It’s time to review my 2024 New Year’s Resolutions.  This is my 3rd year of doing this.  At the beginning of each year I set five personal goals for the year and see if I can complete them.  I grade myself each quarter with a wrap up at the end of the year.

So here are my five 2024 New Year’s Resolutions and where I am on completing them after one quarter of the year. 

Resolution #1 CREATE – Write, record and distribute my own song(s) or write my Memoir

I carried this resolution over from 2023 and I can say that I have finally successfully completed this.  I finally got around to recording, mixing, mastering and releasing two songs.  I am now an Artist on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube music and you can buy my songs on iTunes. 

One song – Happy Song – I’ve had the riff for over 10 years and finally got it paired with some lyrics that I had laying around for probably 5 years.  The other song – My Retirement Song – I wrote the lyrics 3 months before my retirement.  Originally it was going to be a country song or folk song vibe.  I still have the Voice memo demo for the idea.  It turned out to be a Green Day type song with crunchy chords. 

Go stream my songs or buy from iTunes, only 99 cents.  Sometime later this year I will be working on my Sc-Fi novel or my memoir as a band member (current pieces of this are on this Blog – select category LIFE AS A BAND MEMBER)
GRADE: A

Resolution #2 Continue to lose weight, another 25 lbs

Partial Failure.  I am stuck.  I float between 215 and 220 lbs.  Which is not bad considering last April I weighed 275 lbs and was told by my hip surgeon that I needed to lose the gut before he could operate.  I’ve gotten down to 195 lbs before so I know it’s possible.  My high school weight was around 190 lbs, this is because I played high school football… in Texas.  So I spent many off seasons pumping weights and could eat anything I wanted.  Now, a doughnut will make me gain 5 lbs.  Because I am at least maintaining my current weight after losing 60 lbs, I’m giving myself a D, not a complete failure.
GRADE: D

Resolution #3 One YouTube video per week

I am doing pretty good with this.  On my YouTube channel, Retirement Ain’t Easy, I post retirement/life related videos and then I post vinyl record collecting videos as well.  I am enjoying it but sometimes it feels like work to get a video together.  I think I have released a video at least once per week since my YouTube channel started on January 1, 2024.  I also started another channel for my music career and got certified as an Official Artist Channel (OAC) on YouTube. go check out my OAC here.
GRADE: A

Resolution #4 Start a side hustle – photography, music recording, eBay store

I have not done much to resolve this one.  I have the equipment to start a portrait photography business out of my house and actually named my business – Take My Foto – but that is as far as that has gotten.  

I have enough recording gear and music instruments to record music out of my house and I have successfully done that with my own stuff.  I guess becoming a Spotify/Apple/YouTube Artist could be considered a side hustle as I do get paid for streams and if someone buys my music.  I plan to keep doing that.  Working on songs and releasing them for public consumption is work, but work of an enjoyable kind.  Except writing lyrics, that is tough to do. 

I have not created an Ebay store, but I do have enough stuff to sell that it could be successful. Maybe it’s time for a garage sale.  For this resolution I’m going to grade myself passing due to the music artist side hustle, but needs improvement
GRADE: C

Resolution #5 Blog once per week

This is going fine.  Especially since I’ve been doing a series of postings of my LIFE AS A BAND MEMBER (future memoir) and of course this posting.  I have been posting once per week so far this year.  So this has been successful. PLEASE NOTE: I have rebranded this blog to match my YouTube channel.
GRADE: A

There you have it.  My 2024 New Year’s Resolutions Q1 Report Card. 

I’m going to work on losing more weight.  I’ve been a little lax in my calorie counting.  I need to get back in the groove.  I still have a lot of toys and comics I need to sell.  Our plan is to do some down sizing for 3 years so we can move into a smaller place possibly on a lake in Texas.  For a video version of this go to my YouTube channel – Retirement Ain’t Easy or click the video below.

Come back next week as I pick back up on my memoir inserts from my LIFE AS A BAND MEMBER memoir. Thanks for stopping by and reading this far.