2019 In Review

Hello all. I’ve been very lazy with my writing recently – in fact I’ve got two lay reports to write, one from as far back as October – so I’ve set myself a stopwatch for this post: 15 minutes and it’s as far as a first draft.

2019 was an interesting year in that, for me, not much happened. Or at least it didn’t feel like much has happened. I went on my first jaunts – to Prague and Warsaw – lays were had, but it’s not like I came back and it was all I could talk about.

I got 11 lays this year and my approach to lay ratio was around 1:53 with roughly the same age and quality: an improvement on last year’s ratio. Though the number of lays has reduced with each consecutive year it truly doesn’t bother me as right now I’m more interested in being skillful than actually racking up the lay count. As I’ve said before, getting to 100 – for me – is now a question of when rather than if. I know for sure, as I’ve known for a long time, that my Biggest Problem is my impatience – pulling too hard – 2020 would be a much greater success were I to overcome that problem than stick another 24 lays on my notch count (not that this happened in 2019, note).

The real reason for that lack of hunger is that I’ve had a girlfriend this year (realistically since May-ish 2018 actually). I don’t need to go out and chase lays and I’ve been very happy spending time with her. I can safely say that Daygame is pure ego-satisfaction at this point. You can leave questions below on this point but I’m reserving the right to answer none of them.

As far as my other goals are concerned, here they are:

• Travel to two new Daygame cities next year: at the moment I’m looking at Belgrade and Bucharest
• Continue to grow my hair
• Continue to save money for the eventual full unplugging from the matrix
• Buy a sofa
• Nap more
• Read 20 books: 10 fiction and 10 non-fiction

Notice that I haven’t set myself any Daygame targets there besides travelling to two new cities. It’s because I’ve learned my lesson: setting targets in Daygame will make you, at best, feel fine. Not good, not great, just fine. I mean, they are good to get you going if you need that, but I don’t need that. For me, I’ll either reach the goal and feel like that’s what I should be getting, or I’ll fall short and be disappointed with myself. As I said in my priorities post, I’m actually putting gym-work above Daygame in 2020.

Does that mean that this blog is going to come grinding to a halt? NO! It just means that there’ll be a slightly wider range of topics discussed.

Right, that’s 11 minutes in and I can’t think of anything else to say; 483 words at this point. Now to comb through, add any details I find interesting, and put this on the internet.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

Interesting points:

I enjoy this stream of consciousness style writing. Of course, it’s coming out my stream of consciousness so it’s already quite organised

I was sitting around at Christmas with my family and I thought to myself: I’m not excited about things anymore. Now of course I do look forward to things, but I don’t get excited like I did as a child. That’s just part of growing up, right? Yes, of course, but it’s a tough realisation. As a kid I remember counting the sleeps to my birthday and not being able to sleep the night before. It seems quite clear that the things we want as adults come in the medium run.

Can’t believe I forgot to mention this: this whole January to December year thing isn’t working for me so I’m changing it to July to June. I figure that it’s silly we push ourselves to get “one last lay this year” in December when we could be doing it in June. It’s like the cab driver example from Freakonomics: he should work longer hours when the going is good and less hours when it’s quiet, rather than a consistent number of hours a day or working as long as he needs for a set amount of money. This means that I’ll be doing a six month period up until July 1st, and then year periods after that (stats wise). Which brings me onto…

I’m not going to post stats in as much details from now on. I’ve been weaning myself off them for a couple of years: recording less with each passing year. For the first six months of 2020 I’ll be recording approaches and lays, and then after that I’ll only record the lays. I’ll still post the stats but from July onwards there’ll be no breakdown and no accompanying post.

I’ll also not be posting any +1s from now on (WhatsApp, Twitter, etc.) because I want to get myself away from that frame of mind.

Another rule: I have a free pass not to Daygame in heat of 25 degrees celsius or higher. I just melt and not in a good way.

Correction: 1:52. I just checked my spreadsheet.

I’d like to do some more Skype consultations/coaching/chit-chats/etc this year and so send me an email if you’re interested.