This year has a hard act to follow, in 2017 I smashed all but one of my goals and they were not small goals (Get married, Save 15k, Buy a house, publish a book).

I still have goals left to achieve though so let's get them down!

1) Reach 200lbs

One of these days I'm actually going to achieve this one, however this year I feel like I stand a fighting chance. Some of my worser demons have been exised now (I used to crave bad food a lot, especially if I was tired/stressed/grumpy/awake, now I very rarely do) and I've developed some pretty decent habits (I walk a lot more these days and although I'm definitely not a vegetarian, my diet is a lot less meat-based and a lot more plant-based than it used to be).

I'm still sceptical that I can lose 40lbs in the space of one year without doing something extreme but hey, it wouldn't be a year goal if it was easy.

2) Finish my novel

Last year I published a book that I'd spent several years writing, as great as an achievement as that was, it was a non-fiction book and took attention away from my novel writing. Emily Bell has been on my laptop in (half of a) draft format for at least 6 years.

Even if I don't send it to a publisher this year, I'd still be very happy if I could at least finish the first and second drafts.

3) Get a bath

Don't worry, my goal for 2018 isn't 'have a bath' its 'get a bath', as much as I love our new house, it only has showers, however, the main bathroom is right next to the guest room which itself is next to a room so small that it's practically useless apart from storing crap. So we plan to have builders in to move some walls around and extend our bathroom so it's big enough to put a bathtub in there as both of us sorely miss having a nice soak in the tub. I imagine this will be quite expensive though and we're still recovering financially from last year so again, this one is a tall order.

4) Achieve 100% remote work

As I write this, I'm having to do a long commute (3 hours on a good day, up to 4 hours on an average day) and it's driving me mental. Prior to this, I had a contract which was 70% remote for over a year and prior to that, I had one that was 90% remote.

Due to the nature of my job and the fact that I don't like going into London, I want to make it my goal this year that I exclusively take 100% remote contracts (barring the odd day here and there where I go in for a meeting or something).

Ideally, I'd do this via freelancing (I do as many projects as I can want for as many clients as I like in my own time at my own pace for an hourly/daily/fixed rate) but as it's harder to get freelance roles, contracting (I have a single client and I work for them for set hours on a single project) is much more likely.

Either way is fine though, so long as I don't have to leave my house :)

5) Get a puppy and a kitten.

Last year, we lost Ember, a few years before that, we lost Puddles, we now are completely petless and it sucks big time.

We plan to get a kitten as soon as one of us can be at home for a month so that it's not alone during its formative weeks and if I do manage to achieve goal 4 and I can be at home all the time, we're also going to get a puppy. The latter is particularly exciting to me as I've never had a dog before.

Well, that's it. I'll check back in a year and we'll see how I did!