I’m not sure what my 2018 resolutions were, but I surpassed my reading goal of five books by one. The books I read were: “The Arctic Incident” (Artemis Fowl #2) by Eoin Colfer, “Endurance: A Year in Space, A lifetime of Discovery” by Scott Kelly (U.S. astronaut), “Eragon” by Christopher Paolini, “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman, “Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War” by Mary Roach, and, my favorite of 2018, “The Oracle Year” by Charles Soule.

My 2019 resolutions are:

• Finish my Ph.D.!
• Release five singles of video game music
• Release “The Golden Sun Set” album
• Read seven books

It’s looking like I’ll be defending my dissertation in August 2019!! So my biggest resolution of 2019 is to finish my Ph.D. by September and move on to the next chapter of my career.

I’d like to release five singles of video game music, each one from a different franchise. My first release will likely be a Chrono Trigger song titled “Secret of the Forest”; all I need is some album art. The other four will probably be a Metroid song, a Jet Force Gemini song, a Pokemon song, and a Mass Effect/Castlevania/Radiant Historia song.

In addition to the singles, my plan is to release “The Golden Sun Set” with as many songs as I can manage. The current tracklist consists of 41 Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age and five Dark Dawn songs. It will probably be pared down to 15-20 songs, but we’ll see.

Since I read six books this past year, I should be able to read seven books amongst all the journal articles. I’ve been reading the second Eragon book, “Eldest”, and Leila gave me an awesome book by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang titled “Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military” that I’ll be starting soon.

This seems like a lot, but I was told recently that I shouldn’t limit my goals.