Happy New Year's (2018) Introduction

I have three resolutions for the 2018 year. The first is doing a weekly blog post (not including this one). I am still debating back and forth about how to organize it.

My 2017 resolutions were to lose some weight (170lb goal) and to improve at table tennis. It has had its ups and downs but I am happy with my effort.

Around late 2016, I tried different ways to lose weight. My first weigh-in at the start of the 2017 year was at 195 (yikes I may have been 200 before that). Around June, I was around 178 and very happy with my progress. I splurged during summer break confident that I could still hit my goal by the end of the year. By October, I weighed in at 172lb. I severely underestimated the amount of eating I would do during the following Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and thus, unfortunately, ended at 173lb, failing to reach my goal. Overall, the experience was very positive in building good eating and exercising habits.

For table tennis, I aimed to play more tournaments and be more self-disciplined in my own improvement. Generalizing my previous experience, improvement came mainly from playing matches with my training partners with the occasional coaching sprinkled in. Moving to a more rural town in Missouri that luckily had a table tennis club, I aimed to take more video and be more goal-oriented in each practice session. I ended 2017 with a 1580 rating. From analyzing my play, I play fairly confidently against players up to about 1700 rating but do very poorly against unorthodox style players, even those that are lower rated. So, a 1580 rating feels appropriate for my current level.

To write it down so I can keep myself accountable: For the 2018 year, my goals are to:
1) Transition from just being relatively 'fit' to being 'in shape.' I plan to participate in a few triathlons this year, with one of them being the Joplin Summer Roundup Olympic distance Triathlon (1mi swim, 25mi bike, 10k run).

2) Learn to play mahjong. I was introduced to the game during a recent New Year's party. I  don't know anything about it so there isn't much to write as of this post. If I had to set a specific goal, it would be that I would feel ready to participate in a competitive tournament by the end of the year.


P.S. I'm looking for more topics to write about. Feel free to email or comment. Also, I always feel like my writing is disorganized so any suggestions are welcome!