Tag: resolutions

I am a 2011 Cliche

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I was just checking out my New Year’s resolutions list from last year.  Resolutions made: 5; resolutions kept: 0

What’s worse, they all seem like good resolutions for this year, too.  So we’ll take it from the top.

1) Lose a pond a week.

2) Write 100 words a day.

3) Read more often. This s actually a deviation from last year, which targeted one novel and two shorts a month.  Instead I’m making this a quadrupleresolution:

  • Finish reading all my partially-read novels.  That’s Steven Savile’s Silver, John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, and…a couple others I can’t currently recall.  These are not books I’ve abandoned, just ones I set aside to finish later.
  • Read 4 new novels this year.  Not a lot, but a realistic target.  I think I finished 4 last year.
  • Read short stories weekly.  Maybe each Monday I’ll target some short fiction to read.  It can even be flash, but I need to read in the field.
  • Read the Bible every day.  I have an Every Day Bible to help me accomplish this.  I want to read the whole thing in a year.  I’m a Catholic with some pretty stout beliefs (not all of them 100% Catholic-y), but I’ve never made any concerted effort to read the Bible cover to cover.  This year, it’s on.

4) Exercise twice a week.

5) Get organized.

Five good ones.  Let’s see if I can keep at least one this time around.

And I was just getting used to writing “2010”…

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 5 Comments

It’s that time of year again…time for goal setting, promise making, and resolution vowing.  I have a few reso’s myself this time.  I think I usually do.  I don’t recall last year’s.  I suspect that means I didn’t keep them.  Anyway, here’s the list for 2011.

  1. Lose a pound a week. Sounds small enough until you do the math and see it leads to dropping 52 pounds.  And while my aim is to average a pound a week (don’t want to void a resolution by gaining a pound in late February or something), if I drop five in a week, I’ll still aim for one more the next.  I have plenty to lose.  Trust me, 52 pounds will still leave me well above my not-so-perfect target weight.  Like Kevin Spacey in “American Beauty”, I just want to look good naked…or have enough of a view to know how I look naked.  (There are supposedly feet down there, too.  Too much?  Let’s move on.)  The diet (Weight Watchers) starts Monday.
  2. Write 100 words every day. Paltry?  Yes.  Profound?  Definitely.  I’m installing a triple-count penalty for missed days; if I miss a day, I write 300 the next day — not just 200 — to compensate.  No building up ahead of time either.  If I write 2000 tomorrow, the next day I still need my 100.  I just need to get writing every day.  (I confess, I didn’t do it yesterday, so it’s 300 today…but I’ve not yet made it to bed to separate the days, so let’s move on.)
  3. Read a novel and two shorts each month. I’m a slow reader.  Now that I have my Kindle, though, I’ll be able to keep my stuff at my fingertips and make progress.  No reading = no writing…or at least poor writing.
  4. Exercise twice a week. I leave the definition of “exercise” vague because I’m not expecting miracles.  Beginner’s yoga, a walk, the elliptical, strenuous ping-pong…anything better than the walk-to-the-fridge routine I’ve been on.
  5. Get organized. I’m a scattered individual.  “Chaos Out of Chaos” is pretty descriptive of me.  I need to clean out my car, my classroom, all my closets, and redo my computer files…and that’s just January.  I need to start filing instead of piling and get papers graded in less than a week.

Five resolutions.  That’s a lot for a guy that has never followed through with one before.  I guess it’s like planting a lot of seeds hoping one or two might grow.

Five resolutions for me to break

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

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.  😉