“Begin as you mean to go on.”
I’ve heard that phrase a few times, so this year I’m trying it out. I used to be a writer — not a professional writer, you understand, just in the more general sense of “a person who writes”, but I’ve been quite inconsistent with it and it no longer feels natural to me. It’s one of only two things I have enough natural talent for to actually be good at, so losing my touch troubles me. Consequently, I’ll begin 2014 by writing, beginning with this post, and intend to go on doing so. We’ll start out easy — 700 words a week, fiction or non-fiction, and as part of those 700, at least five days where I write at least 100 words — no slacking for a week and then having to do it all at once. It’s a low bar — this post is almost 150 words already. But the goal is consistency, not volume. I can raise volume later. Maybe I’ll even work my way up to doing NaNoWriMo this year (which requires around 1700 words a day every day). Also, looking back over this paragraph, I should also plan to work on using dashes less. 😛
I’m not one for resolutions, but I like to think about intentions at least, where I’d like to put my attention in the coming year. So let’s see:
- Writing
- Consistency
- Opinion pieces. I’m tired of limiting expression of my views to flame wars in Facebook comment threads — it’s time to be pro-active more often than re-active.
- Income from it would be excellent. Not necessarily enough to live off of, just a little extra here and there, and if it were passive income, best of all.
- Personal relationships. Meet more new people, date more, connect with my next SO.
- Minimalism. Get rid of as much of the unneeded stuff in my house as I can to ensure there’s room for the stuff that is needed, and space to think and write and live.
- Fitness. Gettin’ old over here, my body is telling me I need to do more to maintain it. 🙁
I think that’s enough to work on for now — maybe I’ll revisit later.
How are you beginning? How do you mean to go on?