Resolutions

I'm too lazy to look up quotes so I'm going to share some that either I made up or I just can't recall who said them.

"There's always room for improvement"

Okay, that's the only one I can think of.

Every year on my birthday I make my yearly resolutions. Some people do this on New Year's Eve. Some people never do it. SOME people do it on a weekly basis. One year, I did in June. It was panic induced because I was out of money and looking for a job and all I could find was NOTHING. So, I made a proclamation/resolution and had my One Year Of Opus (which you can read about on my July 2007 post). I resolved to spend NO money on clothes or any type of adornement; such as shoes, purses, hair ribbons (hahaha, hair ribbons) and earrings. I did it. Well, there was that one tee shirt. Oops. I had a whole list of things and I accomplished most of them. But that year was unusual and it's usually a birthday thing. My own private year of starting over.

Feeling Good

So, this year, after a few weeks of thought, I've come up with a couple things/ideas/desires I'd like to set down and commit to......
*Being a better writer.
*Staying the weight that I am right now.
*Putting together a reading to benefit something worthwhile.....like hospice or Smiletrain.
*Eating dinner at the dining room table more often.
*Traveling to someplace I've never been before.
*Check out some live music at least once a month.
*Dance more.

I seem to work better with rules and lists. I need deadlines and a kick in the butt! I need regular wake-up calls. I like gaining the knowledge that yeah, maybe I fucked up or got stuck in a rut or just forgot to do things I used to like, yet since it's my birthday I can start over and be BETTER!

I had this miserable experience that motivated me on the writing one. I was looking at the NY Times a few days ago and there was a blurb about a book. It was called "The Happiness Project" and it was written by a woman who took a year and spent that year doing what she wanted/needed to do to be happy. HELLO. That was MY book damnit. I could have written that book. That was my one year of opus. I had the damn rough draft. I could have added, improved and edited. I could have WORKED at it. But, did I write the book? NO. Did I write any book? NO. One thing that impedes me (through my own fault) is that I take what other people say (or what I imagine they think) to heart. I assume I must write the regular, conventional, novel or saga. What I want to write is a book that is unusual in it's form, that is part memoir, part something, and part something else. I'm a conversational person, a person immersed in reality, I can't (don't want to) write a murder mystery or a romance. I need to write about what I know. I don't think I want to write poems...at least I think I want to write MORE than poems. So, by saying I have a resolution to be a better writer, I think it means that I want to be a truthful writer, a more frequent writer and a writer who just DOES it. So, stepping out on a limb here, I think I'll just say that one of my resolutions is to actually write a book that I try and get published. There. Done and done. No, wait, not TRY and get published. GET published. On my terms, as weird and ridiculous as it might be. A sort of memoir, poetry, short story, surprises in envelopes, recipe, general life hints, and picture filled opus.

Yeah birthday resolutions!!!!!