New Year's Resolution 2015
Dec. 31st, 2014 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robertsloan2I've come up with a good one for this year. It's even traditional, something properly negative and self-limiting, all about Giving Up A Bad Habit.
2015 Resolution: No Self Improvement!
That means no weight loss dieting, no eat-healthier plans, no self-help books or videos, no exercise programmes or gym memberships, no affirmations or positive thinking exercises, no Success Visualizations, no what is that thingy - wishy stuff, the sitting about wishing you had a lot of money thingy. I think it's Law of Attraction or something like that, if you just keep thinking about happy things nothing bad will ever happen and all your bills will get paid before they get to you sort of stuff. At any rate, none of that. No Self Improvement!
I'm sixty years old. If I don't like who I am, who the heck am I looking to please? Not some mass market self improvement industry, that's for sure. They make a fortune pandering to people's social insecurities and setting them up for disappointment. Giving up your various recreational enjoyments in favor of more virtuous ones that don't serve the same needs tends to come out as a net loss. You can diet like crazy but that's just going to teach your body to hoard calories because you're facing intermittent starvation. You can exercise grimly and push that to the point of sports injury without actually getting anything out of it. Lots of people buy gym memberships for a whole year and then quit before February - but not without paying for the whole year in advance. That's what these things are really about.
All this just to get to the point in February of the miserable annual self-flagellation of how you never succeed at any resolutions.
I have every confidence that come February, I'm not going to slip from this and suddenly start ordering self help books instead of pastel painting ones. I expect to spend more on new art supplies than either junk food or health supplements. Daily sketching is a good habit I plan to keep, but that's something to focus on a monthly basis rather than declare for all year - that's always Health and Weather Permitting.
I would like to get at least one of my novels edited and processed and made available online as an ebook this year. Currently thanks to finding the perfect cover artist in Jillian Lambert, (blog is http://jillianlambert.blogspot.com) the one I think I can get done before the end of 2015 is "Elder's Pride" formerly called "Sabertooth." It's the one about a pride of Smilodon fatalis in Los Angeles before any humans got to California, right around when the tar pits were still filling up with lots of animal bones. A cat lover's big cat book, a romp into prehistory with lots of very large felines interacting in a family. Very heartwarming and furry, with extra large teeth and fairly impressive claws. Not your usual mog, these cats ate elephants for a living.
Also on the editing agenda, I plan on continuing the edits to "Chazho" to fix point of view issues and get those first five books in the Piarra series ready to go before releasing any of them. So I really have two major editing projects for 2015 but will not list them as year-goals.
If either is done before 2015 ends, great, happy, wonderful, I lucked on time and effort and getting my life together. If not, I didn't set an artificial deadline to get it done by. I do my best work when I just do it at its own pace in the time and energy I have available. I seize the moment on good days and slob off on bad days but still often think about what I'll be doing once I'm up to it again.
Have been getting the daily sketching thing back in the past few days, you can see some tigers and other sketches posted at http://robs-daily-painting.blogspot.com/ aka Rob's Daily Painting where I will probably do my own version of the sabercats too once I get going on those edits. They are as fun to draw as they are to write about.
Ari purrs and sheds Cat Hairs of Inspiration on you! Happy New Year! Quit kicking yourself and go have a good time, the annual "get drunk and don't drive home" holiday is what's up.
2015 Resolution: No Self Improvement!
That means no weight loss dieting, no eat-healthier plans, no self-help books or videos, no exercise programmes or gym memberships, no affirmations or positive thinking exercises, no Success Visualizations, no what is that thingy - wishy stuff, the sitting about wishing you had a lot of money thingy. I think it's Law of Attraction or something like that, if you just keep thinking about happy things nothing bad will ever happen and all your bills will get paid before they get to you sort of stuff. At any rate, none of that. No Self Improvement!
I'm sixty years old. If I don't like who I am, who the heck am I looking to please? Not some mass market self improvement industry, that's for sure. They make a fortune pandering to people's social insecurities and setting them up for disappointment. Giving up your various recreational enjoyments in favor of more virtuous ones that don't serve the same needs tends to come out as a net loss. You can diet like crazy but that's just going to teach your body to hoard calories because you're facing intermittent starvation. You can exercise grimly and push that to the point of sports injury without actually getting anything out of it. Lots of people buy gym memberships for a whole year and then quit before February - but not without paying for the whole year in advance. That's what these things are really about.
All this just to get to the point in February of the miserable annual self-flagellation of how you never succeed at any resolutions.
I have every confidence that come February, I'm not going to slip from this and suddenly start ordering self help books instead of pastel painting ones. I expect to spend more on new art supplies than either junk food or health supplements. Daily sketching is a good habit I plan to keep, but that's something to focus on a monthly basis rather than declare for all year - that's always Health and Weather Permitting.
I would like to get at least one of my novels edited and processed and made available online as an ebook this year. Currently thanks to finding the perfect cover artist in Jillian Lambert, (blog is http://jillianlambert.blogspot.com) the one I think I can get done before the end of 2015 is "Elder's Pride" formerly called "Sabertooth." It's the one about a pride of Smilodon fatalis in Los Angeles before any humans got to California, right around when the tar pits were still filling up with lots of animal bones. A cat lover's big cat book, a romp into prehistory with lots of very large felines interacting in a family. Very heartwarming and furry, with extra large teeth and fairly impressive claws. Not your usual mog, these cats ate elephants for a living.
Also on the editing agenda, I plan on continuing the edits to "Chazho" to fix point of view issues and get those first five books in the Piarra series ready to go before releasing any of them. So I really have two major editing projects for 2015 but will not list them as year-goals.
If either is done before 2015 ends, great, happy, wonderful, I lucked on time and effort and getting my life together. If not, I didn't set an artificial deadline to get it done by. I do my best work when I just do it at its own pace in the time and energy I have available. I seize the moment on good days and slob off on bad days but still often think about what I'll be doing once I'm up to it again.
Have been getting the daily sketching thing back in the past few days, you can see some tigers and other sketches posted at http://robs-daily-painting.blogspot.com/ aka Rob's Daily Painting where I will probably do my own version of the sabercats too once I get going on those edits. They are as fun to draw as they are to write about.
Ari purrs and sheds Cat Hairs of Inspiration on you! Happy New Year! Quit kicking yourself and go have a good time, the annual "get drunk and don't drive home" holiday is what's up.
