Why I hate resolutions and updates!
I’m lame at this whole “I need to update a blog” thing. I apologize dedicated readers. But in light of my lack of dedication, I wish you all a belated Happy New Year! Yippee! It’s a new year! A new day! This year will be the year that everything changes in my life! Yessiree, I am going to make a difference in the world this year! 2010 might as well be called The Year of Jen because it’s going to be fantastic!
Except there’s one problem: I hate the new year. Yea yea clean slate and all that. All lies. I’ve never been one for resolutions. We hear constantly that a person makes a resolution and then after two weeks of dedication, they fall off the map. Buh-bye resolutions! Why? We are who we are. If I have spent my entire life being a couch potato, it’s going to be pretty hard for me to make a resolution to work out six days a week. And there’s no shame in that.
For example, I’ve been trying desperately to become a morning person. I work well in the morning and would love nothing more than to not feel rushed before heading off to a day of work. Except it’s pretty hard to be a morning person when I don’t go to bed until well after midnight. 6am rolls around quickly when you keep night hours. Old habits die hard and I’m a prime example. I’m not saying change can’t or won’t happen, I’m just saying it’s likely not to happen. Ah, pessimism.
Instead, I believe in setting goals. Goals tend to be much more realistic and they revolve around who you are as a person. And the great thing about goals is that you can set them whenever you decide to! I know I know, this entire post is really just being technical with words, but don’t fret, there’s a reason for this post and I’m sure it will excite you more than a steaming cup of hot cocoa and a brand new Red Rider BB Gun.
My thing is that, if you want to change, why wait until the New Year to do it? It seems like a lousy excuse to me. I’m the Queen of Procrastination, so I know how it goes. Oh I want to do this or that, but I don’t have time now. Oh, I’ll do it next year! Yea! Except next year you have even less time and so on and so forth.
I advocate changing now. You want to do something with yourself, why not today? Why not wake up this morning and “be the change you want to see in this world.” Why wait until January 1st to change?
Therefore, I’ve set a goal for myself. I started writing Spring of Innocents in September and I want to have most of it done by May and I definitely want the entire thing to be finished come September 2010. Ambitious for a full time worker and grad student? You betcha? But you better also believe I want this. I expect I’ll be writing the final pages of the story by the end of this week, then it’s time to go through and fill in all of the gaps and make the story more full of life. I’m quite excited about how things are going. I really like the feel of this story but of course I’m biased. It’s mine.
Finally, I have a question for everyone. I’m sure that many writers know of the site Authonomy and maybe a couple other sites just like it. However, what are your thoughts on them? Do you think they are actually helpful for those that dare to dream like myself? I’ve had experience with sites like that in the past and most of it has never turned out to be fruitful. The responses were always “Omg it’s good! I love it!” Which yea, thanks for boosting my ego, but I want really good, fantastically good. I wouldn’t post things on Authonomy for the chance to have my story read by editors. Instead, I want it for the critiques, the harsh feedback that lets me know where my story falls short. I’ve read that many writers on sites like Authonomy don’t really grant that type of critique and instead give glowing reviews in the hopes of having the favor returned so that they might be plucked by Harper Collins. Is this right?
I suppose if nothing else, its good for networking right?
Thoughts?
I’ll be sure to let everyone know when I finish the rough draft of Spring of Innocents!
