Hi,
New Year’s Resolutions (NYRs). I wonder why we choose the start of a new year to resolve to accomplish something we have probably have been meaning to do for some time, but didn’t manage to get it done earlier. If the task was important, why didn’t we do it when we first thought about it? The resolutions people choose can be almost anything. Losing weight, establishing healthier eating habits, and exercising more, seemed to be the most common goals expressed in a 2024 Forbes survey. That’s understandable, I suppose. They are items that are on many of our minds, so why didn’t we begin doing those things when we first thought about them?
Getting healthy (or whatever) is worth doing, but how many of us actual stick with it? Again, according to that Forbes poll (and a few others I’ve seen), only about 8% actually follow through. Sometime around the second Friday in January seems to be when most of the 92% of Resolutioners give up. It’s known as “Quitters Day.”
I don’t make NYRs any more. I try to treat January as just the next month after December, not a special turning point. I will have changes in my life in the new year, of course (some are on purpose and some are imposed), but they usually don’t affect my attitude toward being alive (I like it and I’m glad I am). What I have found to be true (for me) is that resolving to do something beginning at a particular date rarely works. I usually get distracted and forget about it. I do, however, keep a set of fluid deadlines in my mind for things I want to accomplish in the near and far future.
In the near future I intend to finally finish my novella, Flood and Fire, the prequel to my currently off-the-market thriller, Jagged Man. I’ve been working on Flood and Fire for quite a while. I’ve been bogged down in the middle of it for too long, so that has to be my immediate focus. My next fluid deadline after I finish it is to re-edit Jagged Man, redo the cover art, lay out the interior, and re-publish it. The corollary to those two soft deadlines is: If I continue to be stymied by Flood and Fire, I will shift my focus to editing Jagged Man until I’m ready to work on Flood and Fire again. If I’m still having problems with Flood and Fire when Jagged Man is ready, I’ll just publish Jagged Man first, and follow it up with the prequel later.
I do have another mental deadline after that, two projects that I think are going to be really good. One is closer to ready than the other because the other will be a series and will need a lot more research before I can start writing it. It’s good to have so many choices. It would be nice to have more time to deal with them, though.
The next post is about the status of those projects. See you then.
Michael
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