Resolutions

. . . ACTUALLY, I don’t really have any. I stopped doing New Year Resolutions years ago, because I never kept them and it became pretty obvious to me that I really never would.

The truth is, I sort of make resolutions all year round; that is, on any given day I might make some decision that there’s something I’m going to do, or stop doing. Then I try my best to stick to it. Making a point of setting goals for the following ENTIRE YEAR then trying to make those happen really doesn’t work for me.

Example: you make a New Year resolution to, say, quit smoking, and you do. And you make it to February 1 before something stresses you to the point where there are two choices: (1) light one up, or (2) tear someone’s head off. So you light up. And that’s it—you’ve broken the resolution, so you think to yourself that you’ve failed and you might as well give up trying to give up. Until the next New Year comes round and maybe you’ll set another New Resolution. Wouldn’t it be better to just make a February 2 resolution to try again?

Yeah, I know, I’m kinda waffling here. It’s one of those days.

Ok, so here’s a short list of a few things I know I’d really like to get done over the new few weeks or months. This is as close to a list of resolutions as it’s likely to get:

• Clean my desk up. It’s a damned mess.
• Get the garage sorted out. Right now there are two sofas and a stove in there that need to be sold or donated or otherwise disposed of, and I’d like to clear the space so that I can use the garage as a garage. (The reason for the sofas still being there is that, despite being years old, they’re really comfortable and I’ll be sorry to see them go. But we don’t have room for them and I have to be realistic.)
• Write at least two full length books before, say, the end of August. The Artemis sequel will be one of those, for sure. And since I’ve as good as decided to make Artemis a trilogy, the sequel to the sequel might very well be the other. We’ll see.
• Learn to play the piano. Seriously. Some time ago, Kate bought me this really nice keyboard that comes with teaching software, but I just couldn’t seem to master it and the thing’s been sitting behind my office chair gathering dust. See the picture. Nice, huh? I’d like to see about some actual lessons with a teacher, if it’s not too crazy expensive.
• I think that’s about it for now. Other things will occur to me as time goes on.

Until next time . . .