2023 goals – Q1 update

I set myself some goals at the start of the year, and, as part of keeping myself accontable, I want to give some roughly quarterly updates on how they’re going.

So:

• Weigh under 95kg every day for 3 months – This is not going well. I lost some weight at the start of the year, but put quite a bit of it back on in the last month. I did stop focussing on this in the run-up to my strongman competition, so now that’s out of the way this is going to be a major focus for Q2.
• Deadlift 200kg – I haven’t done a proper check of my max deadlift, but I know it improved in the run-up to the strongman comp. I feel like I’m close to this, and won’t have any issues hitting it this year.
• Deadlift 250kg – I’m less certain about hitting this before the end of the year, but it still feels possible. If I do, it will likely be sometime in Q4.
• Complete every event in Bristol’s Strongest Novice – Success! This happened a few weeks ago, and I managed to lift every weight in the deadlift ladder, get every sandbag weight over the bar i the sandbag throw, complete the sandbag carry and sled pull medley well under time, and get several reps on the log press and sandbag over bar events. I feel really good about all of that.
• Finish a half marathon – I’ve booked one in for the end of September. Training so far hasn’t gone great, but that will be another focus for Q2 along with the weight loss, as the two go well together.
• Paint a Warhammer 40k combat patrol – I’m almost there, just need to find a few evenings to get this done.
• Paint a Warhammer 40k incursion force – This is probably something for Q3.
• Paint a gang/team/squad/something else for one of the Games Workshop boxed games – there’s a campaign starting up soon, so that should provide good motivation to get this done. Hopefully it can get completed by the end of Q2.
• Complete my paint tracking app – No progress so far, this is something I need to find more time to work on.
• Blog every week for 6 months – This will be my eighth consecutive week blogging, so 1/3 of the way there.
• Speak at another SQL Server user group – I’m speaking at the Bristol user group 2 weeks from today, and I’m going to use the long Easter weekend to get the talk up to standard.
• Sort out a group tent for larp – For various reasons, this is probably being crossed off the list
• Book another big holiday – I’ve looked at a few, but not taken the plunge on any yet
• Have 5 smaller adventures this year – Booked/arranged so far: LoveTrails running festival in July, Tithing larp in June, mud run in December. For the other two, I’m thinking trips to London to see some shows.

Although I’ve not hit many of my goals yet, I feel like I’m making solid progress on a lot of them. For Q2 I need to focus on the running and weight loss, and keep progressing with the blogging and the deadlifts. I’ll cross off the SQL user group talk in Q2, and hopefully the 200kg deadlift and one or two of the painting goals as well. The main thing I’m concerned about is the painting app, I’d ideally want to see some solid progress on that over the next 3 months but I’m not sure I’ll have the time for it.