Skip to main content

Third Annual Last Post of the Year

So as has become tradition, I would like to take the last post of the year and review last year's goals, and set new ones for the upcoming year.

According to my last post of last year, I laid out the following goals:

1. Write a new book: DONE, though it wasn't the four novellas idea that I thought it might be, instead it turned out to be a middle grade sci-fi adventure story because my boys kept bugging me to write something they could read. It turned out better than I could have hoped and will eventually be a trilogy.

2. Find a home for Flagg: Er. This is still pending. Still pending. Still pending. Note: if you want to be an author, prepare to have every tiny shred of your patience tested, because nothing goes quickly, nothing is certain, nothing is ever final, and even now, I have no idea if the damn thing even arrived at its destination, let alone was read and considered.  Even still, I know the book is good, and will eventually find a good home, so there is that.

3. Have a good launch for Antiartists: DONE, though this was not due to anything I did or would have done, but credit instead lies solely with my brilliant and amazing wife, who wouldn't let me be the weirdo that I wanted to be, and organized a party and fireworks and made the occasion completely memorable and noteworthy.  Launch Day was absolutely fantastic.

4. Remember to be present to love and savor the fleeting life I have been given. Remember to be thankful for all of my many blessings. DONE, though like all my goals, this one is a work in progress. I have a crazy awesome and supportive family, I have a decent indoor job that allows me to pursue my goals, I have a warm house and a full stomach.  Could be a lot worse, for sure. I do tend to get caught up in things, and I lose a lot of time to things that matter very little or not at all, but it is so hard to tell what is important and what only seems important.

So all in all, I did pretty well, year-in-review-wise, I suppose.

Ok.  New goals for the upcoming year:

ONE: As always, write a new book.  I still have the four novellas book in the queue, and I thought that that was going to be my book this year, but it never turns out like I expect, so come January, I will get to writing, and see what sticks.  I have plans for the second Hub book, but I would really like to get back to writing about small world stuff, relationships and inner struggles and whathaveyou, so we'll see. On the other hand, Flagg's world is a hell of a lot of fun to play in, so maybe we'll get bloody again this year. My larger goal is a book a year for ten years, and so far I am three for three.

TWO : Start a podcast.  I got a mic for Christmas (the wife again), and I have ideas for a podcast that might be cool to do.  I hope to recruit my creative weirdo friends to get in on this, too.  I'm really excited to see what comes from this.  Could be a lot of fun.

THREE: Do more good stuff, spend less time looking at screens (unless a word processor is open).  I would like to spend less time dicking around in apps and playing dumb ass games, and reading tweets, and checking in on stuff.  I would like to read more, build more, imagine more.  I want to spend less time distracted, and more time present.  I am going to do this, I mean it, because here we all are, dying, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second, and I don't want to waste it looking at my goddamn phone.  I want to make music and art and be inspired by beauty and love and magic, I want to learn more, be better, enjoy this fleeting life while I still have one.  this might mean I am less accessible, and less able to connect with strangers, and that is just going to have to be okay.  My world has grown too large, to an unmanageable size, and I just want slower time and a smaller life, that is all.

FOUR: I want some kind of closure on my outstanding projects, one way or the other.  I mean, holy shit, a yes or a no.  I need something, anything so I can make decisions what else to do.  I've been patient, I've been cool and collected, but I need an answer.

FIVE: I want to be a good father to my kids, a good husband to my wife, a good friend to my old buddies.  I haven't always been the best at any of those things, but I am trying as hard as I can, I promise.  I am trying.

So I have reached an age where my heroes are dying, and the world is becoming increasingly foreign and is rapidly leaving me behind.  Everything we do has an impact, an errant thoughtless post on a social network, a smile at someone who might need it, change thrown in a red bucket, it all matters.  we move through the world leaving ripples behind us that move others that affects their lives, that makes them feel better or worse, that drives then to action.  Think to yourself, am I making this world better or worse?  Are my actions going to do good or harm?  You are responsible for your world.  You are responsible for the world we share.  You are.

I will not be sad to see the end of 2016, and I want to be optimistic here for the new year, but... I feel we are living through a transitional period, possibly one filled with strife, and when the dust settles and history is written, I have my doubts about this being considered a golden age of enlightenment.  Still though, I will care for my people, I will speak to what I believe to be true, and I will not remain silent.  When my own history is written, I want it to say I did not watch silently, I did not allow evil to be done without opposition, and I did not live in fear.

2017.  Bring it on.  We are ready.

Still Writing,

RP

12-28-16

Comments

  1. Sound like good goals.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, man. I have an idea for the podcast where we invite someone on to say something incomprehensible and out of context about their job. I suspect you may be a good candidate for this.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One of the Best of Us

In the stifling heat my breath comes fast and heavy. What the fuck am I even doing here? What the fuck am I trying to accomplish? I'm sitting on the mat, maybe dying, a forty something dad playacting at being a fighter. This is my mid-life crisis, this is so, so stupid. This has to be the end for me, assuming I can get my heartbeat under control, assuming I don't just peg out here on the mat.  I can't do this anymore. "It's okay man, it's okay, you just need to breathe through it. You're fine, you're okay." The voice of my training partner, gentle and kind. My partner, the maniac that drove me to such a state, that I think I might die, he sits next to me and shows me how to breathe, how to calm my body. He teaches and guides me through it, and in a few minutes I actually am okay, the panic settles down, and maybe this isn't my last class after all. "You're alright?  Okay. Now lets get back to work."  And back to work we go. There

We Would Be a Song

I seem to define my life with soundtracks, playlists that encompass epochs or periods of change or development.  My earliest music was my mother's: Van Halen and Judas Priest, Def Leppard and AC/DC.  I remember a friend of hers explaining to second grade Ralph that the big balls that Angus was singing about were parties, but even then I didn't buy it.  My teen years were heavy on grunge, Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and that was the first time that music ever felt like it was mine , that I discovered by myself or through the radio, or like minded friends, that was the first time that I took it and owned it and loved it, and even now I'll hear Black Hole Sun or Rooster or Smells Like Teen Spirit on the radio and back I go. In the fifth grade, I moved to Kelso, Washington. I want to say that it was hard, but what I remember mostly from childhood is just this sense of taking every day as it arrived.  What else do we have except our own experiences to measure th

Fighting for Clarity

There's this to be said about fighting: while you're doing it, you don't have room in your head for anything else, not your busted ass car or your worries about your family, not the leak under your bathroom sink, or how you're going to pay your bills.  There's only breathe one two, step out of range, shift off the center line, move breathe one three two slip the jab level change three to the body check the low kick counter one two...  it is a better escape than most, and I've tried most of them, believe me. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I get humbled and beat up at every session, I don't understand why I even go. I'm feeling defeated; everything is so fucking hard for me, and I don't know why I'm doing it. I should just quit, right? Fuck you.  I'll show you motherfuckers what I am capable of. I'll show you-  And then I go and I try and my knees give and I get pummeled and twisted and what the fuck man how humble do I