02009 New Year's Resolution #40: No More Resolutions

Back in January, I resolved to try to average at least one New Year's Resolution for every week of this year. I fell short of my goal. However, I did get three quarters of the way there. I figure that's reasonably respectable and something I can extract some pride from. Now that my Year of Many Resolutions is coming to a close, I am going to make one final resolution that should carry me through 02010:

I resolve to make no New Year's Resolutions in the coming year.

I've enjoyed making all these resolutions. It's been good to have real goals to try to meet. And I've been pleasantly surprised at just how successful I've managed to be. But I've had enough for now. From now on, instead of making straightforward resolutions, I'm just going to try doing those things that make sense. I'll try to behave well, to do as little harm as possible, to improve where I see that it would be good to do so. That's generally been my approach to life all along, and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

Besides, because I didn't make all of my 02009 New Year's Resolutions at the start of the year (and because I looked at each one as a yearlong goal starting on the date that I made the resolution), I still have a lot of existing resolutions to keep me company throughout the next several months at least.

If you're interested in a fun mental exercise, I suggest trying your own hand at coming up with at least as many New Year's Resolutions in 02010 as I came up with in 02009. You'll probably find it very difficult, especially if you take it seriously.

One final comment that's worth making: I did not actually make every resolution that occurred to me over the course of the year. I could, for example, have resolved to make an effort towards being better at remembering people's names or resolved to try to teach myself to speed read or resolved to make a serious effort at learning a second language. These would all have been worthwhile resolutions. I would really like to do each. But I just knew that my likelihood of success would be terribly low during my Year of Many Resolutions. I picked my battles. Those other goals will have to wait for another time.

-----

What follows is a list of the resolutions I made in 02009, along with the dates on which they were made. I'm not providing a status report for each one. Suffice it to say that some will end up fulfilled, some partially so, and some were a bust…although there were probably fewer in this last category than a reasonable person would expect.

1. 1/6/02009 — Whenever somebody makes a request of me, particularly if it is something that will cost me nothing but perhaps a little bit of time and effort, I resolve to try to ask myself the following question: "How would I respond to this request if it were being asked by a woman who told me that her son had been killed before his time and that this was his dying wish?"

2. 1/7/02009 — No matter how insipid I may think someone's music is [here I am thinking of acts ranging from Creed, Live, and Smashing Pumpkins (and The Smashing Pumpkins (why the nonsensical addition of "The", I will likely never comprehend)) to Steely Dan, Britney Spears and Celine Dion], I resolve that I will try to keep in mind that everyone who has ever been signed to a recording contract [even William Hung and Wesley Willis (don't get me wrong: I love what I've heard from Wesley Willis)] has a kind of talent that I simply do not possess and has developed a skill that I would likely never be able to achieve.

3. 1/9/02009 — If I get a new full time job in 02009, my new employer's main phone number will not end in "0330".

4. 1/14/02009 — I will finish typing and formatting my non-fiction book proposal and I will try to get at least one suitable publisher to entertain it. [The first publisher on my list is Oxford University Press.]

5. 1/17/02009 — I resolve to try to make at least one New Year's Resolution for every week this year.

6. 1/22/02009 — I resolve to get my weight down at least as low as 175 lbs. and to try to keep it that low.

7. 1/26/02009 — I resolve that no matter how sensible they may seem at the time, I will keep in mind that certain "experiments" ought never to be repeated. [Cinnamon and steak are two great tastes that do not go great together! Lemon Pledge is not, even in a pinch, suitable for cleaning spills on the Pergo floor!]

8. 1/27/02009 — I resolve to get more on top and to stay more on top of our household recycling. Specifically, I will make the trip to drop our recyclables off at least once a month.

9. 1/31/02009 — I resolve that I will not make efforts to become a shameless "friend accumulator" on Facebook. Anyone I invite to be my Facebook friend will be someone who I remember and for whom I have sincerely fond feelings. I won't indiscriminately invite random people who just happened to be in my high school class, or who just happen to live in my town, or who just happen to work for the same company as me.

10. 2/3/02009 — I resolve to stop putting up resistance to having my face photographed.

11. 2/10/02009 — I resolve to take a genuine stab at reading Holy Bible, by assorted dead guys.

12. 2/11/02009 — I resolve to try to produce at least 5 photographs, in the next year, of which I am unjustifiably proud.

13. 2/25/02009 — I resolve to try to reduce the amount of junk mail that ends up coming in our door, which eventually ends up going to the recyclers. Specifically, I am going to make an effort to get all of the unwanted catalogs to stop visiting our mailbox.

14. 3/5/02009 — I resolve that I will significantly cut back on my own consumption of soda and opt for water instead, most of the time.

15. 3/23/02009 — I resolve to try to improve my handwriting.

16. 3/23/02009 — I resolve to start writing letters again.

17. 4/4/02009 — I resolve to undertake some sort of new art project.

18. 4/18/02009 — I resolve to not be so senselessly protective of my bright ideas.

19. 4/22/02009 — I resolve to try to be better prepared for spontaneity!

20. 4/23/02009 — I resolve to...

* try to keep in mind that I am probably not always the ugliest guy in the room.

* try to remind myself that the IQ tests and SAT scores and school grades, while no guarantee, have been consistently high enough that "stupid" very likely does not truly apply.

* try to be encouraged (by the friends I have and by Beth's persistence in sticking around) that I may not be as boring as I have for so long believed. Perhaps there is something interesting about me after all.

* try to be less dismissive of compliments; try to accept them at face value as being sincere instead of questioning the motives behind them.

21. 5/7/02009 — I resolve to be more optimistic than is my natural tendency.

22. 5/7/02009 — I resolve that if/when it becomes a reality, I will be filled with gratitude for something that may seem strange to others: The blessed opportunity to have serious thought be strictly a leisure activity.

23. 8/28/02009 — I resolve to buy a pair of shoes to replace [my old, worn out pair].

24. 8/29/02009 — I have resolved to treat [our dog] Sherman more as one of our children than as a long-term house guest.

25. 9/1/02009 — I have resolved to make flossing a regular, lifelong, habitual part of my daily routine.

26. 9/3/02009 — I resolve to train myself to scoop the clumps from [our cat] Willow's litter boxes on a daily basis instead of just when I remember to get around to it.

27. 9/15/02009 — I resolve to consistently wear protective ear plugs whenever I am running either the lawnmower or the snow thrower.

28. 9/15/02009 — I resolve that I will learn to ride a unicycle by this time next year.

29. 9/22/02009 — I resolve to try to remember to use "aught" in speaking the name of this year (or any year since 02001), should the opportunity arise.

30. 10/13/02009 — I resolve to make a serious effort to become a fairly proficient touch typist within a year.

31. 10/20/02009 — I resolve to try to grow my own pumpkin(s) in the following year so that I can carve a jack-o'-lantern in 02010 without having to pay for it.

32. 10/30/02009 — I resolve to not wallow in my failures, but instead to take pride in my successes.

33. 10/30/02009 — I resolve to become a coupon clipper, a comparison shopper, an anti-spendthrift (at least as far as grocery shopping is concerned).

34. 10/31/02009 — I resolve to fit regular visits to the American Red Cross into my schedule. I will not merely wait for a blood drive to come conveniently close to home on a day when I don't have to work. Instead, I will make a point of scheduling appointments and making the trip to Manchester to give away my platelets.

36. 11/28/02009 — I resolve to exercise much more regularly than I ever have before.

37. 12/10/02009 — I resolve to get around to formatting and self-publishing my 02005 novella, in hopes that it might find an audience.

38. 12/12/02009 — I resolve to learn how to operate comfortably and competently in the InDesign environment.

39. 12/26/02009 — I resolved to finally learn how to skate backwards.

40. 12/29/02009 — I resolve to make no New Year's Resolutions in the coming year.

02009 New Year's Resolution #39: Backwards Progress is Progress

Our lovely town (Newport, NH) has one of the largest town commons in the state. So the promotional material says. It does not specify whether that's one of the five largest, one of the ten largest, or one of the fifty largest. Anyway, I guess the implication is that it's pretty big and that should be a point of civic pride.

What's more interesting to me is what the town does with this asset. Specifically, the northern end, and specifically during winter: Every year, after some snow has fallen, they bring in a plow and push back the snow so that there is a cleared area surrounded by a low containing wall of snow. Then they turn a hose on and flood the cleared area with water. The water then freezes to become a public outdoor ice skating rink. At the northwestern corner of the rink, they bring in a wooden shed with lots of ice skates. These skates are available for the public to "rent", free of charge.

This is our fifth winter living in Newport. While I had always intended to take advantage of this wonderful amenity, I hadn't ever gotten around to doing so until today.

This afternoon, I finally went skating on the town common. I spent well over an hour out on the ice and it wasn't until I had passed the hour mark that I finally made my only fall of the day. Quite a surprising accomplishment, considering that a) I hadn't been ice skating in a few years, b) I never was very good at it, and c) the condition of the ice in this rink really leaves quite a lot to be desired. There is, of course, no Zamboni out there, so the ice is uneven and scarred.

Anyway, when I got out there, I made a spur of the moment New Year's Resolution:

I resolved to finally learn how to skate backwards.

Until today, I had never managed to do this. Why? It always seemed quite enough of a challenge to stay upright while going forwards. I didn't feel as if I had sufficiently mastered that part of the operation to warrant taking on anything any more difficult. But today was different, and today I taught myself to skate backwards. I am slow and shaky. I am not at all skilled and there is no elegance or nuance to my technique. But I now know that I can skate backwards, however amateurishly. Progress!

The Latest Evidence (It's All in My Head)

I present here argument number 5,279 (approx.) in favor of having a solipsistic worldview. What follows is, of course, a completely true story. I promise, plus I can't make this stuff up (unless I am making everything up).

A few nights ago, I decided to watch Love Actually on DVD. A fine motion picture. I highly recommend it, in case you haven't seen it. Anyway, I've watched it a bunch of times and I don't get tired of it.

However, I do get tired, and so I did not make it all the way through this viewing on Thursday night. I fell asleep.

On Friday night, I resumed my viewing when I went to bed. Again, I fell asleep.

Yesterday, I watched a bit more while I was hanging laundry in the early afternoon. Again, I didn't get all the way through to the end of the movie, as I stopped watching when the laundry was all hung.

At some point a little later in the afternoon, Beth was watching the teevee and a commercial for Aciphex came on. Without really paying attention to what the drug is designed to treat, Beth asked me whether I wanted some Aciphex. [This was asked solely for the comedic value, as somehow this drug company decided that it made sense to give a drug a name that sounds like "ass effects".]

I, of course, declined, but this did provide me with a golden opportunity to tell Beth that I had been thinking about the following idea recently: Shouldn't there be some sort of food that you could eat that would color your burps and farts? That would be worthy of the "ass effects" name! You could have green ass effects and pink ass effects and swirly ass effects.

So this was yesterday.

Last night, I went to bed and finished watching Love Actually. When it was over, I was still not quite sleepy. So, I decided to watch the Deleted Scenes section of the DVD. Despite having watched the movie a bunch of times, I had never before watched any of the deleted scenes on the disc.

Lo and behold, what do I discover in the deleted scenes?

You guessed it: There's a kid who gets in trouble at school because he wrote an essay about what he wants for Christmas, and what he wants is for farts to become visible! There's this whole funny sequence of showing how great it would be if people's farts were visible, including Queen Elizabeth II's farts.

Again, I repeat, I had never seen these deleted scenes before. I can also assure you that I had never heard these scenes described. I had never read about them. And there is absolutely nothing in the final cut of the movie that would suggest in any way that this scene was ever shot. In the final version of the movie, the kid was close to a nonentity. Emma Thompson's character made a brief reference to "my horrid son, Bernard". He might've had a line or two otherwise, but really he amounted to no more than an extra.

If this story suggests anything at all about the nature of the universe, here it is: It's all in my head.

02009 New Year's Resolution #38: Learn Something

After making my last New Year's Resolution, I decided to get to work on formatting for the printed version of my novella. I figured the most reliable way to ensure that it ends up looking like I want it to is to make a PDF to upload to Lulu. I figured I might as well try doing it in InDesign. A good idea, in theory. In practice, I was unable to get anywhere in my first half hour (or thereabouts) of trying. It turns out that my desktop publishing skills have really deteriorated in the last couple of years. Either that or InDesign (which, truth be told, is an application that I never really did use very much) is much less intuitive than I expected.

I'm fine with defining and applying styles. I'm not really quite as impressed with how Adobe has set up their styles as I would like to be, but it's a tolerable system and overall I think the software is terrific. But I can't figure out what should be the most basic and completely intuitive part of the process: making new pages appear automatically (with the proper formatting) when the text overflows the last page of the document.

This is horribly frustrating!

Which brings me to my thirty-eighth New Year's Resolution of the year:

I resolve to learn how to operate comfortably and competently in the InDesign environment.

Just typing that makes me feel like a bit of an imbecile. Oh well! I suppose that's good for me.

02009 New Year's Resolution #37: Swallow the Self-Publishing Pill

I spent some time today doing a bit of research on various tools for self-publishing. The reason: My thirty-seventh New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to get around to formatting and self-publishing my 02005 novella, in hopes that it might find an audience.

I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 02005. I was not a "winner" because instead of ending up with a 50,000 word "short novel", I only managed to write a 40,000 word novella.

I suppose it's fair to say that I didn't really fully embrace the "reckless abandon" aspect of the activity. Instead of throwing in a random plot line to continue my story (and thus increase my word count) beyond what felt like a reasonable stopping point, I stopped typing. The result was a cohesive piece of fiction that I am proud to have written. Had I gone the other route, I might've gotten a certain satisfaction from "winning" NaNoWriMo, but I am sure that it would not have really compared to the satisfaction I got from "being true to my vision". I am sure of this because I am familiar with my own nature.

Being familiar with my own nature, I am also quite sure that I'm terribly unlikely ever to seek out a literary agent or to go to the trouble (and through the inevitable frustration) of submitting my manuscript to publisher after publisher in hopes that one of them might like my story enough to want to publish it.

Nonetheless, I do think that it's a decent (if not great) piece of fiction. I think that it's the sort of thing that can likely find an appreciative audience if given an opportunity. (My sister liked it plenty, anyway.)

When I wrote the thing, just over four years ago, self publishing was about the last thing I would have expected to ever consider doing with it. "Self publishing" was, in my mind, exactly the same as "vanity publishing" and it carried an immense stigma. If I were to try to explain this stigma, it would probably come across as arrogant and mean spirited. Perhaps it's best to avoid that.

Anyway, over the course of these four years, my mind has changed (I think in response to a change in the publishing universe) and now I am at the point of being mentally prepared to do it without any reservations.

I expect I'll probably go with Lulu for making hard copies available (partly because they'll give me a free copy and partly because they throw in a free ISBN and a listing on Amazon). As for e-book distribution, I'm thinking I'll likely go through Feedbooks. If you have self-published or if you have looked into it yourself, I'd be happy to entertain suggestions for alternatives, particularly if you can make compelling arguments in favor of some other outlet or in opposition to these.