23 Things To Do In 2023

Here we are. Post #50. I thought about doing a big post about milestones, but decided that I’d rather wait until post #100 for that.

In the meantime, we’ve got this year’s to do list. Twenty three things I plan to do this year, starting with…

Tend to the Important Unfinished List Items from 2022 List

If you read last week’s post, you’ll remember that I didn’t actually get around to completing everything on the 2022 To Do List. In a normal year, if something important doesn’t get completed, it usually just carries over to the following year’s list.

But this year, the big to do list isn’t just a list of my goals… it’s also entertainment for the blog. So I didn’t want five of the twenty-three items on the list to be straight-up reruns from the previous list. Because that would be boring.

So I settled for grouping those five together as one item for this year, presented simply as unfinished business. Specifically: Find a second Starfinder RPG group to join. Write a novel. Reconnect with old friends (hopefully getting together with Mike again, but focusing on a meet-up with Leanne – as well as Dennis if an opportunity presents itself). Finish emptying out my brother’s basement. And finally, getting my mouthful of bad teeth replaced with a shiny new set of dentures.

Rebuild the Phrase of the Day Archive

One of the many, many objects that I need to retrieve from my brother’s basement is a printout that I had the excellent timing to have made just a few weeks before the Macintosh died. This printout was of the complete (at that moment, anyway) Phrase of the Day project.

(Your question at this point is probably, “What the Hell is the Phrase of the Day?”, and I’ll have to postpone your answer until March, as I have a post about that on the schedule. Suffice it to say, it was a strange little creative project that my friend Mike and I spent over ten years working on, a few minutes at a time here and there.)

There does not currently exist a complete archive of that project. All of the individual parts of it still exist, but like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces are scattered around multiple locations. I have the last parts of it in several word processor files. And I have an earlier (partial) attempt at a reconstruction from back when I was still living in the basement. But I need to finally reassemble it into its complete form. (And get copies of it to a number of individuals so that it will survive the eventual ravages of time.)

Commission Four Pieces of Original Art

In 2022 I commissioned a couple of pieces of original art. And while the end result of that – receiving some awesome new art – was fantastic, I also had a surprising amount of fun in the early stages of the projects.

Seeking out the right artist? Scouring the internet for reference photos that fit the image I had in my head? Watching each stage of development as the image evolves through several forms from rough sketch through final rendered image? I had a blast on my end of that creative process. (I might be a little bit addicted now.)

So I’ve decided that sometime this year (ideally in the first half) I’m going to be doing a blog post on Geek & Nerd Art. Fan art, RPG character art, OC concept art, and so on. And what’s a post about art without… well, art?

I’ve got a (growing) list of geek/nerd art that I’d like to have, and my plan is to commission some artists to bring four of those pieces to life this year, and present the results of as examples for that blog post.

Develop Straumgate

I’ve mentioned Straumgate a couple of times in past blog posts. It was initially ‘created’ as an urban environment for a solo Pathfinder game, and quickly evolved into the setting for a multi-storyline serialized work called “Tales of Straumgate”. But so far, it’s still woefully underdeveloped.

I plan on changing that this year. I now know who my seven protagonists are for Tales, and that will inform what I need Straumgate to be for them.

The realization that I’m probably never going to be running another RPG campaign set in my Esciem Realms campaign world means that I can mine it for content to transplant into this new fantasy metropolis.

And I’ve got so many ideas for fantastic new stuff… this is going to be fun!

Take the Wheelchair Out and About in Salem

Since getting the electric wheelchair and taking up with me to BrickCon in late September/early October, I have used it (and the large medical transport van du jour) to get me to and from doctor’s appointments. I’ve also taken it to a donut shop once. And that’s pretty much it for my wheelchair travel.

The purpose – okay, one of the purposes – of the trip to the donut shop was to make sure that the chair would get me to and from the bus stop nearest my apartment with sufficient battery charge. Which it did. I can theoretically go places. So why haven’t I?

So far the excuses have been: I can’t go anywhere today, I need to write nonstop for several days to get this blog post finished in time. I can’t go anywhere today, I’m too sick. And more recently, I can’t go anywhere today, I live in Oregon and we’re currently in the eleven-month long ‘rainy season’ of the year.

I now have the ability to go places (within Salem, anyway – a bus trip to Portland and back is probably beyond the capacity of my battery), and I need to start actually going to them. I can get to a movie theater. I can get to the library. There’s a second-hand LEGO store (one of the Bricks & Minifigs franchise locations) that I can get to.

Opening up more accessibility to Salem therefore lands on this year’s to do list.

Put Together Budget

As a result of becoming a paperboy in the fifth grade, I have been the user of checking accounts since I was ten years old. I spent a couple of years as a young adult with no income. And ever since then, I’ve been an adult on an extremely limited income.

Because of all of that, you might think that I’m an expert at things like balancing a checkbook, and making and sticking to a budget. And if that’s what you really think, then this might be a very surprising revelation for you.

I only ever know ‘about’ how much money I have by checking the current account balance on my bank’s website. And I cannot remember ever having set a budget for myself. Oh, I’m fully aware that having a budget would be a good thing for me. A fact I’m made acutely aware of seemingly every few months when I suddenly find myself at the bottom of a financial hole.

I’ve decided that it’s time to put an end to those recurring financial holes, and start determining what is the best way to spend my limited amount of money rather than relying on hope, guesswork, and prayer. This will be the year… of the budget.

Clean/Organize Hallway Cabinets

There are a couple of cabinets at the front of the hallway leading down to my bathroom. They seem like they’d be a nice place to keep miscellaneous stuff in an organized manner… and they probably would be, if I hadn’t crammed them completely full of crap over the course of the five years I’ve lived here.

The state of the cabinets didn’t bother me until a couple of months ago when I went to shove something into them (to get it out of my way) only to discover there was no longer any more shoveable room. Hmm. Something needs to be done, and that something is adding this problem to the list to be dealt with at some unspecified time later on this year.

Seriously, though… I’m going to completely empty them, probably throw most of the stuff away, and then start using the cabinets as storage space for specific things so that I know where they are. Maybe even soon.

Get Art Hung in Apartment

When I moved from Dad’s house into my brother’s basement, some art came with me. Later, when I moved into the apartment, some of that art moved along with me. The rest is still in the basement and will hopefully come over yet this year.

None of the art in the apartment is hanging on a wall where you’d expect it to be. Most of it, in fact, is sitting on the floor leaning up against a wall, as if waiting for some kind-hearted soul with hammer-and-nails to come along and rescue it.

I want to get all the art hung. The stuff that’s already here, the stuff that’s still coming here, and even the stuff that hasn’t yet been commissioned and drawn, let alone printed onto canvases.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of open and available wall space upon which to hang things. What seems like it would be the best wall for that is banged on hard enough and often enough from the other side (long story) that I doubt pictures would stay there for very long. So I am currently contemplating turning the otherwise relatively useless wall of the hallway down to my bathroom into an art gallery.

Divide LEGO Set Stockpile Into Two Categories

Someone recently told me that I had too many unbuilt LEGO sets. I quickly corrected their wildly flawed assessment of the situation by informing them that I simply didn’t have enough storage space. But, yeah… I need to do something about that.

While building for the last two conventions, I spent the usual amount of time sitting at the computer browsing around on Bricklink. But rather than spending all of that time placing orders I couldn’t afford, some of it was spent examining the site’s parts catalog and discovering if certain parts that I needed could be found in some of my unbuilt sets… and then deciding if I needed to save those sets to eventually be built or if I was willing to harvest them for the needed pieces.

I knew when I started that process that I was stepping out onto the proverbial slippery slope. And now I’ve decided to just go ahead and slide all the way down.

It is very unlikely that I’m ever going to build all of the currently unbuilt sets in my collection, so I have made the decision to go through everything and separate them into two categories: Sets that I plan to build. And sets that I am willing to open up and reorganize into my small (but growing) collection of sorted bricks, plates, and other elements.

Make Noticeable Progress in Sorting the LEGO

Speaking of which…

In addition to freeing up some room by sorting the parts currently in the unbuilt sets, I also have plans to make some headway into my containers upon containers of unsorted LEGO.

Stacks of 18 gallon storage totes. Well over a hundred 6 quart plastic shoeboxes. Cardboard boxes, Ziploc bags, and even one large plastic garbage bag. All of it full of completely jumbled and entirely random assortments of LEGO. A monument to chaos that I can no longer afford to maintain.

The goal is to sort at least half of it by year’s end.

Display (a Minimum of) Six MOCs in Space Western

As I sit here writing this, we are about five months away from this year’s Bricks Cascade LEGO convention in Portland, OR. And this is finally the year of the Space Western collaborative build!

I’ve started putting together the list of MOCs I’d like to build for the con, and there are a whopping eleven Space Western MOCs listed there. I can tell you right now, I will not complete that many. (The whole list – Space Western and other themes combined – stands at thirty-three MOCs. If you’d like to take a moment to laugh hysterically at the notion of me building thirty-three MOCs before mid-May, feel free. I certainly have.)

Soon those MOC ideas will be arranged in order of importance, and then slowly whittled down as I start building and time begins running out. And while I don’t have any set parameters for all those other potential MOCs, I do have a goal for Space Western. Five specific MOCs, and at least one MOC from the list of the remaining six. So, a minimum of six MOCs. Can I do it? Check back with me in May.

Build a LEGO Nativity Scene Before the Christmas Season

Three weeks before this last Christmas, I mentioned in the blog that I was thinking about building a miniland-scale LEGO Nativity scene. After posting that piece, I ended up thinking about it a lot. So much so that it ended up going on this year’s to do list to make sure that come the later part of the year I wouldn’t forget to do it.

Sort/Empty Remaining Boxes & Totes in Apartment

I’ve got a couple of boxes of miscellaneous stuff that I need to go through. There are also five totes of I’m-not-sure-all-what stacked up against one wall near the computer. And as I start getting back to work emptying my brother’s basement, they will be joined by more containers filled with much the same.

The ones currently here I don’t want here much longer. The ones coming here I don’t want here long at all. I want to either find places for things, or get rid of them.

Take Better Notes and Set Up Back-Up Schedule

Sometime in mid-November, I posted about the fact that I don’t back up my data often enough. Since then, I have backed up my data a grand total of zero times. It’s like I’m incapable of learning.

So, I want to set up some kind of back-up schedule. And hopefully actually back things up according to that schedule. (You never know. It could happen.)

In a similar vein, I’ve been looking at some of my old notes for writing projects from data that I have backed up, and I’ve discovered that I have a tendency to write down just enough to trigger my memory for the rest of the details. Yeah, the problem is that my memory is no longer what it once was, and some of these cryptic notes I’ve taken are triggering absolutely nothing.

I need to start elaborating more about my characters, settings, plots, and whatnot when taking these notes because otherwise if my ability to write fiction ever does come back, some of these unwritten projects are going to remain unwritable due to insufficient information.

Increase the Blog’s Readership

I want more people reading this blog. I don’t really have a good reason for that desire. The blog isn’t monetized, so it’s not like getting more readers will benefit me financially. I’d rather not admit that it’s just an ego thing, but… (yeah, probably just an ego thing.)

More to the point, I’d like more people reading this blog without me having to post links to each new post hundreds of times a week in blog promotion threads on Twitter. I need to find a way to attract recurring readers. Maybe even… dare I even think it… subscribers?

Search for Salvageable Data on the Corpse of the Mac

Another item awaiting me down in the depths of my brother’s basement is my long dead Macintosh Performa 405. Which, if it can be raised from the dead, even temporarily, could be a treasure trove of long lost data. Stuff from as far back as 1993!

A few quick internet searches give me hope that data retrieval might be possible, assuming that the elderly computer hasn’t suffered water damage from the problematic environment of the basement.

Defeat the Insomnia

Possibly the most important item on the list. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t really slept ‘well’ since about 1988 when I first got sick with chronic fatigue syndrome, but the insomnia I’m talking about now is the intense inability to sleep that’s been going on since December of 2021.

I don’t even know if this is something that I have any control over. Can I defeat the insomnia? Well, it’s starting to feel like it’s either defeat the insomnia or die from sleep deprivation, so lets hope that some kind of game plan occurs to me.

Keep Apartment Clean and Organized

I’m very proud to be able to point out that this doesn’t say “Clean and Organize the Apartment”. Because – with the already referenced exception of the hallway cabinets and a stack or two of totes and boxes – the apartment has been relatively clean and organized for months now. It’s already been a personal record for me, and I intend to keep it this way for a long, long time.

Update Bedtime Prayers

Every night before I go to bed, I pray. It’s the same thing every night. A few of what people would consider ‘legitimate’ prayers, along with a number of short prayers that I’ve written myself. And a lengthy section of “God blesses”. God bless this person, that person, those people over there, and so on.

Like I said, the same thing every night. And it’s been that way since the mid-to-late 90s. We’re talking about somewhere between nine and ten thousand nights of incredibly repetitive prayer. It’s gotten to where I don’t even think about what I’m saying any more. It’s just rote memorization. Like the Pledge of Allegiance. Or the old McDonald’s Big Mac jingle from my youth. Sections of dialogue from Ghostbusters or The Blues Brothers. I’m not entirely sure that my nighttime prayers actually mean anything anymore.

For several years now, at least once a week, I think to myself, “I have to do something about this.” (I usually think this while I’m supposed to be focusing on the prayers that are coming out of my mouth.) And the conclusion to that thought is always, “Soon. Maybe tomorrow.” Yeah, right.

The plan has been to at the very least, rearrange the order so I have to start thinking about them instead of just hitting ‘play’ on my brain. Put some of my original prayers through a second draft. And seriously shorten that “God bless” line. Every night I’m asking God to bless a bunch of people that are no longer in my life. Some of whom have been gone for decades.

“Soon. Maybe tomorrow?” Hmm. “Soon. Definitely this year.”

Clean C-PAP Equipment Weekly

Ever since the events discussed in my third post on Insomnia, I’ve been using the C-PAP machine when I attempt to sleep at night. (Most nights, anyway. I skipped it the two nights I had food poisoning as I had a fear of vomiting into the mask, down the tube, and into the inner workings of the machine. It took nearly six months to get that machine to me, how long would a replacement take?)

According to the app, you’re supposed to clean your mask and tubing (and other assorted paraphernalia) every week or so. Discovering that, I made the responsible decision to purchase the equipment to do that.

Weird long brush on a coiled wire handle to clean the tubing. Special wipes to clean the mask. Plastic basin to do the actual cleaning in. (Hot water and dish soap I already had.)

I’ve had this equipment for well over a month now, and I’m beginning to think that it might be time to take the next step and actually start using the stuff.

I suspect that if I can get everything set up and clean the stuff once that it shouldn’t be hard to create a once-a-week cleaning schedule (and stick to it).

Investigate Alternate Platforms for Blog

I’m not necessarily looking for a replacement for blogspot/blogger. But I’m seriously thinking about trying to find an additional platform for some of my posts.

I’ve recently read articles online talking about using Medium as a way to increase readership by reposting your blog posts there. I’ve signed up for an account and am going to be investigating that avenue. I know there are other similar sites out there, and as the blog is about to enter its second year, I’m thinking it might be time for an upgrade.

Look Into Using AI Writer as First Draft Collaborator

I’ve started keeping an eye on artificial intelligence writing software developments. So far all of the major progress has been in getting a machine to suggest ideas for you to write about, and maybe helping you put together an outline. Which is pretty much the opposite of what I need.

I want to take the ideas I have, put together my own outline, and feed that all into a machine to have it produce a first draft. A starting point for my Writer’s Blocked brain to grab ahold of and make my own. I can’t seem to turn a blank page into a first draft, but I’m seriously thinking that I’d be able to turn a first draft into a much different second.

I just need the machines to catch up with my needs.

Gain Some Sexual Experience

The more time passes the more I am convinced that if I don’t have sex soon I am going to literally explode. Or possibly implode. Some sort of ’ploding will occur, at any rate.

I almost included ‘find a sex partner’ in the list of important unfinished business items from last year, but then deeper desperation took hold of me. I would still love to have a sex partner, but I’ve realized that I’ve reached the point where I’m more interested in the sex than the partner. I want the experience more than I want the person, if that makes sense.

Obviously, there needs to be a second person – a partner by very definition – for sex to happen, but my ability to care about exactly who that partner is has started to slip away from me.

Between how late at night it is right now as I type this and how much sleep deprivation I’m operating under, I’m not certain this is going to make sense. But there are things I want to do, and I am now choosing to prioritize those things over being picky about who I do them with.

I’m reminded of a country and western song from the 80s called “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places”. It’s not that I’ve decided to start looking in the wrong places. It’s that I’ve finally decided I need to be looking in ALL the places, right or wrong.

Another Year, Another List

Okay, so that’s the 2023 list. Check back next January to see how I did. And check back next Sunday for another blog post.