 or fewer different sets by the time we switch the calendar over to 2024.  As it stands currently, my want list has 36 sets on it which means I've reached my goal!  However, I can't celebrate too much yet as there will probably be some 2023 releases that make their way onto my want list (looking at you, Allen & Ginter)!  Therefore, it'd be good for me to continue to whittle down the want list over the next few months in preparation for Ginter's eventual release.  That said, I have to give myself an A for this resolution goal thus far!

2.  The Great Reorganization

Ah yes, this pesky goal that I never, ever seem to make much progress on (even when I do make progress, it feels like it's one step forward, three steps backwards most of the time)!   While I've had this particular goal on my resolution list for several years running, this year I decided to try and specify a few specific goals within the reorganization umbrella.  For 2023, those goals are:

1. Finish uploading my Barry Larkin Collection into TCDB through 2022.  Once I (finally) get caught up, the long-running goal will be to complete the previous year's worth of Larkin cards during the following year.
2. Clear off my card table, even if only for a day.
3. Clear off my TV stand (it's also full of cards and it's been driving me nuts for awhile now)
4. Get my card collection to fit within my four stacked bookshelves.  

So far, I can honestly say that I'm failing all four goals.  My Barry Larkin Collection is updated through 2020 only - and the year 2021 has a ton of Larkin cards so I've been putting off working on that for months now.  My card table probably has more cards on it currently than it did when I wrote my resolutions in January.  My TV stand is best not mentioned at all right now.  Finally, my card collection is growing, not shrinking, which means those bookshelves are overburdened still.  In essence, this is about as low of an F grade as I can give myself!

3.  Reading

I've still read exactly zero books to completion in 2023.  I have a few books that I've started but I simply haven't had the time (or ambition, to be honest) to read much lately.  The goal for the year is to read five books so it's still attainable but not if I don't actually, you know, read something soon!  This is another F for my report card.

4.  Video Games

Yes, I put video games as a goal for 2023.  Video games have long been a hobby of mine but basically ever since my son was born I haven't played much at all.  My goal is to "finish" two different video games which I probably won't actually end up doing but I have played a tiny bit of Skyrim on my PS4 (a new save file) and my brother and I occasionally fire up Fortnite to play together.  What I really need to do is get back to playing games on my Switch - I've played through most of the MarioKart single player stuff so maybe I could count that as a game "completed" (or I can once I earn 3 stars on the last few cups).  For now, this resolution gets a D.

5.  Disc Golf

My specific goals here were to:

• Throw over 300 feet consistently off the tee pad
• Throw a round of par (or better) on the course I play the most
• Play on at least two new-to-me courses this year

So far in 2023, I still don't throw 300 feet consistently.  I did almost finish a round at par on the main course I play (I ended up +1 after admittedly choking a bit on the final hole).  Finally, I haven't played any new-to-me courses yet this year.  This goal also gets a D thus far.

6.  My LEGO Blog

The goal for my LEGO blog is to publish 36 posts for the year (aka average three posts per month).  Through today, I've published only eight posts (though I do have another post that should be up on Monday of this coming week).  I'm well behind my ideal pace but with summer here I should have some more time to dedicate to the blog and hopefully I'll pump out more content than I was during the semester.  For now, this goal gets a C-.

7.  Nachos Grande Specific Goals

Another list of things to accomplish:

• Get my Discord channel up and running (including running most group breaks over on Discord)
• Figure out streaming to Discord
• Do voting for blog of the year, card of the year, set of the year, again (ideally starting in November)
• Do another round of Not-So-Secret Santa (I've got some awesome returns from that to show off soon)!
• Get the blog more noticed
• Grow my Discord channel to at least 75 people
• Figure out Patreon and get at least 2 people as Patrons

Let's see.  The Discord is up and running though I don't stream directly to Discord I do post links to the live feed for my breaks so I'll give myself credit for the first two goals.  The third isn't something I can do until closer to the end of the year.  Same with the Not-So-Secret Santa idea.  Get the blog noticed was kind of a vague goal, not sure that I managed to do that much yet.  The Discord is sitting somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-80 people I think so that's good. And finally, I haven't done much at all with Patreon other than sign up (nothing is active yet).

Overall, for now I'd give myself a B- though that grade could fluctuate wildly depending on how those middle goals go later this year!  By the way, if you haven't yet joined my baseball card centered Discord channel, I invite you to do so (if the link doesn't work, let me know and I can send you a personal invite)!

8.  Trading

The goal for 2023 was to complete 50 different trades.  As of today, I'm at 61 trades for the year so this get a big A grade!  That being said, trading has become much more difficult lately as my want list (see the first goal) continues to shrink down.  

So, through a bit over five full months my Blog Resolution report card looks like this:

• A
• F
• F
• D
• D
• C-
• B-
• A

I guess it's good I'm capping the list of grades with A's but for the most part this wouldn't be a report card that I'd be proud of.  Luckily, there are still over six months to go before we close out 2023 so I have some time to turn some of those grades around yet!