Rish Outcast 296: New Year's 2025

Better late than never? Rish looks back at his 2024 goals, and sets new ones for 2025.

Happy New Year to all!

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Logo by Gino "New (Zealand) Year's" Moretto.

I Ran (I Couldn't Get Away)

Only one month left in 2024, and I've already reached my Exercise goal for the year.  Think I'll make it?

While I got fewer days in in November than I did in the previous months, I still did okay.  I've set the same goal of twenty-four for December.

Positive Achievement (For A Change)

So, at the end of each month, I tally up how much I've exercised, much like I used to do with my word count.*  My goal for 2023 was to Exercise 200 Days, and my goal for 2024 was to Exercise 222 Days.  These are achievable goals (last year, I managed 249 days, which is not at all bad), and one of the few things I've managed to do this year is keep up with my exercise goals, mostly running.  On Halloween, I went on an extra long run, because one of the neighbors had put up a fog machine in their yard so I ducked down the cul de sac to check it out, and when I got home, I added up how I've done for the year so far.

Not sure why I didn't save orange for October.

So, as of October 31st, I'm at 251 days of exercise for the year, which means that not only have I already achieved my goal, but I've already beaten last year's total, with two months left.  Not too shabby.  I guess Big Anklevich and I are alike in at least one way.**

*In November, I've set the goal of writing every single day . . . but the trick is, I didn't say how much.  So if I write three words, I'm counting it.

**Or two, if you count our love of dogs, and understanding that cats are cold, sinister things.

Novel Progress (Or Lack Thereof)

My big goal for August was to get my audio production of my novel "Balms & Sears" to sixty percent.  Unfortunately, I'm not going to make it.  

I did record two chapters last week, though, which isn't nothing*, and maybe I'll do one more tonight.  Still, at this point of the month (written back in August), I'm at nineteen percent, with no signs of getting more done.  I did go to the library and formatted the next couple of chapters (they have MS Word there you can use for free), but whoa, I discovered a chapter that was supposed to have gone earlier, and instead of simply snipping it and pasting it early in the narrative, I simply changed a couple of details so it works where it appears.  That sort of thing--it will come as no surprise to you--eats up a lot of writing time.  Sigh.

And since I'm here, I'll go ahead and post my Exercise Goal progress, instead of making it two posts (I originally wrote this all before, a week ago, but the laptop restarted as I drove back from the cabin and I lost it all (as usual).

So, at least as far as exercise goes, I'm way ahead of the pack.

*Though my "chapters" tend to be so small, they should hardly qualify as such.  I know the rules aren't set in stone, but I probably ought to do that thing where there are only ten or twelve chapters, and each one has several "segments" or sections of the story in them.  But it's too late for me now, son.  Maybe I'll implement that on the next one.

Exercise Goal - First Six Months

Whoops, we're into July now, and I haven't posted my exercise progress.  Six months are over, and for my silly goal of 200 days of exercise, that means I should be at around one hundred.

Whoops, I'm at 146.

I feel a little bit like Big Anklevich* (since I have a craving for juicy red flesh and neighborhood women can't keep their hands off me) when he was so far ahead of his yearly writing goal that he could slack off for two months and still have no problem achieving it.  

But like Big Anklevich, I'll keep exercising (on Wednesday, there was a whole family fishing off the dam where I do my weekly runs, and I just tucked my head down, turned the music up, and ran past them twice, ignoring the cries of "What is that man doing, Daddy?" and "Why does he run like Forrest Gump if he'd never got the leg braces off?"), and we'll see just how far past it I can run.

Exercise Report - March

 Doin' alright, I gotta say.

Exercise Report '24 - February

So, February came and went, and even with an extra day, I didn't manage to achieve all my goals.  One of those was exercising 24 days (which, now that I think about it, allowed me to take Tuesdays off and a single other day the whole month).  I did manage 21 days, and did very well at the end of the month (though I still miss most Tuesdays), and I'm happy that I keep it up, but technically, this was one of those months I fell short of my goals. 

I'll try to manage 24 days in March.  

Exercise Report '24 - January

So, this is how I did for the first month of the year, exercise-wise.

Not too shabby.  Of course I could do better, but since it's January (typically very cold and miserable), not too shabby equals pretty darn good.

Rish Outcast 269: New Year's 2024

Rish likes New Years, and talks a bit about that.  He looks at the many goals he failed at in 2023 and sets a few for 2024.  He answers a couple of questions from listeners, and despite this episode ending up obscenely long, reads "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert W. Service.

Why?  Because he thought you would like it.

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "New (Zealand) Year's" Moretto.

Exercise Report - 2023

Last year, I set the goal of exercising 200 days in 2023.  An achievable goal, as long as I didn't get sick twice.  Which, unfortunately, I did.

But no worries, I still had plenty of healthy days (oh, sorry, I needed to put an asterisk by "healthy" in that part, but it slipped my mind.  Er, "mind," sorry again) in which to get my exercise in.

Here's the chart I made for the first six months of the year:

And here's the chart for the second half:

Even though it's not pretty to look at, the chart makes me proud.  No asterisks.

Obviously, my worst month was January, but my best were a tie between August and September, with June in third place.  

So, both halves together, we get 249 days of exercise.  Not 200, like I had hoped, but I'll still take it.

Exercise Update - November

Looking at my chart, there are a lot of white spots--which represent days I didn't exercise--but they aren't the majority, not even close.  In fact, if I decided not to exercise for the rest of 2023 (and simply soil myself whilst watching "Euphoria" and the Canadian remake of "Skins"), I would still have achieved my goal to have exercised 200 days this year.

But don't you worry, I currently have no plans to watch "Euphoria" or "Skins" any time soon.

Exercise Update - First Six Months

So, the year is half over, and unless I'm related to Gandalf, my life is way more than half over.  I had set a goal for exercise in 2023 of 200 days, and you know, that's very achievable.  That means that if I exercised every day from the start of the year, I could take August through December off, and still make my goal.

So, here's where I am so far:

 

Some months have been better than others, with June and March being the really productive ones.  And I'm more than halfway there.  Of course, what I consider exercise and what you consider exercise might be two different things (when I was on a family vacation last week, I told myself I had to do ten laps in the pool, going up and back, before I could count it as my daily exercise.  And after three or four laps, my body started whispering, "Hey, why don't you quit now?  No one would fault you, and no one would ever know."  Damn body.

But I'm not in a contest with you (look at you, though, how well you're doing . . . it's inspiring, really), I'm just doing it for me, and one hundred and twelve days between January and July is something to be proud of.

Full disclosure: I'm posting this in July, and I have already fallen way behind (I'm currently sick with a summer cold, so my desire to exercise is somewhere lower than that of Jabba the Hutt).

Exercise Update

I have not done very well at blogging about my exercise activities this month, but compared to two years of blogging every single day, nothing could measure up.  I have, however, done pretty damn well at the actual exercise part . . . which should be the greater accomplishment.  

My goal, I believe, was twenty-one days in June, and at this rate, I'll actually achieve this one.

In fact, the only day this past week I didn't manage to exercise was the day when I had that exercise bike in front of me, locked away in the attic of the cabin for nearly a year.  It would have cost me nothing--and taken only five minutes--to open it up and climb on, pedal for a few rounds . . . but I didn't.  Weakness is strange.

Exercise Pole--er, Goal - May Update

The weather is nice now, and I should be exercising more.  But it's still sometimes hard to find the energy for.  I said I'd do twenty days in May, and I only got nineteen, but even that was a challenge--there are times when you are busy, apathetic, or just tired.*  

*Every month, I keep setting a goal to do another audiobook of one of my stories (so I can put it out there, either in text form or as a couple episodes of my podcast), and I absolutely won't do it.  Last night, it was the end of the month, so I knew if I just sat down and started recording (I already had to do some re-lines for Abbie), I could hold my head up high on my Patreon address and tell people, "It was hard--and boy does this story blow--but I did it."  And I still found excuses not to do it.  Ah well, goal for next month. 

Exercise Goal - April

I did NOT set an exercise goal for the month of April (more's the pity), but I do have a goal for the entire year*, so I should've kept posting these.  I did, however, mark the chart every time I went for a run, as a very very small reward for doing it.  So, here's where we stand for the year:

So, I'm about a third of the way there, which isn't bad.  As the weather gets warmer, I do tend to want to go out and do stuff more often, so let's see if I can't get twenty or more days done in May.

*Exercise 200 days in 2023.

Exthorcise Update

 Here we are in another month.  Good luck in yours.

Exercise Gole

Last night, I planned to exercise, even got into my running clothes, and then didn't do it.  I had also set up my microphone, meaning to get a couple more "Cormorant" chapters recorded, and at least one "Company You Keep" one done (they take way longer).

But still, March has been more productive than February, and I plan on running again tonight (heck, I could stop blogging and do it right now), especially now that it's way above freezing, even when the sun goes down.

Xercise Update

I tried doing sit-ups for the first time in an entire year, and was surprised to discover that I couldn't manage a hundred.  Did I ever?

But the important thing is that I'm exercising, and pretty regularly now.  More often than I write, and less often than I edit audio.

I went on my full run last night, and about one mile in, it started to rain.  It worked wonders on getting me to exert myself, as I tried to get home before getting soaked, and was gasping and heaving when I came up the steps . . . but in a good way.  

Exersize Update

I'm doing better this month.  I honestly think that having the goal board with little squares to color in has helped me.  Twice over the weekend, I considered skipping any exercise, and then thought of how I failed in my February goal (of twenty days), so it motivated me to do something (my goal for March is twenty-one days).

Here's where I stand right now.

Xercise Goal

As far as exercise goes, we had a big snowstorm this week (biggest in twenty-something years), and I'd have been a fool to go running in that.  But I could still exercise inside, and it takes a lot less time.  And one day, the sun came out during the day and melted inches and inches of snow, so I did take advantage of that and did my full run that night.

I did much better this week, mostly because the month is almost over and I'm seeing how few days I've been exercising (the below graphic is immensely helpful, especially filling it in each day when I do exercise . . . and knowing that it will be publicly released).  I don't think I'll quite reach my goal, but that should make me work harder the next month.