Monthly Archives: January 2014

Resolutions

I have a few different New Year’s Resolutions. 1920×1200. 1280×800. 1024×768. 1920×1080. 1280×720. 1440×900. My laptop, tablet, second monitor, television, phone, and what I typically use for games, respectively.

Okay, it’s a lame nerd joke, I know. But I was thinking about resolutions today, being the new year and all. I was thinking about them while I was putting off writing my blog post for the day. And that’s when I realized: resolutions (that is, goals made in the heat of the new year’s regeneration frenzy) don’t make my life better. In fact, they might actually make it worse.

Most people make resolutions to better themselves. They want to lose weight, or write more, or finally take that trip they’ve been dreaming about. But the truth is, most of these achievements are unrealistic. They don’t want to “work hard at getting more in shape;” they just want to “be a size n-1.” They want to be something else, but don’t realize the hard work it will inevitably take to get there.

It’s no secret that most resolutions fail in short order. To think mine would be any different isn’t the most humble of worldviews. So if I made resolutions, and they are more likely than not to be broken, where would that leave me?

Feeling guilty about broken promises and unmet goals, that’s where.

It takes a lot of work to change one’s habits and/or personality. One of my loose, resolution-ish type things for this year was to be more disciplined with my writing. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened yet; I did my usual internet surfing/time passing thing, then finally got around to writing once my girlfriend had left work (which meant I had to finish before she got home). In other words, the inexorable pull of ADD was yet again too much.

As this happened, I started feeling guilty (something at which I have plenty of practice). Here I was, the earliest days of a new year, and already falling back into old habits. The Funk leered at me from around the corner; it could smell the direction of my thoughts, and they were tasty.

But I stopped myself (something at which I’m getting better) and realized the irrationality of what I was telling myself. Why would I think that a date clicking over would be like some switch being magically thrown in my head, turning me into a shining exemplar of punctuality and productivity? That’s as silly as thinking that I will wake up next Tuesday and be able to digest dairy, or that my ADD will magically fade into the aether. In other words, dumb.

So yeah, no resolutions for me. That’s not to say I don’t want to better myself. But a better way to do that, rather than digging pit traps for myself, is to avoid known triggers and setting myself up to fail. I’m going to try to take a less rigorous, hands-on approach to the next year. If I succeed in getting what I want, great! If not, then so it goes. Life’s too short to be neurotic. I’d rather be content.

I Guess I Should Be Looking Forward

Yesterday, I spent some time looking back at 2013. It’s also traditional, however, to look forward into the next year, often making resolutions or setting goals.

Well, I’m not really going to do that. Resolutions seem made to be broken, and setting goals involves a lot more thought and decision-making than I’m feeling up to right now. Rather, I’m going to write about things I want to do, see, or have happen in the near future.

I want to keep on writing. Blogging has become part of my daily routine, and I’d like to keep it that way. I’d like to put more energy into it, however, try to make my daily posts a bit less perfunctory. Maybe even write some fiction; I’ve toyed with the idea of serializing one of my short stories, as a way of building up a (lot of) buffer. I just haven’t decided when to do it yet.

I want to find passion for my hobbies again. Right now, a lot of my friends seem to be coping with varying levels of SCA burnout. Even I’m finding myself less enthusiastic than I used to be, going to weekly practices far too often out of force of habit. Maybe teaching (which I plan to continue to do) will help with that, but I also want to further my own training.

I want to continue to work on improving my mental state, being more conscious of triggers and cues that herald a Funk, as well as maybe even talking to someone in a professional manner. It can’t hurt at this point.

But mostly, I want a better job. Being a retail grunt has outstayed its welcome. Architecture didn’t pan out, and I’m still feeling more than a bit burned by forces outside my control (read: recession). I want to start looking for other jobs, in fields closer to my passions. Maybe IT support. Maybe web design. Maybe even something where I can use my atrophying architectural design skills. I don’t know. I have so little experience looking for a job, let alone picking a career, I don’t know where to start. But something has to happen.

And of course (as well as to end on a lighter note), I want more LEGO.

So there you have it. A short list of not-goals and not-resolutions for the coming year. I haven’t the faintest idea how to accomplish most of these (except the LEGO one), but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. More likely than not I’ll forget this stuff, but maybe I’ll return to this list in the future, see how things are going. After all, I’ve written it down; that makes it real.

Anything could happen.

I Guess I Should Be Sentimental

So, a new year. How about that?

Most places will be running articles about how to change your life in just 10 easy steps, or 29 things that will be the same and/or different for this trip around the sun. As ridiculous and sentimental as these types of things can get, who am I to jump off a bandwagon? I’d like to take a moment to look back at the year past, and maybe the year to come.

What changed during 2013? Well for one, my girlfriend and I moved. Due to mismatched lease terms, I had moved into her place back in September of 2012, but March marked the time when we “moved in together,” finding a space that would work for both of us. It’s been an interesting experience, living with someone else, and one I’ve gotten used to surprisingly quickly. I guess it really hit me when she went out of town to visit her parents over the holidays. I was shocked by how big and empty our four-square townhouse (with finished basement) felt, just by the absence of one person. I’ve lived in smaller places on my own, but never one this large.

My job situation has also improved slightly. True, I’m still working a retail job well outside any field I have actual skills in, but I’m no longer pushing carts in the sweltering heat and/or freezing cold. I’ve since moved inside, stocking shelves in the early morning (ugh) and helping people on the sales floor after opening (closer to yay). At least this way I get to use some of my tech savvy. I think some of the management is trying to groom me to become one of them, but I’d rather not make a career out of it.

I’ve also tried to become more cognizant of my mental state when it comes to SCA fighting and fencing. The head game seems to be the next plateau I need to break through; I just need to stop being so darn nice all the time.

I’ve started leading drills at fighter practice, filling a gap that’s been present for far too long.

I’m becoming more conscious of my depressive tendencies, trying to recognize and mitigate the Funks I tend to fall into. While not formally diagnosed, I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that my state of mind might be something other than my fault, and I should feel about as bad about falling into a Funk as I do about not being able to focus thanks to ADD (read: not at all).

I got a shiny new (big) TV. I started watching Doctor Who. I started experimenting with multiplayer Minecraft. My Steam library expanded (as did my backlog), and I even got around to completing some games and reading some books I’ve been meaning to.

And the biggest change, in case you couldn’t tell, is that I started blogging. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing regularly (mostly fiction) for years, but finally buckled down back in July and did something about it. I’ve been posting daily (for the most part) since. The writing has not always taken the direction I thought it would, in terms of format or subject, but I’ve stuck with it. Even if it feels like I’ve just been vomiting words onto a blank page to fill some arbitrary, self-imposed quota, I like to think that writing is still doing me some good.

And of course, with that, thank you for sticking with me and my writing. I know readers come and go, but I thank all of you who have come, stayed, even moved on. I hope you find my writing interesting enough, as I can’t always be the best judge of that. To those who have commented, thanks. To those lurkers who read and move on, maybe clicking “like” somewhere, I thank you too; I’m a lurker by nature as well. I wish you all a happy new year.