2012 progress report - May

So as we rapidly rush to the end of the fifth month of the year, it's time to survey my resolutions once again, just like I did every month. Except for April. And March. Ah well. 3 out of 5 isn't bad, right?

Measure and modify - sadly, I haven't kept up with my resolution to check how I'm doing every week and make sure I do better where I need to. My life has felt like a whirlwind for the past few months, and without structure it's hard to make sure you're paying attention. I have been assiduously logging every run (and every walk) that I've done since I got to Singapore, but I could do a bit more with the data. The trouble is I'm not sure what. Is a strides-per-minute of 80 good, bad, indifferent?

Comedy - at last, made some movement here. I've been on stage at Masala three times and twice at Talk Cock, the ominously-named Sunday evening show in Clarke Quay. It's taking a while to get the measure of the audience here, because they are quite different to Hong Kong, and I'm not getting as much stage time as I'm used to. Never did I realise what a luxury a regular eight minutes would be.

Keep writing Mixed success here. I've put together another chapter of my novel and I'm having some ideas about how to improve the structure of it, but I haven't put in the hard hours of actually writing all of that. I've made things harder for myself by needlessly duplicating the manuscript, to the point where I'm not quite sure where the most up-to-date version is. Also, I've learnt that Google Docs is not a satisfactory replacement for Microsoft Word when you're dealing with a book-length document. (Neither is Microsoft Word, but that's another story...) My Tripadvisor reviews have lost all pace; I think I began to lose hope when I realised the person who wrote the most last year seems to be some search-engine-optimisation warrior who repeats the same reviews on a three-month cycle. My honest, proud approach of only reviewing novelty has meant my volume has suffered. Perhaps I'll make a big push in the second half of the year, but without resorting to the same cheating ways it will be hard to catch up.

Finish things The rabbit is done; soundtrack synced up (I think) but the resolution has come out a bit crappy. Thus the version I've got on Youtube isn't quite satisfactory - but the license on the video software has expired, so getting round this without spending a lot of money may be a little awkward. Still, there's other things to finish like the novel - maybe I need a list.

Keep fit I haven't managed to run every single day since the 22nd of February, but I've lost about ten pounds since I arrived here, and that's mostly been a gradual and steady decline, not a ridiculous up and down yo-yo of binging and crashing. I've finished the hottest half marathon I've ever run, and although that was 5 minutes slower than my personal best, I'm not dissatisfied with it. Hopefully I get my place in the Osaka marathon at the end of the year and can do better than I did last year.

Keep in contact Struggling here - again, lack of structure means that I'm often out when I need to be at home to Skype with people in foreign lands, and I should spend more time keeping in contact with people in other ways. I know what I need to do, I'm just not doing it.

Learn to dance, learn a foreign language, count my blessings Failing on all three of these.

So all in all, I think that's roughly 3 out of 9, including a few half-achievements here and there. That leaves us seven months to get the rest right. I think learning a language is going to fall by the wayside for a while, but it's fairly clear what I need to do to put the rest of these things in order. So off we go again...