Welcome to 2012

I got kind of sucked up into making a ton of food earlier this week (new whole30, what-what) and then jury duty happened (and is continuing to happen today - why couldn't I have been more offensive?) so this new year has been slipping by without time for throwing together a list of resolutions and/or goals. Which is actually fine by me, since I've never really been into them (I was anti-resolutions before it was cool to be anti-resolutions). And I've been spending my time working on things that are important to me the last few days, anyway. Diet. Reading. Editing. Spending time with friends. Exercising.

I think, if anything, my biggest goal for this year is to learn how to better utilize my free time. Because here I am, unemployed, sitting on my ass most of the day (actually, I've been pretty good about not just sitting on my ass, at least when I'm not sick), not getting nearly as much accomplished as I could. And last year, my absolute biggest regret was not fully utilizing all that freedom I had at work. And once I use that time more efficiently, a lot of my other problems will fall in line, like finding a job and becoming a better human being for myself and my friends.

Six months ago, my goals essentially boiled down to getting in better shape and writing consistently. I bagged both of those pretty well. Now for the next six months, I'm going to focus on efficiency. I'm not entirely sure how to do that, but there are a ton of free organizational tools out there. And I know one very important step is limiting how much I run around in circles on the internet, checking and rechecking the same blogs. I waste a lot of time online, during the most productive part of my day (morning), and I don't even use it to post or comment or do anything productive. Not cool.

So I think I'll take a leaf from Scalzi, and shut off everything until my daily goal is met or noon, whichever comes first. And also research other techniques. The pomodoro technique worked for a while, but I ended up putting off starting the timer so I could keep procrastinating. Ah, procrastination.

But I cannot say I don't have goals I want to reach this year. I want to read 50 books, 10 more than last year, from in my market (strict fantasy this time!) and from well outside my usual reading comfort zone. I want to do a monthly recap of what I've read, instead of the six-months one I did, so I can be a little more in-depth.

Writing-wise, I have a manuscript (ZA) to finish editing and send out to beta readers. My current goal is March, but that may be a tad ambitious, knowing how long it took me to edit GW last year, which is a clean 50k shorter. And had at least one full rewrite iteration behind it. So realistically, more like June, but lets aim for March and see what happens. :)

I want to finish another two draft zeroes, or possibly one draft zero and a draft 1.0 (SC from last summer needs a thorough rewrite, it's just not marketable until GW is), along with completing ZA and sending out queries. This may also be a bit ambitious, but if I get back on track with writing 1k/day, it definitely can be done.

If nothing else, I definitely want to act more like a real writer, and, you know, actually write, like I was doing for most of last year. That is what makes me feel accomplished in life more than any other job and if I want it as an occupation, I damn well better keep at it, and fight for it. One thing I learned from last year was that it's perfectly okay to just have a day job, as long as you have else passionate driving you.

Exercise-wise, I have a number of much firmer and measurable goals. I need to be able to do a strict pull-up by March 16, my cousin's wedding and the next time I see my dad. I told him back in October that the next time we saw each other, I'd be able to do one. I can currently crank out five chin-ups in a row, but no pull-up.

I want to run a comfortable three miles and compete in a number of 5ks, increasing my race time with each one. There is a 7 mile run in April which I want to be able to complete without walking and apparently once you can run 3 miles with ease, it's easy to stack miles on until you get to half-marathon levels. I don't ever want to do a half-marathon, but a 10k would be dandy.

I also want to get married, have fun, climb a 9, learn to cook new things, reestablish fancy dinner night, make new friends, get a job, stare in abject amazement at the stars, hike Mt Lemmon, visit family, giggle mischievously, dream outrageously, be scared shitless, be pushed well outside my comfort zone, step well outside my comfort zone, fail, fail, and fail again.