Progress on resolutions

January went past far too quickly for comfort; although I'm happy that I'm flying to Malaysia on Wednesday, I'm aghast at how fast we've blown through one twelfth of the year. And secretly worried that I don't know how to spell 'twelfth'.

When I look back at this year's resolutions, a month on, I'm a little sad at how over-optimistic some of them seem, yet at the same time pleased that they haven't all been broken. And the great thing about Chinese New Year starting this week is that I can award myself another chance to get them all right. And if that fails, I'll declare Welsh New Year in March, and plough on in similar fashion until 2012 and we're all consumed in a John Cusack-shaped fireball.

How has it gone thus far? Well: I've managed to write something every day, although I haven't got married yet. I wonder if I can blog and get married on the same day, or if I'm going to get kicked in the nuts for even thinking of that. We've been very disciplined, meanwhile, on not purchasing any more books or DVDs so far this year. That said, I haven't read as much as I would have liked: nibbling away at a book on North Korea that I bought back in November, and I've read one awful Swedish crime novel, and apart from that nothing. (Or so I thought. The scary thing about this blog is that without it, I wouldn't realise I read two John Le Carres this month, although since all such books follow the same depressing arc, maybe they're all iterations of some ur-Carre.)

We've watched Inkheart, Dr No, The 39 Steps, Rocknrolla and Shaolin, although the last was in a cinema so doesn't properly count. From where I sit, stuck beneath a purring cat, we have nine or ten more DVDs waiting us, so it will be at least April before we buy another movie (and that's forgetting about all the other unwatched DVDs lurking in the bedroom).

The apartment is far from tidy at the moment, although we're packing for Malaysia (where "packing" means "put everything on the floor so the cat can play with it", but I need the occasional excuse. No races, but I have dragged my weight under twelve stone this month (with a little help from an undercooked egg and the fear of God/cholesterol instilled by my doctor four weeks' ago). On the downside, I've not even touched The Great Old Game yet, tried to dance, spoken a word of Spanish beyond "cheesy nachos" or finished anything properly yet. I'm going to finish Auto Comedian 1.0 on the plane to Kota Kinabalu, I promise. I also wrote a letter today (as well as going to the gym for the first time since October) so it feels like I'm doing some positive things, and if I can get at least one photo per day from Chinese New Year onward, perhaps I'll be back on track.

So onwards, fail harder, fail more often, but fail better.