Lessons for 2017

Following up from 2016's kick in the dick:

Only the Pos

Rhys Darby in Short Poppies as Terry Pole

I'm not planning to try to win any sexy leg competitions in 2017, although my pasty white northern pins would take the top spot for sure. The butt load of bad news that the end of 2016 dumped all over my life has been making it hard to keep my head from falling. I'm taking a lesson from Terry Pole:

I have a habit of self-reflecting and only seeing the faults when I do. It isn't that there aren't things that I feel positive about accomplishing, but there are other things I get so hung up on the negative aspects of that it stagnates all my efforts to make something else.

There are a lot of things I can't control in my life. Many of those things are what has kept my outlook bleak and my efforts stagnated. I can always spend my time wallowing in the things I can't change. That's too easy and won't lead to anything positive in the long term.

Fixing What I can When I can

Baby steps to 2018

The other night I was sitting at my desk not really sure how to spend what remained of my vacation and I noticed my cup from my morning coffee was still on my desk. I'd not planned on leaving it on my desk all day, but I waved away the minute long task with the idea I'd be able to take care of it later. There I was at the end of my day contemplating going to sleep and the minute long task of taking my coffee cup to the kitchen had been put off nearly the entire day for no real reason other than I told myself I'd find time for it later.

I realize I put off the smaller things, because I don't see the goal of accomplishing the small things as being worth the effort when I'm trying to figure out a way to get the bigger stuff done. That leads me back to self-reflecting on what I haven't gotten done; which only discourages me from putting effort into the next thing.

Small fixes/victories/accomplishments can add up if you let them. I know I can't change some of the immense things that cropped up in my life, so I can expect further stress from them. Small victories are still victories. I need to remind myself of that so that when I do manage to accomplish something I can take a proper measure of pride from the small victory and use that to fuel my efforts further.

In Closing

I'm not sure what I'll get out of this year. I had so much hope at the start of last year. I haven't lost hope. It's just been tempered heavily with reality. This year anything short of total thermonuclear war will be a pleasant surprise, so 2017 

2016 you've been a real kick in the dick

Like it says in the title. Such an enormously tall pile of bullshit was dropped onto the end of the year it skews the years overall worth sharply towards the negative side of things. It's too much to really even start listing without feeling the existential nausea kick in hard, so that's not what I'm gonna do here. I don't want to wallow in the misery of 2016. This is going to be all about making 2017 such a great year that it more than makes up for the events of 2016.

NaNoWriMo was a success. 52,678 words during the month of November. After it was over I lost track of the story. I didn't lose the story itself, but life and the holidays just drew me away from it with a suddenness I hadn't been prepared to handle. I feel like I learned a lot in the process of writing my story. I know the story was far from over or even really begun properly after all the words I put into it. I am hoping to spend some time in the start of this year to write up some of the lessons I learned from it for myself. Not as sage advice to pass on to others, but more to help my own understanding of how the process works for me so I can give it another go. I am gonna with the story I have so far, maybe finish it up if I can, or find a way to trim the size of the story I had in mind down. It snowballs every time I start to work on it though.

I've got a new camera it doesn't have a view screen for you to see the pictures you take with it, but it is digital so it has a massive and easy to access storage. I have always liked small toy digital cameras that take weird pictures I can't be sure will turn out until after I check them on a computer. I never liked the idea of taking 100 pictures for the 1 that you will show the world. That's fine for a professional photographer, but nothing I really need for myself. I'm hoping that I'll be able to use this year as a means to get handy at taking pictures with it. If not it will be fun at least to take pictures from my life for myself.

I've got a trip to central NY planned for the end of January to visit my family. My only thoughts have been on how cold it will be. Long Beach has been very cold lately, but it's still nothing compared to the frozen north country I'll need to trek through to visit my family. All of my colder clothes have slowly been moved out of my wardrobe over the years out here in the Southern California weather. Frost bitten extremities aside, it'll be nice to see my family again. It's been 3 or 4 years. That's the trouble of living with your younger self's life choices. Still trying to fix most of those.

I don't know what sort of plan I have for this blog in the coming year. I guess I'll just take it as it happens and see what I can get out of it. Maybe I should branch out to an easier format. Podcast or youtube channel or something. That'd be a lot easier for me to update and produce content to fill. My brother had mentioned some ideas before, but I don't ever know how serious to take his ideas.

Well here's to hoping 2017 turns out better than it looks.