Resolutions... BAH

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December 31, 2010. The last we see of this year. Looking back, it has not been a bad stretch. We sort of survived the financial meltdown of the last two years with all its uncertainty and constant anxieties. I published Dreamcast 2, wrote Dreamcast 3 (it’s still at the printer), wrote zerodraft of Where Arrows Fly (now in third revision) and completed about two thirds of a new story I have no name for yet (perhaps The Canal Rat). So its been productive.

There had been progress in other parts of my life, but they don’t belong here. This blog is an outlet for all the leftover feelings, rants and musing of a restless mind. And please don’t assume any of it is true; I freely mix imagination with the real stuff. But if I have thought of it, and especially if I wrote it down, then it has an internal reality and occupies a track in my memory. That’s something to keep in mind. I often recall episodes in my books that have been edited out or in, and I have to backtrack to the completed product to see what the official version ended up as. "What were you thinking...?" I’m often asked, and I have to query back, "In which version?"

So it is in real life. I sometime have to ask my wife just "How things went down exactly...?"

But now here we are, starting a new chapter for 2011. I’m old enough to wonder just how many chapters are left in my book of life. Am I still climbing upward or have started on the decline? Should I be in first gear or am I still in overdrive? Not easy to tell. But life is still too much of a struggle, with aspirations ahead of me, so I must still be in drive.

But back to 2011. I resolve not to make any resolutions but to keep things as they are on their present course. There was a period when each year the list started with "I have to quit smoking for real this time..." and eventually, I did. Sometime later came "I have to write a book..." which was followed in subsequent years by "I have to finish the book(s)..."

But for 2011, read my lips, there are NO resolutions to pre-frame the year.

There will be challenges, setbacks, triumphs, miles stones achieved and passed, why burden it by artificial restrictions. I could say "This year, I will be a better husband, father or person in general..." but why force my character in some new straight jacket? Impose new borders on an already limited living space?

But you are a writer, surely you can come up with a better script for yourself? True enough. But that’s why I have my characters, to explore events and circumstances, feelings and emotions, not to forget consequences... to go where I myself dare not go.

My experience with resolutions... too often they are targets for failure. Aiming too high (insurance against success), or too low (evidence of a lack of commitment) makes the whole an exercise in futility...

Being environmentally conscious, I suppose, I could recycle something from past years... but NO!

So People, sorry, no resolution this year. Nada!