February 7th, 2005

I thought I’d revisit my resolutions, to see how I’m doing one month into the year. I hope this won’t be too depressing.

• I haven’t finished anything on the writing front yet this year (I am aiming for one novel, two short stories, two essays), so the best way to check if I’m on track is probably by word count. Ugh. I had 21 week days, and all of them except MLK day should have been writing days. So, if I’d been doing well, I’d have written 20,000 words in January. I wrote 13,661, which leaves me 6,339 short of goal. That’s six days short in word count, more or less. That doesn’t make me too happy. Ah well, it’s another month, now, and maybe I can make some of the words back this month.
• Blogging three to five days a week went reasonably well. The first week (the week on which I made the resolution) I only blogged on two days, but every other week I blogged on at least three different days (though on no week did I blog five days). However, many of my entries this month were very long and involved, so that should probably count as a positive. The trend for longer entries derives from an increase in writing stamina, I think. It shows that the exercise is paying off.
• Reviewing books is the category in which I really think I did extraordinarily well in January. I reviewed three books. I think I had previously reviewed two books in the entire history of the blog, so three in one month is much improved.
• No weight loss yet. The worst part is that I’ve sort of been watching what I’ve been eating and kind of thought I was doing ok in this regard. I’m going to have to work harder. I’m not in a hurry, but surely a month is long enough to take off one pound? That’s what I was kind of expecting, anyways, and not getting there is disappointing.
• Walking Sergei was something I did reasonably well at. I walked him every week at least once, and most weeks twice, and one week three times. I also spent time with him every week training him. I count this seperately from walking him because it’s usually brief. His attention span for intense training isn’t more than ten minutes, and I try to make the walks at least fifteen. Training is either off-leash heel practice or working with treats and come or something like that.
• The next item on my list was exercise. Today I picked up a schedule for a nearby yoga studio, and am hoping to find a class I can go to in the next couple of weeks. I’ve added a very brief (only ten minutes or so) yoga routine to a couple of my mornings a week. It started out being three mornings (MWF), but now I find it nearly impossible to drag out of bed timely enough to do it on Wednesdays after I stay out at writing group Tuesday night. I’m not sure if I’m going to try and persist on that, or whether I’ll add a weekend morning to get back up to three mornings a week, or whether I’ll just let myself live with two mornings a week plus a weekly class. So this category is probably a wash, and I won’t give myself a hard time unless it rolls around to March and I haven’t gotten myself into a class yet.
• Expansion of knowledge : no dice.
• Making do with less is progressing perforce more than per choice. Videos now come only from the library, as do most books. We need to spend less at the grocery store each week, and we’re very close to being right at 100 dollars a week which is a huge decrease for us and definite progress, though 80 would be ideal in terms of what we can actually afford. I am involved in several CD weeding and book weeding projects. I have started cooking from scratch and in bulk, when possible. I’ve made chili, gumbo and double batches on noodle casseroles. I’m researching the composter, which I think is salvageable and has some starter compost in it already. I think I know how to use it now. I’m thinking about planting a small herb garden (otherwise, to what end compost stuff?). This should reduce our household waste. It’s interesting how once a week trash pickup (we had twice a week in Jackson) changes your attitude about trash. If there’s any way for me to generate less trash, I’m glad to try it. Of course most of what can go in the composter could go in the garbage disposal, but still. No television is still working for us, and I’m grateful not to have that inveterate time thief around.
• Submit for publication, yadda yadda, nothing to see here, keep moving. Well, unless you count my working on second drafts of Loyal Companion and Egghead Kingdom, which is what one does before one submits stories. Wanted to have sent my bit for Viable Paradise by the end of January and have not done so, yet. Must do this before the end of February, latest!
• “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” This was a vague goal, and I don’t expect to know from month to month whether I’m on the right track or not. I think God’s telling me to write an essay about biblical literalism, but I have a thousand reasons not to do this, ranging from an aversion to generating religious controversy or divisiveness to the fact that I’m no biblical scholar and have no call to be telling anyone anything about the bible. The fact that there’s so many (superficial) reasons not to do it make me wonder if I’m supposed to, and I don’t want to be all Jonah and refuse to go to Nineveh, if you know what I mean.

To sum up: some progress, some regress, some immobility. Sounds a lot like life, doesn’t it? Actually, to be fair, there’s very little regress. Mostly there’s forward motion or status quo. I review the list not to scold myself but for the purposes of keeping my eyes on the goals. If they were worthy enough in January, they should be worthy in all the other months too. One of three to five blog entries for the week — check.

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