So the first year of me having a blog is coming to a close.  Well, I’ve only had it about 10 months, but it is the end of the year in which I started it.  I have not done such a good job of updating it regularly.  I hope to do a better job next year.

I have learned a whole lot this year.  I’ve learned I was a bit too ambitious with my plan to do episode-by-episode reviews of 4 or 5 television shows.  Even at a pace of an episode a day, it would take me more than a year to finish.  So I am not planning to continue my planned Watch This project for the time being.  Consider it on hiatus.  I will finish Futurama Season 1, hopefully by the end of January, but no more.  At least not until I can figure out a way to do it that I’m happier with.

I was also a little too ambitious with the 25 years of NES, as well.  Apparently, between work and my other hobbies I was not able to write 25,000 words about NES games.  Still I have about a third of them done and another third written and ready to go.  So I will finish that project.  And as long as I get it done before October next year it is still 25 years of NES, so it’s all good.

I also did not get around to writing much about sports or books.  I was going to post my thoughts about each weekend of football, but I ended working every weekend, so I did not get to watch enough football to feel comfortable putting out any observations or analysis.  Rare was the opportunity I had to watch a full game.  As for books, it is not that I did not read any.  I read more than 20 new books this year, along with rereading about another 20 or so.  The reason I did not manage to post more than once about them is that I try to make my writing about books more . . . substantial, and I simply failed to allocate enough writing time to get anything good done.

Moving away from making feeble excuses for my lack of output, I am happy with my movie reviews.  I am a little disappointed that I did not manage to write reviews for Red or Scott Pilgrim, but I’m not changing much about how I do movie reviews.  Other than, hopefully, doing more of them.

So this year has not been great, but it was a start.  “What am I going to do next year?” you probably did not ask.  For one thing, I hope to post with greater frequency and regularity.  I intend 3-4 posts a week.  To facilitate this, I will not do any big projects, like 25 Years of NES or Watch This, though that kind of thing may return later, but I think I would be better able to get into a writing and posting rhythm if I allow myself to write about whatever I want.  I will try for variety, but more important to me right now is quantity.

The big change I am planning, and enacting very soon, is a new blog title.  Critical Ramblings sounds like a lame placeholder name, but I couldn’t not come up with anything better, But now I’ve decided on one: We are Finally Cowboys.  It is the title of a song from the soundtrack of one of the greatest video games of the last 5 years: No More Heroes.  It doesn’t really mean anything, other than being somewhat childishly fanciful, which is exactly what I’m going for with this blog.   I will also try to come up with “catchy” names for posts on every category.  Something like “Scott tells you what to watch” for TV, but actually good.

I guess that’s it for my year in review.  Now a picture of Wildcat on his cat-o-cycle.