I wish I had something profound to say it being the start of a new year and all. The thing is, today’s just another day like yesterday was and like tomorrow will be. The fact that we call this the “new year” is pretty much arbitrary. But, that’s the way it is.
New Year’s resolutions generally don’t work. There’s too much pressure at the start of a new year and people take on too many things. This year, instead of trying to stop doing particular things or start doing particular other things I’ve tried to go simpler with my resolutions, four words simple in fact.
Write. Exercise. Fun.
That’s it. Those are the resolutions for 2013.
It pained me to realize at the end of last year after I’d escaped LoathesomeJob just how badly I’d been affected by UberDirector’s abusive behavior, and it was abusive in all the classic ways. The way that scared me the most, though, was that my experience silenced me. Largely I stopped blogging; who wants to read blog after blog entry about a bad job that was just consistently oppressive in ways that weren’t even shocking after a while. After all, once your boss tries to gas light you and flat out lies to your face about something she said in front of 25 people there really isn’t anywhere to go but physical conflict and for me the solution to that is pretty obvious (hello, 911).
Not only did I stop blogging, though, I stopped writing. Yeah, my NanoWriMo novels are just what they are supposed to be after completion but they can be better and in 2010 I was on my way to making them better. Can I blame LoathesomeJob and UberDirector, DeputyDirector, and the cast of supporting idiots for the fact that I stopped writing? Not completely, no, but that whole mess of a situation was a factor.
All of this puts write at the top of 2013’s to-do list. Write means just that. Write: morning pages, exercises, fast fiction, blogs, that incredibly scary kind of expensive class on dialogue I signed up for that starts in two days. It’s all writing. No, it’s not all going to be good, or profound, or include links to free music, but at least it will make me feel more like me.
Exercise gets me where I want to be with other goals. In my family, happiness is just a thing called fat; we don’t eat when we’re not happy. Jettisoning LoathesomeJob back in April made me very, very happy indeed. Add that to the fact that I now work in a part of town where we have actual restaurants, sandwich shops, and other assorted take-out places and it equals me ending 2012 carrying an extra 10 lbs. Losing the extra poundage is just an added side benefit that will result from exercise. The real reason to exercise is I don’t function when I don’t sleep, and I don’t sleep when I don’t exercise. Nothing made that clearer to me that the arrival of cold weather and the departure of the morning walk from my routine. Sleep went the way of the Dodo and so did any chance at a good mood or resolution number three.
Fun can be broadly defined but fun is a lot like the Supreme Court’s view of p0rnography: I can’t describe it but I know it when I see it. Applying the fun rule is going to cut out a lot of things I’ve been doing by habit the past few years. Yes, Facebook, I’m looking at you.
Making all this happen is going to take the fourth word: Focus.
If I just focus on those three things other stuff I want to get rid of, like the fact that I watch too much junk TV or I weigh more than I want to weigh, will take care of itself.
Good plans it seems – I haven’t had New Year yet since I use the Tibetan calendar – a lunar one in which this year New Year is on Feb. 11th. I kind of like linking it to a purely natural cycle, especially since the different date each year makes it somehow more momentous.
I’m writing from my new toy – a little chromebook which allows me to sit in my livingroom (or anywhere else I like) and write. I too had stopped writing – stopped most everything – and now I’ve picked up again.
Thanks for your card – I know I owe you some serious emails….