The only constant

Yesterday was delicious. I spent an hour or so working on my new novel (outlining it and writing a draft of the first chapter), then read books for most of the rest of the day. Sixpence House by Paul Collins is a delightful memoir about books. I love books about books. :) Also read The Playwright’s Guidebook by Stuart Spencer, and wrote out some of the exercise scenes. Playwriting is more my style, I think, since dialogue is what I particularly relish writing. Finished reading The Magicians of Caprona (third book in the Chrestomanci Quartet) and got 100 pages into Witch Week before I realized it was past my bedtime. Oh, and I finished reading Howl’s Moving Castle on Saturday. Loved it. At this rate I’ll have read five Diana Wynne Jones books (possibly six, with The Dark Lord of Derkholm) by the end of the break. Not bad. :)

But that’s not what I’m going to talk about. It’s that time of the year again, time to review the past year and make resolutions for this one. So, 2006. It was, overall, a good year. I can’t tell if that’s because it’s an even year or not. :) (I apparently have a subconscious dislike of odd numbers, which is only now surfacing.) Anyway, I started Riverglen Press and published two books (The Book of Mormon: Reader’s Edition and A Christmas Carol), began blogging in earnest (452 posts on here in 2006), got a camera and started learning photography, became president of the C.S. Lewis Society on campus, and did lots of other stuff.

What do I expect this year? Well, foremost in my mind is graduation in April. After that, I’ll try to get a job at either BYU Library or Provo Library, work for a semester or two, and then apply to library school (either online or at UNC Chapel Hill, most likely). Hopefully I’ll get married somehow. :P (But that depends on a planner which I don’t really have access to. ~sigh~) I’m sure I’ll blog a lot. No worries there. :) I’ll save the rest of the expectations (er, goals) for this next part.

But first, here’s a review of last year’s resolutions:

1. I’d forgotten that I set the real goal for 70 (I thought it was 100 all along). And voila, I read exactly 70 books in 2006! Fancy that.

2. I’m not sure exactly what’s happening with Beyond. Last week I had a change of heart, and was determined to revive the project, but I’m getting rather tired of programming in general. We’ll see.

3. My only exercise has been walking to and from campus. Yay.

4. Well, I now alternate between pasta, baked potatoes, and frozen burritoes for dinner, so I guess that’s some small improvement. Not really. ~sigh~

5. Still haven’t done this…

6. I made a dent with reading the rest of the C.S. Lewis corpus but there’s still a fair amount left to read.

7. Haven’t done this either. But I’m taking Latin 302 starting in six days, so hopefully my memory of Latin will rescue me until I get my head above water.

8. Haven’t done this.

9. Or this.

10. Or this. ~sigh~

11. Well, I have posted almost every day, but I don’t know if the quality of posts has changed much. :)

12. Haven’t done this either. But I did try.

Resolutions for 2007:

1. Get all A’s this last semester. Fight apathy and senioritis as if they were a two-headed dragon. Strive for excellence in all I do.

2. Read 100 books. From January to May of 2006 I only read eight books; from June to December I read 62, average of 10.33 a month. (In December I read 14, or about one every two days.) I’m tempted to bump the goal up to 120, especially since I won’t have homework after April, but I don’t know what the year will bring.

3. Write either a full-length novel or a full-length play, or both.

4. Publish at least 10 books via Riverglen Press.

5. Get a job at a library, and figure out when I’m going to go to library school (and where).

6. Set up a study program for expanding my knowledge and skills in a variety of areas (languages, history, art, music, etc.).

7. Plan better. Don’t waste time.

8. Save money. (And try not to spend it all on books.)

9. Eat better. If not…well, I guess they have Internet access in hospital rooms, right? Right? ;) (Just kidding.)

10. Focus more on others; serve more.

11. Say more nice things about people. I often think them, but for some reason they scarcely leave my lips. The absence of mean words doth not warm fuzzies make.

And finally, 12. Be more like Christ than I’ve ever been before.

It’s all quite doable, I think. And this post is plenty long. The End.

Ben, sounds like we followed the same diet and exercise plan in 2006. Mine probably won’t change much this year, unfortunately, but let me know if you find an equally cheap and easy alternative to pasta and potatoes.

For what it’s worth (which is not much), I think you should go to UNC-CH. I was there last weekend and loved it. It’s a beautiful campus. And it has, what, three libraries?! Does it get any better than that?

Ramen? No, really, pasta and potatoes are hard to beat. Rice is pretty cheap, though — I prefer jasmine rice (since I served in Thailand and all, and it smells so good). It’s figuring out what to put on it that’s hard. (I can make curries and such but they take time, and the last time I refrigerated some and ate the leftovers, I threw up ten times in a row.)

I’m going to try eating more fruit, vegetables, and fish, which will mean more trips to the grocery store (probably twice a week), but it’s worth it, I think. Instead of snarfing down Cheez-Its when I’m hungry, I’m going to try celery and peanut butter, or carrots, or something. (I do eat nuts, but I heard once that too many nuts isn’t healthy. Hopefully it was wrong. :))

I’d love to go to UNC-CH, especially since a good 25% of my ancestors are from North Carolina (for a while). And I love back East. And I miss humidity. If I get an assistantship there, tuition isn’t so bad. We’ll see. ~fingers crossed~ (And yes, three libraries = bliss. Right now I’m two blocks east of the city library and ten minutes south of the university library, which is bliss - 1.)

[…] At the beginning of the year I set a goal to read 100 books. (Last year I aimed at 70, thought I’d set it at 100, and ended up reading exactly 70.) Since October’s almost over, leaving just two months in the year, I figured I’d better take a look at where I am. It’s not looking so good. […]

[…] Last year I wrote 355 blog posts, which seemed like a lot until I went back to my 2006 New Year’s post and found that I wrote 452 in 2006. Goodness. But I do think this year’s posts were better, at least to some degree. I hope. ;) […]