venta

Yup, it's the beginning of January, and so it's time for the annual bookkeeping spree.

Last year, I resolved to:

1. Carry on Thinking. It's still easier to do something because I know someone wants me to, or to ignore problems that come sidling up. It's still easier not to dig around in my own subconscious to find out what I really feel about something. But I think it's important, and worth nagging myself to keep on doing.

2. Make the time to spend by myself doing Stuff. Ideally, this will be writing and music, as carried forward from last year. However, I'm
allowing the idea that other things might catch my interest as they pass. This, of course, requires me to keep the tedious life-admin in check sufficiently that when I have an evening at home it's free to actually get on with things more interesting than paying the gas bill and hoovering the stairs. I think I'll count it as a success on this score if I can point to a number of finished projects at the end of the year, and say I learnt to play that sonata, I wrote that short story, I took those photographs.

1 is on the whole, I think, not doing too badly. My old habit of just considering what other people want me to do (instead of what I want) still leaps out to bite me on occasion. One particularly nasty occurrence broke out in the summer when I found myself trying to reconcile three differents sets of peoples' (irreconcilable) expectations - and found that I didn't even have an opinion on what I wanted to do, other than trying to achieve the impossible.

However, I think this is sufficiently underway that it can be signed off the resolution list. I intend to Carry On Thinking, but hope that it's becoming engrained enough that it doesn't require a special resolution.

2, predictably, didn't do so well. And the successes it did have were in slightly unexpected areas. Music and writing haven't really seen any progress, and photography has barely got a look in (though the last is influenced by the fact that all my photos seem to be rubbish these days - more on that another day). Actually, writing has probably gone downhill, since my workplace forbade access to blogs during the year and that's dented my LJing somewhat. This LJ is scarcely epic literature, but at least writing gig reviews and so on reminded me how you glue words together.

However, I have managed to "finish" a couple of projects. I successfully completed the Advent calendar I set out to make, and got other people to do the same. I kept my BAYD posts up nearly every week. And I started other projects of geurilla creativity up, although sadly none of them have come home to roost yet (and since they consisted of posting strange things to people and waiting for results, the lack of roosting is out of my control :)

None of these are particularly devastating projects (the conquering of Asia had to go on the back-burner in the end), but at least a few things got out of the concept phase and into the execution phase, which is traditionally the point at which I stick.

Accordingly, I think this should go to the top[*] of the resolution stack this year.

1. Do More Creative Stuff
Yes, writing, music, etc. But really, I'm still just keen on stuff. I'd like to have achieved Things over the course of the year, I'm willing to be flexible on the exact nature of the Things.

2. Sort My Room Out
Now, anyone who's, er, ever spoken to me might well be aware that "tidy my room" has been on my to-do list since about 1999. I'm not talking about just a quick tidy-up here, but a redesign of lifestyle is really required to sort it properly. I have a lot of stuff and a small room, and achieving long-term tidiness isn't that easy.

This resolution really covers a wider range of things, like keeping on top of paperwork and correspondence, and not losing/forgetting important things. Also the timely completion of ongoing tasks, like regularly updating Mabel's website.

To-do lists (on paper, because I'm like that) will probably feature heavily.

3. Dress Up
Having had two heavyweight resolutions, this one is nice and fluffy :) I have been noticing of late that (a) I own a lot of nice clothes and (b) I spend updwards of 99.9% in jeans or combats and a jumper. This is silly. On New Year's Eve I went to a 60s themed party, and thus was wearing a shovelful of black eye makeup and a minidress. And I thought, gosh, I don't dress up for parties that often. Hey, this is quite fun. I should do it more often.

As is traditional with New Year's Resolutions, I shall note that it is January and throw myself wholeheartedly into them (today's to-do list has upwards of twenty things on it).

[*] Or according to certain seditious sources, the bottom. If you're not familiar with the top/bottom argument about stacks, ignore this and say "huh, programmers".