What New Year's Eve would be complete without a retrospective? In quasi-order of significance on my life:
Resolutions, 2014. Unlike previous years, I'm not even going to bother looking up what my resolutions were back on January 1. This year has been so disrupted, any resolution goals I did achieve would have been by random chance, not intentionality.
Work. I started a new day job in January. It came with more responsibility and more stress, but more of the good stuff, too. However, what struck me most after I
started was how several of my new peers said the same thing: what the
hell were you thinking, taking a horrible job like this? (Such prognostications of doom were usually said soto voce in hallways and elevators, with significant head shakes and sidelong glances). As the year went on and things were going pretty well in my world, I'd get repeated warnings about how awful the job could be, with repeated variations of "do you regret it yet?".
Curiously, though, my year was fine. Better than fine, it was pretty good. At each major turning point of the year, I half-expected the impending horrors to show themselves, but they never did. My experience in the new job wasn't just "absence of bad"... it was "I rather like this". Thanks to the welcome I got, I spent the last twelve months waiting for the other shoe to drop, but based on everything I've seen, experienced, and heard (and been able to sniff out via a carefully cultivated spy network) is that there is no boogieman under the bed. Probably.
Writing. Ugh, don't even go there. In the spring, I finished the first round of deep edits on my next novel, and have figured out a) why my MC wasn't compelling, and b) what to do about it. However, I've not really done anything more with it since then. I just haven't had the mental energy to tackle it (see "Work", above). It doesn't help that the deeply horrible second draft is the point where it takes a tremendous effort of will and/or self-delusion to believe that the book a'borning is worth salvaging. The temptation to chuck the wretched thing and work on something more productive is way, way too strong.
Exercise. Started running in February. This was a great thing, as exercise is a wonderful way to deal with stress (see "Work", above). Using the Couch To 5K app, I started couch-potato slow. Over the course of months, I worked up to ~5K training runs several mornings a week. When I ran in my first official 5K this summer, it was no more challenging than a normal Tuesday. Go me!
Alas, I pulled a hamstring in July, which sidelined me for a while, but then I was back on the pavement, working my way back up to 5K eye-openers. Go me again!
Alas (again), in late October, I tore a tendon in my left foot while doing some rough trial hiking in the Poconos. That meant constant pain for weeks. As of this writing, it's slowly healing. I walked 2 miles yesterday, and my foot let me know it. However, that sensation of "someone is stubbing out a lit cigarette on the bottom of my foot" wasn't terribly pronounced, so that's a good thing. I'm still casting around for an aerobic activity that doesn't involve stress on my foot. Maybe weights? Yoga?
Resolutions, 2015. I'm not sure yet what my resolutions for 2015 will be. Now that things have settled down a bit, I might just recycle the 2014 ones.
I hope the coming year is an interesting and enjoyable one for you!
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Resolutions, 2014. Unlike previous years, I'm not even going to bother looking up what my resolutions were back on January 1. This year has been so disrupted, any resolution goals I did achieve would have been by random chance, not intentionality.
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| About my day job... |
Curiously, though, my year was fine. Better than fine, it was pretty good. At each major turning point of the year, I half-expected the impending horrors to show themselves, but they never did. My experience in the new job wasn't just "absence of bad"... it was "I rather like this". Thanks to the welcome I got, I spent the last twelve months waiting for the other shoe to drop, but based on everything I've seen, experienced, and heard (and been able to sniff out via a carefully cultivated spy network) is that there is no boogieman under the bed. Probably.
Writing. Ugh, don't even go there. In the spring, I finished the first round of deep edits on my next novel, and have figured out a) why my MC wasn't compelling, and b) what to do about it. However, I've not really done anything more with it since then. I just haven't had the mental energy to tackle it (see "Work", above). It doesn't help that the deeply horrible second draft is the point where it takes a tremendous effort of will and/or self-delusion to believe that the book a'borning is worth salvaging. The temptation to chuck the wretched thing and work on something more productive is way, way too strong.Exercise. Started running in February. This was a great thing, as exercise is a wonderful way to deal with stress (see "Work", above). Using the Couch To 5K app, I started couch-potato slow. Over the course of months, I worked up to ~5K training runs several mornings a week. When I ran in my first official 5K this summer, it was no more challenging than a normal Tuesday. Go me!Alas, I pulled a hamstring in July, which sidelined me for a while, but then I was back on the pavement, working my way back up to 5K eye-openers. Go me again!
Alas (again), in late October, I tore a tendon in my left foot while doing some rough trial hiking in the Poconos. That meant constant pain for weeks. As of this writing, it's slowly healing. I walked 2 miles yesterday, and my foot let me know it. However, that sensation of "someone is stubbing out a lit cigarette on the bottom of my foot" wasn't terribly pronounced, so that's a good thing. I'm still casting around for an aerobic activity that doesn't involve stress on my foot. Maybe weights? Yoga?Resolutions, 2015. I'm not sure yet what my resolutions for 2015 will be. Now that things have settled down a bit, I might just recycle the 2014 ones.
I hope the coming year is an interesting and enjoyable one for you!
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Sounds like a very productive year to me! I hope your holidays were great as well. :)
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