2014 Resolutions, or I Should Write More
Dec. 31st, 2013 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cryptogirlWell, we got back from Edinburgh yesterday after a fraught rainy drive in which my husband learned how to download Spotify playlists so he could interrupt Foxtrot with CHVRCHES*. We've had a massive lie-in, ploughed through some of the food my parents weighed the car down with, and we have our first Hogmanay drink of a Fog Cutter with all the ingredients orthodox except the Earl Grey gin, Peruvian brandy and Kraken dark spiced rum. So, not very traditional but BY GOD IT'S DRINKABLE.**
Anyway. It seems traditional to do resolutions of some sort as 2013 draws to its arse-end and we go into 2014, incidentally the Scottish Year of Homecoming.
1) Finish the novel.
Yeah, it's getting done by the end of January. Partly because my dear editor will be in town then and I can be talked out of the grimly-inevitable 'BUT IT'S ALL REALLY BAD AND NOBODY WANTS TO READ IT' angst. And partly because it's getting to be a full-time endeavour along with housewifing and the Scotland Plan.
2) Get the Scotland Plan in action.
We're aiming to live in Edinburgh sometime in February or so, because it's amazing among other reasons. The house we looked at is sold now, but there's one a stone's throw from Arthur's Seat and another near Duddingston Loch, and I would basically have either of these and trek ill-advisedly around with a notebook writing down novel ideas till the end of time. Oh, I do that anyway :(
I also want to note that I have got a Rightmove account and the Windows Phone app. YOU MAY ATTACK ME AS A CLASS TRAITOR NOW.
3) Reassess hobbies and do more of the enjoyable ones.
Things I did more of this year:
- Weightlifting and general strength training
- Writing
- Music, both playing and listening
- Brain-stretching things like learning languages
Things I did less of:
- Sitting around being glum
- Doing jobs that made me sad
- Being glued to WoW/the TV
I think letting the things I did less of slide would leave exactly no gaping hole in my life, don't you agree? (Although I have lots of good TV stuff from filesharing stored up, and I'm not abandoning gaming, dear lord no. I just got Fallout: New Vegas in a sale. COME ON, GUYS, GAMER 4 LYFE.)
I wonder if I can double the amount I can lift on the barbell. 40kg must be doable even if it's half my body weight, right?
4) Keep the brainmeat happy.
It's not been a bad year brain-wise. I've generally steered clear of Drama and Doom. I think this is partly because I'm doing things I want to do that make me happy, and partly it's having a lower bullshit threshold as I limp into my 30s.
Twitter and Facebook have been surprisingly good this year for my mood; the ever-present Bacon Posse have provided laughs***, I have a bunch of lovely followers who are part of the Eurovision fandom and we chat across oceans about languages and culture, and there's my lovely Cambridge girls (and Maltese ex-pat) who help me ruin both sites with threads about ovaries, novel-writing and the Great Oddie-Gabriel War started via Skype and the podcast which is in an uneasy truce. the cards Kelly and I sent are perhaps our finest hours. Well, finest in-joke ever. ROUND ONE TO ME.
5) Learn something new.
I quite fancy learning these things, in no particular order:
- Another language
- Another musical instrument
- Something crafty
I'm working on Gaelic, which was a long-term plan, but I guess I should at least round off the Romance languages a bit or do a Slavic one. Perhaps Spanish and Polish would do. I'm fed up of understanding more of the former from Latin inferences and drive-by reading up on conjugations, but not knowing enough to actually hold a conversation. And besides, it would make having the novel character that speaks it a bit happier.****
I'm torn between choosing a stringed intrument and something woodwind-y. I want to play the clarsach because it's entirely beautiful, and I want to play the flute for mostly the same reasons. Let's wait and see how skint I am next year. Maybe the royalties from the book will help out.*****
Craft-wise, I might start drawing and painting again, or get back into making lovely stained glass things as the evening class was loads of fun. If I got good I could even sell the things I make for a decent amount. Maybe.
Anyway, that's the list. Let's see if we can't tick them off and keep my 30s as the decade I actually *had fun* and stopped being all serious an' ting. It's been a mixed bag of a year for me and a lot of my friends, but I hope 2014 treats you better and you have more happiness/gin/bacon/delete as appropriate x
* Philistine. But I do love CHVRCHES, and so should you.
** I blame Hidden Rooms for this. At one point, I was approximately 75% Fog Cutter and nothing else.
*** A long-standing Twitter gang. Members include a US sysadmin who hates pants, the CEO of antivirus firm ESET, the infamous Paperghost, his lovely girlfriend, a Bristolian Anglican web guru and a Suffolk-dwelling web dev and aspiring novelist. I love them all dearly.
**** Butcjwatson points out I could do Finnish and Hungarian, then boggle gently that they're in the same family. Hmmmm.
***** ACTIVATE THE SARCASM KLAXON CAPTAIN
Anyway. It seems traditional to do resolutions of some sort as 2013 draws to its arse-end and we go into 2014, incidentally the Scottish Year of Homecoming.
1) Finish the novel.
Yeah, it's getting done by the end of January. Partly because my dear editor will be in town then and I can be talked out of the grimly-inevitable 'BUT IT'S ALL REALLY BAD AND NOBODY WANTS TO READ IT' angst. And partly because it's getting to be a full-time endeavour along with housewifing and the Scotland Plan.
2) Get the Scotland Plan in action.
We're aiming to live in Edinburgh sometime in February or so, because it's amazing among other reasons. The house we looked at is sold now, but there's one a stone's throw from Arthur's Seat and another near Duddingston Loch, and I would basically have either of these and trek ill-advisedly around with a notebook writing down novel ideas till the end of time. Oh, I do that anyway :(
I also want to note that I have got a Rightmove account and the Windows Phone app. YOU MAY ATTACK ME AS A CLASS TRAITOR NOW.
3) Reassess hobbies and do more of the enjoyable ones.
Things I did more of this year:
- Weightlifting and general strength training
- Writing
- Music, both playing and listening
- Brain-stretching things like learning languages
Things I did less of:
- Sitting around being glum
- Doing jobs that made me sad
- Being glued to WoW/the TV
I think letting the things I did less of slide would leave exactly no gaping hole in my life, don't you agree? (Although I have lots of good TV stuff from filesharing stored up, and I'm not abandoning gaming, dear lord no. I just got Fallout: New Vegas in a sale. COME ON, GUYS, GAMER 4 LYFE.)
I wonder if I can double the amount I can lift on the barbell. 40kg must be doable even if it's half my body weight, right?
4) Keep the brainmeat happy.
It's not been a bad year brain-wise. I've generally steered clear of Drama and Doom. I think this is partly because I'm doing things I want to do that make me happy, and partly it's having a lower bullshit threshold as I limp into my 30s.
Twitter and Facebook have been surprisingly good this year for my mood; the ever-present Bacon Posse have provided laughs***, I have a bunch of lovely followers who are part of the Eurovision fandom and we chat across oceans about languages and culture, and there's my lovely Cambridge girls (and Maltese ex-pat) who help me ruin both sites with threads about ovaries, novel-writing and the Great Oddie-Gabriel War started via Skype and the podcast which is in an uneasy truce. the cards Kelly and I sent are perhaps our finest hours. Well, finest in-joke ever. ROUND ONE TO ME.
5) Learn something new.
I quite fancy learning these things, in no particular order:
- Another language
- Another musical instrument
- Something crafty
I'm working on Gaelic, which was a long-term plan, but I guess I should at least round off the Romance languages a bit or do a Slavic one. Perhaps Spanish and Polish would do. I'm fed up of understanding more of the former from Latin inferences and drive-by reading up on conjugations, but not knowing enough to actually hold a conversation. And besides, it would make having the novel character that speaks it a bit happier.****
I'm torn between choosing a stringed intrument and something woodwind-y. I want to play the clarsach because it's entirely beautiful, and I want to play the flute for mostly the same reasons. Let's wait and see how skint I am next year. Maybe the royalties from the book will help out.*****
Craft-wise, I might start drawing and painting again, or get back into making lovely stained glass things as the evening class was loads of fun. If I got good I could even sell the things I make for a decent amount. Maybe.
Anyway, that's the list. Let's see if we can't tick them off and keep my 30s as the decade I actually *had fun* and stopped being all serious an' ting. It's been a mixed bag of a year for me and a lot of my friends, but I hope 2014 treats you better and you have more happiness/gin/bacon/delete as appropriate x
* Philistine. But I do love CHVRCHES, and so should you.
** I blame Hidden Rooms for this. At one point, I was approximately 75% Fog Cutter and nothing else.
*** A long-standing Twitter gang. Members include a US sysadmin who hates pants, the CEO of antivirus firm ESET, the infamous Paperghost, his lovely girlfriend, a Bristolian Anglican web guru and a Suffolk-dwelling web dev and aspiring novelist. I love them all dearly.
**** But
cjwatson points out I could do Finnish and Hungarian, then boggle gently that they're in the same family. Hmmmm.***** ACTIVATE THE SARCASM KLAXON CAPTAIN
