I am so good...

...sometimes I amaze myself.

I don't do groceries often (one of the benefits of living with my mom), but when I do, I tend to keep track of the total price as I go. This both gives me something to occupy my mind and ensures that I'm not shocked when I get to the checkout line. Usually I'm pretty close: within a dollar or so.

Today I estimated that my order (including produce and other stuff I had to guesstimate) would be about $37.60. Actual price: $37.53. Total variance: 7 cents (about 0.2%). I'm so good.

On goals and resolutions

This time of year, many people sit down to make Resolutions. Resolutions, in the end, are generally nothing more than goals, refurbished and given seasonally-appropriate packaging. And this is what gets me in trouble.

To segue (and I promise this will eventually return to the point at hand): I am a gamer. And, like most gamers, I have made many, many characters over the years. For almost all of these characters, I have submitted (or at least thought up) more than a simple character sheet with dots on it, but a background to explain what all those dots mean. The history part of the background (ie: my characters' past) has never been a problem for me. Where I get in trouble is when I need to create my characters' goals (ie: their future, or at least future plans).

For years, my characters didn't have any goals. Most often, especially in live-action games, the storytellers didn't give external goals (ie: quests) to work on either. This generally led to my character drifting along aimlessly until they came under the sway of some charismatic figure and followed them (or were used by them) to achieve their goals.

For the last year or two, I've made it a point always to give my characters a list of short- and long-term goals. I even write them down. It gives me something to work for in-character, and drives a lot of my characters' decisions. The only problem is that a lot of times, the writing of goals seems like an afterthought, a sort-of contrived list to give myself something to do.

( To return to our main point... )