New Year's Resolutions
I’ve always been a little wary of making New Year’s Resolutions, and even worse at keeping them. Are they a useful way to decide our priorities for the coming year, or are we just setting ourselves up for failure?
Most resolutions tend to focus on things like exercising more regularly, eating a healthier diet and reducing, or even stopping, our alcohol intake. But this sort of resolution is often abandoned by February, and in the current circumstances (global pandemic, dangerously divisive politics and disastrous climate change), I have no intention of giving up my evening tipple and savoury snack habit any time soon.
So yes, resolutions are hard, and this year, even more so. It is with this in mind that I have compiled the following, somewhat more flexible, list of resolution-type guidelines, which I may, or may not, keep:
No. 1
Stop worrying about my word count
Give up, once and for all, any notion that imposing a daily wordcount on myself will increase my productivity. It never has and it never will. It might work for other writers (loads of them, apparently), but not this one. I shall continue to do what I’ve always done on a daily basis and spend a couple of hours faffing about and tinkering with what I’ve already written, just to get myself in the groove, and then start writing a new scene. I will write as much as I can, even if that’s not very much at all and I won’t fret about it, because another day I may well write more than I ever dreamed possible in one sitting, and I’m actually much more likely to do that if I’m calm and happy and not fretting about how many words I’ve written.
No. 2
Remember that social media should be fun
Try not to worry about whether I’m spending too much, or indeed too little, time on social media. I shall spend exactly the amount of time I feel like spending on there, which might be a lot one day, and nothing the next. Some people have special apps that allow them to schedule their tweets and that works for them, but honestly, I’d rather boil my own head than do this. I don’t want Twitter to become a job. I want it to be what it’s always been: a fun place to scroll when I’m fed up with staring at the pathetically small number of coherent sentences I’ve managed to add to my work-in-progress; a place to connect with people and lend support if I can; an opportunity to find out what other people are thinking or doing; a chance to have a laugh or a rant with someone, or to read one of those threads that attracts morons and trolls and fantasise about what I might say to them if I wasn’t such a dreadful coward and didn’t have to worry about my author ‘reputation’.
No. 3
Manage my news intake
I will try my best not to watch as much news this year, but if I do get sucked in - and I will - I won’t beat myself up about this because I’m a news junkie, and addictions are, by their very nature, hard to overcome, and if I’m honest with myself, I rather enjoy shouting at the telly. This being said, I only really need to watch or listen to the news twice a day, max. Unless of course something like an insurrection at the US Capitol takes place, in which case, I give myself permission to watch it all day.
No. 4
Embrace pyjamas
I will never again feel guilty for putting my pyjamas on before 5.00 pm and to aid me in this, I have invested in several rather glamorous nightwear/loungewear items that lend me an air of fragile, bohemian sophistication that was sadly missing from my previous collection. If I still smoked, I would probably buy a cigarette holder to complement the look. If it’s true and we really are heading for another version of The Roaring Twenties, I want to be ready.
I am ready.
So, if I think of any more resolutions, I will let you know, but frankly, I think four is more than enough to cope with right now. If you like the sound of any of these, do please feel free to adopt them yourselves.