Make 'Em and Break 'Em

New Year’s Resolutions?

-from Susan

Happy New Year, Minds and Friends!

It’s a common enough question, but one I usually duck. I do better with Second Week in February To-Do Lists than with something that has the sweep of 365 days. Alcoholics Anonymous has it right when they suggest to people trying to quit that they eliminate booze just for one day…and then just for the next day. Build up some small triumphs before looking so far over the horizon.

That’s not to say some people who are looking out for my professional or personal interests don't have resolutions for me: daily cardiac and weight-bearing exercise, limit salt and caffeine, write enough words a day to complete a manuscript partway through the year, buy your agent a Michelin-star lunch (no, that’s me saying it – she’s much too polite), etc.

There was a time when I was pretty computer smart - never a programmer, but I understood the overall structure and purpose and how to follow instructions for new hardware and software. I am slipping. In 2016, I must start an online newsletter, which means converting Mac address files to Mail Chimp, which a friend’s 12-year old does in his sleep. I’m losing sleep just contemplating how hard it will be.

 

I must quit playing game apps, the simple ones scorned by young children. I’m slowly but obsessively building out a cute little city while the 6-year old in the family is glued to her iPad, virtually running, leaping, moving at 50 miles an hour through a blurring landscape trying to pile up pineapples and unicorns. She is processing, processing and I fall farther behind. But what I’m most afraid of is getting hooked on her app and sitting like a zombie, ignoring cat hair sagebrush and incoming mail. I. Will. Not.

But I will write the second book in my French village mystery series while the first is polished and made ready for its debut. That is a happy promise I make to my editor at Minotaur and to myself. Having worked so hard to get to this point, that’s one resolution whose horizon looks better than pineapples and unicorns from here!

 

(Pineapple photo: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos; Unicorn tapestry photo, public domain)