Five resolutions for me to break

Happy New Year to all.  Like so many others, I have a list of changes I’d like to make in my life.  What better time for them?  Some are ambitious, some are desperately needed.  I wonder how many I can pull off?

1. Get more organized at least a little organized. I am the personification of chaos, to the point that my principal has started rolling her eyes at me.  My classroom is a mess, my house is a mess, even my truck is a mess.  I’m not planning to go from zero to OCD overnight.  Baby steps.  For now, I’m taking a few minutes at the end of the school day to put things back where they belong.  Same at bedtime.  Little by little I’ll become a functioning human being.
2. Eat healthier. This is not a diet, just a vow to make healthier choices in the overabundance I consume.  More fruit and veggies, less soda, more fiber, less sugar.  I need to lose weight, but I’m pretty bad at that, especially when the rest of my life isn’t perfectly in line (see #1).
3. Play more actively with my daughter. My little girl loves to run and jump and squeal and frolic.  I love watching her, but I don’t have the energy to join in.  Well, I’m going to start thinking of our play sessions as my workout regimen.  I’ll work up a sweat and get my endurance up so we can play the way she deserves.
4. Write 3000 words a week. Not a lot, I know, but it’s doable.  And if I get my 3000, I’ll likely get more.  It’s usually the first few dozen words I have trouble getting out in a writing session, be it time or mental constipation to blame.  I’ve been slow to the point of wondering if I still fit my own definition of a writer.  Must write.
5. Get stories in the mail. Stories don’t sell from a drawer.  I need to do a better job getting them out there.  I only have three out right now, two of them to WotF, despite having four or five unsold stories that have been sent out before that remain unsold.  If they were good enough to send before, they’re good enough to send again.  I intend to get one out a week through this month, that giving me enough time to read them through and brush them up first.  Besides, the staggered submissions will stagger responses and hopefully lead to less blocks of wonder-time.  Wonder time always seems to kill my productivity.

Well, those are my goals.  There are smaller things: apply to (and attend) a Clarion workshop, apply to all four quarters of WotF (or lose elligibility, even better), train my mutt, put valuable writing content in my blog, sell some stories (slightly beyond my control short of #5), and on and on.  Five is probably more than I can pull off.

Here’s hoping that you find the strength to follow through with your resolutions and that 2010 is a great year for you.  Now I need to go start working on some of these.  You probably should, too.  😉