Resolutions for 2010
I love the new year. The fresh start, the hope and possibility. I love making resolutions, even ones I know I’ll never meet or stick to.
I don’t view resolutions as hard goals. Rather, resolutions exist as a kind of governing pattern for behavior. Making them at the turn of the new year enables me to practice them through January; usually enough time to turn resolutions into habits.
So, forthwith:
Cease rushing. I tend to think about time in terms of minutes. Sometimes seconds. The 10 seconds I spend doing this thing are 10 seconds I can’t spend doing something else. It makes me incredibly efficient, but I’m a poor verbal communicator and a terrible listener, especially when it comes to my daughter. By slowing down I hope to become clearer in my verbal communication and a more mindful listener.
Finish Boone’s Landing revisions. I was a fool to think I could revise a novel in two months. Still, I’ve made steady progress and have moved on from writing fill scenes to sequencing and continuity. Of course I have wracking self-doubt about the book’s quality, relevance, plot, characters, my own self-worth as a human, and more. In January and February I’ll work on query letters and proposals in addition to revisions.
Be a little more mindful of my health. This means looking for opportunities for activity (particularly outside), and learning to cook again. This time, with a real emphasis on vegetarian meals.
I took advantage of some after-Christmas sales and bought a couple shirts for work. Nothing fancy, just some standard Arrow shirts from JC Penney. Since they are grown-up shirts, they come somewhat tailored, with specific measurements for neck circumference and arm length. I’m not familiar with my measurements, so I had to try them on. Suffice to say the world looks very, very different in the mirror of a JC Penney dressing room. Wuff. Anyway, in an effort to reduce the sag and bloat and move things back to where they’re supposed to be, I’ve decided to try a variation of Mark Bittman’s vegan before dinner, though I’ll stick to plain vegetarian meals. More on this in a separate post.
Make more conscious purchases. Since I began following Put This On, and particularly since I saw Jesse’s post on his mom’s shopping habits, I’ve tried to be mindful of purchases I make. Yes, I appreciate the irony of having just talked about buying shirts, but I think they’re good and hopefully will last longer than the shit from Old Navy (oh, how you do tempt me with your dirt-cheap clothes cobbled by sweat-shop hands). A much better example of mindful purchases would be the Art Metal Construction Co. chair I bought yesterday from Good Will. Six dollars, fantastic craftsmanship and aluminum construction. With a little repair, it should last long enough for my son to take to college. It means I didn’t buy some press-wood piece of crap from Target or Ikea, and we were able to move the bent plywood chair from my office to the living room. A chair, I might add, that’s lasted at least ten years and is as solid as the day I bought it.
Finally, when possible and economically feasible, I want to buy from a person or people instead of a giant corporation.
Learn people’s names. I have a terrible time remembering people’s names and it’s getting worse. I have also discovered that people put some stock in a person knowing who they are, especially if they are some HR VP or something. Hopefully I’ll get a little better with practice.
Read 52 books. I’ll never read that many, but the resolution itself kept me reading in 2009, so I’m making it again.
