Happy New Year

2007 Retrospective
Coffee. Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop (like coming home). Brief, almost comic, stint at law school (like the sinking feeling of getting pulled over for the first time). Coffee. MFA applications. Four weddings, no funerals. Blog. Coffee. Snow!

2008 Prospectus

• I begin the new year with coffee and about 6” of snow. More of each are anticipated throughout the day. Snow!
• Last year (last spring actually) I made it a goal/effort to post a new blog entry once a week. In 2007 I accumulated 50 entries, most of which occurred in a flurry at the end of the year. This year the goal is to make it a more evenly spaced 52+ entries.
• There’s the JanNoWriMo goal already mentioned.
• Then there’s me lighting candles, praying to idols and doing rain dances to bring myself an MFA acceptance letter. If I don’t get one I will have to have a Woah-Stop-Evaluate moment. Library science classes, anyone? That or radio intern, that was always fun.
• There’s other goals out there to be had, like losing a stone this year. Not because I’m British but because I think a stone is the most wonderfully awkward unit of weight. Anyway, weight isn’t my goal so much as working out more so that my knee hurts me less. I have my mother’s genetics to thank for the fact that I have never done anything mean to my knees and yet they hate me.
• Maybe I should also get a better aka "real" job. Attempts have been made: none successful.
• Writing! At least one hour straight daily. They say that if you make it a daily habit, that if you sit and write for a set amount of time even if you’re not inspired that you’re that much more productive when you are inspired, and that inspiration strikes that much more often. They (scientific researches this time) say that if you do something every day for 21 days it becomes a habit. Tangible goals: an hour+ per day on fiction and a story per month (length unimportant).
• Coffee!

If nothing else, the last item well definitely feature prominently in 2008.

Oddly enough tonight feels like it has more magic than New Year’s Eve did. Maybe because there’s a layer of snow on everything creating these great highlights and the sky shimmers back the street lights creating a grey-orange background to the night. Maybe it’s just that everything last night was about the end and tonight is all about the beginning of something. Either way I’m writing in the dark, because the dark preserves my view of the night out my window.

Pictures: top coffee stolen from Jud, snow = outside my house courtesy of my most awesome christmas camera.