I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. It is a tradition I believe was – and wouldn’t be surprised if I did more research – was created by companies like Weight Watchers and gyms in order to drum up business during slow times of the year.
Usually – and I have found myself the victim of this in the past – a resolution like getting back into shape involves signing up for a gym membership that doesn’t get used, and they get to charge you for two years on a monthly basis. This is how gyms stay in business if you’re wondering. Not that I blame them. It’s a tax against you for not using something, to be honest.
This is why after I went through that experience, I decided I wasn’t going to make resolutions anymore. Instead of that nonsense, I make punch lists of things I want to accomplish.
Sure, it might SEEM like the same thing. But a list is not the same thing as a resolution. I can ignore a list if the idea doesn’t work out for some reason. A resolution sits in the back of my head nagging me forever on my failure.
The following punch list of items are a few things I hope to accomplish this year, but I’m not holding my breath. Nor should you. 🙂
Get back in Full News mode
The biggest challenge I have faced since the start of the pandemic (besides, you know, making money…) has been being knocked completely out of my routine. The fact it is nearly two full weeks since New Years started and I wanted to post this on January 3 should attest to the fact that I need desperately for daily punch lists. If for no more reason as to make sure I’m accomplishing what small steps I must in order to achieve the overall goal.
Local journalism usually works on a kind of schedule, the dictates of the calendar for sports and meetings, school events, and the rituals of life provide the regularity of content to a news scribbler like myself. The moment they started shutting everything down in March 2020, that routine has gone out the window.
So as I start playing catch-up throughout the month of January on the news of the day, my biggest punch list item for 2022 is this: get back into the old groove.
I used to write a ton of content every day, and now I’m lucky if I can get more than 10 items strung together. So if I can get that back up to 15-ish? That would make me happy.
Getting there requires not just my renewed work effort after feeling burnt out by life over the past two years. It requires everyone to start taking steps back toward normalcy. Fear is what got us here, and logic is what will get us back to regular business.
Let’s all take a deep breath here at the beginning of 2022 and figure out where we are going from here, instead of making bad decisions based on the ugliness of what we face on a daily basis. Fear drives us to do dumb things. Be smarter than the lizard parts of the gray matter up there reading this.
It’ll go a long way toward making everyone feel better. Myself included.
Fix my desk situation
My desk is a complicated, jumbled mix of hand-me-down furniture, cheap Walmart purchases and a cart to hold all the computers I have (whether they are running, or sitting and waiting to be justified in their existence.)
Generally speaking, I have treated desks in times past and present as a catch-all for my technology and piles of paper that seem to grow on me daily despite my previous punch list item to get rid of paper out of my life as much as possible.
Plus at one point, I had a great thing going with a drafting table that I had mounted a television upon and used as a fancy monitor stand. During some Christmas Day doings, I got outside and began to work on stripping the old layer of the stain off the legs. Then I barely heard the snap over the buzzing of the sander as I broke a piece of the leg – a crucial one to boot – which I now will have to spend additional time and resources to repair.
This situation cannot stand forever.
So my first punch list that isn’t based on writing work is to fix this, then complete a long-standing project of getting the perfect desk setup together.
Some Christmas money is being devoted to this at some point, and I hope I can by the time I get around to finishing everything still afford this awesome workbench on wheels that has a crank for raising and lowering it (sit/stand, ideally would be good for me) from Home Depot.
Until then, I’m stuck with this wonky setup. That should be motivation enough.
Fix the computers up
Speaking of computers, I have a lot of tech sitting on my hands and have done nothing with it. This is a problem for me, because of all things I hate more than anything is wasting a resource that could be used to build something incredible.
I bought some machines a while back from a store called Free IT Athens when Jess and I took a random adventure to that side of the state, which was absolutely worth it. I’ve got lots of old spare parts looking for uses here and there, others I’m hoping to turn into some kind of strange digital art pieces. Recycled tech still a useful kind of thing? Who knows. Maybe I’ll get into crypto mining.
Launch more websites
2020 saw the launch of Polk.Today. 2021 was the year I added PolkSportsWire and this site. Big ideas and expansion are some of the things I want to work on this year, which means I need to launch more websites.
I’ve already started work on this particular campaign, with the opening earlier this week (in Alpha mode, to be sure) at PolkSportsWire Fan Zone. Think Facebook, but local and sports-only.
I’m also working on a corporate home for Myrick Multimedia (coming soon,) a Paulding site (coming probably February/Early March 2022), and some other ideas I’ve been batting around.
What does that mean for you? More content to enjoy.
What does that mean for me?
I might never sleep again.
Complete NaNoWriMo
Way back in my Auburn days, I completed my first novel in just about a month. (I got to the ~50,000 word mark without a problem, but the novel wasn’t fully completed in a first draft until that December.) That’s the goal of National Novel Writing Month: write the first draft of a full novel in 30 days during the month of November. You know, during the distraction of playoff football for high school, basketball season about to start, the holidays getting underway and all the other vagaries of life that get in the way.
What do I say to that? Bring. It. On.
So a punch list item for this year includes writing the first draft of a new novel.
I’ve been on-and-off working on writing projects in the background for many years, but I’ll start on an idea then get bored with it and move on to another. Like I’m hopping on rocks to cross a shallow spring when I should just get my feet wet for a few moments without having to balance everything. The lesson being? Dive in and make the effort.
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