This year will be the year of connections, if everything goes according to plan. I hope to really strengthen my relationships with my friends, family, and the communities I care about. Since I had so much trouble with six goals last year, this time around I'm dropping down to just three big ones.

Goal #1 - Get Fit

I'm going to several conventions this year where I'll be cosplaying as a Red Lantern (Denver Comic Con, Minneapolis Comic Con, and Convergence). If I'm going to be in a skin-tight outfit, the gut has to go. Toward that end, I'm going to make two major changes in my lifestyle. The first will be to make 50% of most meals I eat vegetables. That change alone should have a dramatic effect on my health, even if it doesn't give me the physique I'm looking for. The second change will be to devote a portion of every day to strenuous physical activity. I'm going to be looking to the paleo community for help on this. These two changes will be very difficult for me, so I will need all the moral support I can get.

Goal #2 - Connect with Family

Maintaining contact with people I don't see on a daily basis has always been hard for me. I don't know why, exactly, but I guess it's just a matter of tunnel vision. So this year, I'm going to focus on keeping in touch with my family at a minimum. To do that, I'm planning on making three changes in my life. The first is to call my sister and parents every week. The second is to make a habit of updating Facebook every day with the highlights of that day, or maybe the plans for the next day. The third is to carve out at least an hour every weekday and half the day on weekends for spending time with my awesome wife Treasure, whom I sadly had not been spending enough time with in 2013.

Goal #3 - Draw Daily

Since college, I haven't drawn much at all. Sure, I do color work for Silver Gryphon Games on a regular basis, but my other art skills have been neglected. So, in 2014 I'm going to make it a habit to draw for at least ten minutes every day. It doesn't matter whether that's practicing life drawing, sketching random things, or doing full-on finished renderings. As long as I draw for ten minutes, that day will be considered a success, even if the end product is awful. It would be nice to document this by posting the result on Tumblr, but I'm not going to commit to that.