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Entry tags:
Resolutions
Yes, I'm running three weeks late in formalizing my resolutions.
1. Exercise at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes per session (20 of which must be aerobic).
2. Read twenty-six books this year.
3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.
4. Pet the cat.
5. Put more money into savings in 2006 than I did in 2005.
6. Keep track of any other productive things I do.
7. Clear out my email inbox at home.
9. Do at least one post per month tracking my progress on each of these.
1. This one is a lowball goal, since I currently exercise six times a week, usually for 40-60 minutes. This doesn't include the walk to/from work, which is another 100-200 minutes per week. I'm sure that walking a couple of miles a day is good for me in some nebulous fashion, but it doesn't register as exercise to me.
However, the lack of visible progress I've gotten from seven months of dedicated exercise has gradually sapped my resolve on this subject. So I'm setting a lower baseline to make it more achievable and to keep myself from saying "Forget it, it's too much work." I'm also making it an official resolution, which will make it much less likely that I'll slither out of it. I don't expect any visible progress from sticking to this resolution, either, but I'm hoping I'll at least maintain what few gains I have made.
I've considered getting weights or a weight machine; if I do start weight training, that can be substituted for aerobic exercise for purposes of this resolution. (Not that I'd switch to only lifting weights, but I'd probably do something like alternate weights and dance exercises every other day.)
As long as I average five days a week for the year, this resolution will count as fulfilled. Missing a few extra days a week now and again for whatever reason is not a big deal.
So far this year, I've done seventeen workouts in twenty-one days, making me easily on track for this.
I've also done as many as thirteen consecutive push-ups. (Stop laughing. Push-ups are hard!) Push-ups are one of the few areas I can see an improvement in ... one of the reasons that lifting weights has an appeal is that it'd be nice to see the amount of weight I can lift increase over the months.
2. I've read one book so far, Zorro by Isabel Allende. I actually started it last year but it was pretty slow going. It was a curiously dense book, with very little dialogue and a lot of narration, so that many events would be crammed into a handful of pages.
3. I haven't submitted anything for publication in the last two or three years. I've got at least four short stories that qualify as complete and could potentially be published. And one novel that's nominally complete but that, frankly, I don't think is publishable in its current form and revising it (again) is more effort than I'm willing to commit at the present time.
But, anyway, sending out stories to magazines is easy enough and there's no reason I can't schlep out a few this year.
If I accumulate acceptance slips instead of rejection slips, that's OK too. But submitting work is fully in my control, and having it published isn't, so I'm sticking with the goal of submitting stuff.
4. Ash appreciates this one. She will also make sure that I keep it.
5. I think 2005 was a record low for savings, my worst since 1998. Saving more than that this year should be pretty easy. I've started the year with a sharp increase in my 401(k) contributions. (Enough of an increase that HR called to ask, "Did you mean to increase it by this much? Really? Okay. Just checking.") I expect to ratchet it back to a more sustainable level sometime in the next few months, but still, off to a good start.
6. This is meant to cover all manner of productive things: writing, art, cleaning, etc. (I'm not sure how I'm going to track cleaning, since I'm not going to bother noting every time I do the dishes or laundry. But cleaning counts as productive, darnit, so it belongs here). I'm not breaking these into individual categories because, well, they're all important to me, and the more time I spend on one the less time I'm likely to spend on the others.
In the year so far:
Writing
Twenty-one entries to Unfinished Tales. I've been doing at least one every day.
-- One fluffy bit with two of my characters complaining about my choice of subject matter for the last picture I did in December
-- Two on a new short story inspired by conversations with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
koogrr about the reema, a new race he'd created. Together we'd fleshed out various biological and cultural details for them and I think they're interesting and unusual. So I'm noodling with a story about them.
-- Eighteen on Silver Scales
I don't think I'll continue with the entry-a-day format. It's nice to look back and see that I've written something every day, but several times I've stayed up late to make sure I got my daily entry posted, and a lot of the entries are short. Well, maybe not as short as I thought, looking back; even the shortest are around 350 words, and the average looks to be 500-1000. Umm ... hmm, that tracks to be a Master Plan(tm) level of writing. And I know how well the Master Plan(tm) worked for making me happy about writing. Also, I think the format encourages me to be wordier than necessary, as I beef out short bits to make them look more like a complete entry. And I'm wordy enough as it is. Anyway, I may stick with it for the rest of January, or not. I'm not definitely not resolving to keep it up for the rest of the year.
Art
-- Four sketches of the Faerie Hypnotist, forapanthromorph
-- Nine (small) sketches of Orren, forbeetiger
-- A few sketches of random reema
Nothing very detailed on the art front. I need to do color icons of the Faerie Hypnotist and Floosh, based on the sketches chosen. As expected, doing a lot of writing means that I spend less time drawing.
7. Because it would be so much easier to delete spam if there weren't thousands of old emails (mostly lj comments) cluttering my inbox. This really shouldn't be that hard, but it's tedious and somewhat time consuming, so I just haven't done it yet.
8. I'm sure I had a resolution in mind for this, but darned if I can remember what it was.
9. Done for January!
1. Exercise at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes per session (20 of which must be aerobic).
2. Read twenty-six books this year.
3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.
4. Pet the cat.
5. Put more money into savings in 2006 than I did in 2005.
6. Keep track of any other productive things I do.
7. Clear out my email inbox at home.
9. Do at least one post per month tracking my progress on each of these.
1. This one is a lowball goal, since I currently exercise six times a week, usually for 40-60 minutes. This doesn't include the walk to/from work, which is another 100-200 minutes per week. I'm sure that walking a couple of miles a day is good for me in some nebulous fashion, but it doesn't register as exercise to me.
However, the lack of visible progress I've gotten from seven months of dedicated exercise has gradually sapped my resolve on this subject. So I'm setting a lower baseline to make it more achievable and to keep myself from saying "Forget it, it's too much work." I'm also making it an official resolution, which will make it much less likely that I'll slither out of it. I don't expect any visible progress from sticking to this resolution, either, but I'm hoping I'll at least maintain what few gains I have made.
I've considered getting weights or a weight machine; if I do start weight training, that can be substituted for aerobic exercise for purposes of this resolution. (Not that I'd switch to only lifting weights, but I'd probably do something like alternate weights and dance exercises every other day.)
As long as I average five days a week for the year, this resolution will count as fulfilled. Missing a few extra days a week now and again for whatever reason is not a big deal.
So far this year, I've done seventeen workouts in twenty-one days, making me easily on track for this.
I've also done as many as thirteen consecutive push-ups. (Stop laughing. Push-ups are hard!) Push-ups are one of the few areas I can see an improvement in ... one of the reasons that lifting weights has an appeal is that it'd be nice to see the amount of weight I can lift increase over the months.
2. I've read one book so far, Zorro by Isabel Allende. I actually started it last year but it was pretty slow going. It was a curiously dense book, with very little dialogue and a lot of narration, so that many events would be crammed into a handful of pages.
3. I haven't submitted anything for publication in the last two or three years. I've got at least four short stories that qualify as complete and could potentially be published. And one novel that's nominally complete but that, frankly, I don't think is publishable in its current form and revising it (again) is more effort than I'm willing to commit at the present time.
But, anyway, sending out stories to magazines is easy enough and there's no reason I can't schlep out a few this year.
If I accumulate acceptance slips instead of rejection slips, that's OK too. But submitting work is fully in my control, and having it published isn't, so I'm sticking with the goal of submitting stuff.
4. Ash appreciates this one. She will also make sure that I keep it.
5. I think 2005 was a record low for savings, my worst since 1998. Saving more than that this year should be pretty easy. I've started the year with a sharp increase in my 401(k) contributions. (Enough of an increase that HR called to ask, "Did you mean to increase it by this much? Really? Okay. Just checking.") I expect to ratchet it back to a more sustainable level sometime in the next few months, but still, off to a good start.
6. This is meant to cover all manner of productive things: writing, art, cleaning, etc. (I'm not sure how I'm going to track cleaning, since I'm not going to bother noting every time I do the dishes or laundry. But cleaning counts as productive, darnit, so it belongs here). I'm not breaking these into individual categories because, well, they're all important to me, and the more time I spend on one the less time I'm likely to spend on the others.
In the year so far:
Writing
Twenty-one entries to Unfinished Tales. I've been doing at least one every day.
-- One fluffy bit with two of my characters complaining about my choice of subject matter for the last picture I did in December
-- Two on a new short story inspired by conversations with
koogrr about the reema, a new race he'd created. Together we'd fleshed out various biological and cultural details for them and I think they're interesting and unusual. So I'm noodling with a story about them.-- Eighteen on Silver Scales
I don't think I'll continue with the entry-a-day format. It's nice to look back and see that I've written something every day, but several times I've stayed up late to make sure I got my daily entry posted, and a lot of the entries are short. Well, maybe not as short as I thought, looking back; even the shortest are around 350 words, and the average looks to be 500-1000. Umm ... hmm, that tracks to be a Master Plan(tm) level of writing. And I know how well the Master Plan(tm) worked for making me happy about writing. Also, I think the format encourages me to be wordier than necessary, as I beef out short bits to make them look more like a complete entry. And I'm wordy enough as it is. Anyway, I may stick with it for the rest of January, or not. I'm not definitely not resolving to keep it up for the rest of the year.
Art
-- Four sketches of the Faerie Hypnotist, for
apanthromorph-- Nine (small) sketches of Orren, for
beetiger-- A few sketches of random reema
Nothing very detailed on the art front. I need to do color icons of the Faerie Hypnotist and Floosh, based on the sketches chosen. As expected, doing a lot of writing means that I spend less time drawing.
7. Because it would be so much easier to delete spam if there weren't thousands of old emails (mostly lj comments) cluttering my inbox. This really shouldn't be that hard, but it's tedious and somewhat time consuming, so I just haven't done it yet.
8. I'm sure I had a resolution in mind for this, but darned if I can remember what it was.
9. Done for January!
Cats and Savings
I bet you started on this one already ;-)
5. I think 2005 was a record low for savings, my worst since 1998.
For most of the country actually. The US Savings rate was negative for 2005. Collectively, we raided our savings more than we put into it.
no subject
To that end, perhaps you should set a higher baseline?
no subject
Sticking to things that you control
(Anonymous) 2006-01-21 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)3) Acceptances should count as more than one rejection. Wouldn't you feel silly missing this resolution because Prophecy and all 4 of your publishable short stories had been accepted on the first submission, and you didn't have time to get new material together for a 6th submission.
5) Spend less money on discretionary expenses (as opposed to saving more). The problem with phrasing the resolution in terms of saving is that it can be skewed by unemployment or other serious problems.
and one suggestion for making a resolution less of a nuisance:
7) Anti-spam software might help a lot here. I use Cloudmark's product, and while it only catches about 80% of the spam, it has a very low false positive rate. In fact, I've never seen an email which generated a false positive which wasn't sent by a corporation for a marketing purpose (even if I had consented to it previously), and there haven't been more than a dozen of those over the last 2 years. You could even run your anti-spam software on your existing inbox when you install it.
no subject