An early look at 2013

A year ago, I outlined the concept of New Day Resolutions. I am still trying to follow the idea of resolving what I will do today, rather than what I will do over the next year. Am I always successful? Some days are better than others.

However, there are definitely things I look forward to doing this year. I may not do them all, either because I don’t have time, money or because I change my mind about wanting to do them. There may be other things I decide to do. But as of right now, here some things I am eagerly anticipating for the next revolution around the sun.

More reading: I was a little surprised to find that I only read 46 books last year, according to my Goodreads stats. Because, frankly, having taken five graduate-level courses at Mythgard, it seemed like I read a bunch more. (I did read some shorter pieces that aren’t listed there in my stats, but not really enough to justify bumping the number up.) At the very least, I should’ve read a book a week. But right, I’m looking forward not behind, so I’ll set my modest goal for the year at 52 and move along.

More schoolin’: This will be my second full year at Mythgard, though I’ll be cutting back a little. As mentioned above, last year I took five classes; however, I expect to only take three this year, one per trimester. Not without chagrin, because there are definitely classes I would love to take but won’t really have the time and/or money to put an appropriate amount of effort into. I’ve also got that paper to write for the Joss in June conference, and hopefully there will be more similar academic opportunities I can take advantage of.

More writing: Last year I wrote more than any recent year, and perhaps I wrote more than any year of my life altogether. More importantly, I managed to stay relatively consistent (daily resolution…daily resolution) with my writing schedule. This year, I’m going to build on that momentum [damn you corporate speak! why u not out my system yet?!] and continue working on my writing projects both big and small. That should mean more blogging as well.

More submitting: I sent 21 submissions out last year (not 21 pieces; a few pieces I submitted multiple places) either for contests, traditional and online publication, or agency representation. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t much. I should easily be able to triple the number of submissions I send out this year, and would hope I can do even more. Unfortunately, my favorite submission finder and tracker website, Duotrope, has just become a subscription-based service. It’s a really nice service, but not sure if I can swing the fee just now.

More working: Which leads me to this one. At the beginning of last year I had a well-paying, if not spiritually fulfilling, corporate job. At the end of the year, I wore a brown suit and dropped parcels off at people’s doorsteps. For the 8.5 months in-between, I didn’t have a steady occupation (beyond the schooling, reading, writing, and everything else I listed above), although I did do some freelance work through Elance. This year, I need to figure out the whole steady income thing. Ideally, I will figure out how to do this while doing one of the things listed above.

And that’s that. Those are the things I am looking forward to this year.