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2012 Goals: Q2 check-in

by Rob Friesel

Phew… a few days into Q3 before I realized that I hadn’t taken a moment to reflect. A reflection on the pace of things, perhaps?

For those playing along at home: the original 2012 goals post, and the Q1 check-in post. And now… the Q2 check-in:

  1. Exercise: ≥4 days each week. Considering we had a new baby in April, and then… well: that other surprise in May, it’s actually kind of amazing that I managed to get in any exercise at all. Still, I managed some:
    Total Exercise Sessions (2012 Q1 + Q2)
    Not actually too bad of an April and May. And by June I’m more/less back in it. Breaking it down to just the running and walking:
    Total Miles Walked/Ran (2012 Q1 + Q2)
    I’m actually keeping up with my desired total mileage each month. As for climbing:
    Total Climbing Sessions (2012 Q1 + Q2)
    I resigned my monthly membership and moved to a punch card. I was sad to do it, but I just couldn’t justify it any longer.
  2. Reading: ≥36 books. Kicking ass this year? Goodreads is telling me that I’ve already read 29 books this year (this being out of my goal of 36). We’ll skip the graph this quarter. The table tells the tale.
    Book Author Date Links
    Neanderthal John Darnton 1/2 Goodreads; Amazon.com
    The Cardinal of the Kremlin Tom Clancy 1/15 Goodreads; Amazon.com
    Animal Farm George Orwell 1/19 Goodreads; Amazon.com
    We Are in a Book! Mo Willems 1/21 Goodreads; Amazon.com ^^Yes, it’s a kid’s book. So what? I read it for The Boy enough times.^^^
    Grendel John Gardner 1/24 Goodreads; Amazon.com
    Embassytown China Miéville 2/12 my review; Goodreads; Amazon.com
    Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal Christopher Moore 2/22 Goodreads; Amazon.com
    Quiet Susan Cain 3/1 my review; Goodreads; Amazon.com
    The Intuitionist Colson Whitehead 3/6 Goodreads; Amazon.com ^^Which, seriously, I know I don’t have my own review posted anywhere but… 5-stars. Really: go out and read it right now.^^^
    Against a Dark Background Iain M. Banks 3/21 Goodreads; Amazon.com
    The Joy of Clojure Fogus & Houser 3/22 ^^But I’d been working on this one since… July 2011? A good long while.^^^ Goodreads; Amazon.com
    Running Lean Ash Maurya 3/25 my review; Goodreads; Amazon.com
    Mobile Design Pattern Gallery Theresa Neil 3/29 my review; Goodreads; Amazon.com
    Little House in the Big Woods Laura Ingalls Wilder 3/31 ^^Though admittedly: that was a co-read with A., for H.; and A. did most of the reading.^^^ Goodreads; Amazon.com
    jQuery UI Eric Sarrion 4/9 my review
    Code Simplicity Max Kanat-Alexander 4/26 my review
    Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 4/29 Notes
    Farmer Boy Laura Ingalls-Wilder 5/1 ^^Ibid.^^^  
    Little House on the Prairie Laura Ingalls-Wilder 5/15 ^^Ibid.^^^  
    Clojure Programming Chas Emerick 5/19 my review
    Maintainable JavaScript Nicholas C. Zakas 5/23 my review
    The Wise Man’s Fear Patrick Rothfuss 5/27 Goodreads
    The Little MongoDB Book Karl Seguin 6/1 Goodreads
    The Invention of Hugo Cabret Brian Selznick 6/4  
    Kanban and Scrum: Making the Most of Both Henrik Kniberg 6/9 Goodreads
    Player Piano Kurt Vonnegut 6/10 Goodreads
    The REST API Design Rulebook Mark Massé 6/12 my review
    Imagine: How Creativity Works Jonah Lehrer 6/17 my review
    Alien Contact (anthology) Marty Halpern 6/21 my review
    Developing Web Applications with Haskell and Yesod Michael Snoyman 6/30 ^^…or 7/1, depending on how you figure the fuzzy end on this one, for me.^^^ my review

    …and those are the books that Goodreads is telling me I have finished in 2012 so far. Also: five more irons in the fire, as it were. And months to go before the year is out.

  3. Reading: 10 new authors. Most of the books have been new, and many of the authors have been, as well. At least half, by my count.
  4. Writing: ≥5 hours each week; 1000+ words per session. Remember when I mentioned the new baby? and “the other thing”? back when I was talking about my total exercise? It’s basically the same story here:
    Total Hours Writing (2012 Q1 + Q2)
    This suffered from those incidents. March and April were both strong though, and July is already a better month than both May and June. So there’s a chance for recovery.
  5. Writing: Finish a draft of my novel-in-progress. This is completed. March 13th was when I “finished” that first draft. Been working on a re-read and revisions. Slowly but surely.
  6. Code: Write something (anything!) in Clojure. Remember that little Groovy program to generate the 2011 reading timeline? I thought maybe I’d write a version in Clojure.

About Rob Friesel

Software engineer by day. Science fiction writer by night. Weekend homebrewer, beer educator at Black Flannel, and Certified Cicerone. Author of The PhantomJS Cookbook and a short story in Please Do Not Remove. View all posts by Rob Friesel →

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