Three! Two! One!

2013 ends tonight. I'm not much one for New Year's resolutions, because I like to try and take stock of myself as often as possible and course correct whenever I feel it's necessary. Not that I am hyper-self-aware, but I think I'm pretty realistic about the good and bad in me, and always trying to do what I can to bolster the one while diminishing the other. Trying to assign a specific day for that process, and using that day to assess a full year and make plans for the entire next year, is impractical and forced and not a tradition I entirely understand.

That said, 2013 was my first full year of regular blogging, and inasmuch as we all seem to generally agree that a whole year is a significant amount of time, that's pretty cool. This year was also when I started writing for The Chemical Box, read/RANT, and PopMatters, so someday, looking back, this will no doubt feel like an important year in my amateur comicbook critic career (or whatever term is appropriate...is it a career if you never expect to make a single cent form it?)

So, as 2013 wraps up and I head into 2014, hopefully the second full year of blogging about comics in my life, there are a few things I know I'd like to accomplish in the next 365 days. I want to publish 200 or more posts on Comics Matter. I'm ending up with a frustratingly so-close-yet-so-far 179 for this year, but hitting 200 would only have meant another 2 posts per month, which I gotta believe I can do next year. I'd like to do another thing like Atari Force Month, but with some other title that has enough material that I could write about it every day for 30 days in a row. I'll probably aim to do that in June again, if the timing works out. I want to continue to branch out to other sites beyond this blog. Writing for them this year has led to some of the work of my own that I've enjoyed the most and am proudest of, so the more places that want to publish me the merrier, as far as I'm concerned. Finally, I want to get better at writing about comics comprehensively. I want to talk about the bad parts of series I like and the good parts of series I despise. I want to remember to credit all the artists, pay attention to editors, acknowledge good lettering more often, and pick up on every story detail no matter how small or incidental. It's probably impossible to never leave anything out, but at the very least that's what we should all be striving for, right? Even if we know we'll never get there.

These aren't resolutions, necessarily, because I'm not the least bit resolute about them. If I fail to accomplish any or all of the above goals, that's fine. If I hit them all, that'd be fantastic, but I'm not going to drive myself crazy about it. They're just stuff I'd like to see happen, things I'm already working toward and will continue to do so. 2013 was a success, blog-wise. I'm confident 2014 will be, too, with or without me checking those items off my list.

BTW, I totally dropped the ball on this month's Monthly Dose. It's my first time not doing it in 14 months, which is better than I would've expected, but also I hate to miss any deadline, even one I set for myself arbitrarily. My plan is just to do the December 2013 installment sometime in the first week of January, and then get back on track after that. I know you're all SUPER concerned about it, so I wanted to let everyone breathe easy.

Happy New Year!