Editing

The new year post

I’m given to understand blogging is now a so-yesterday thing to do. While that might be confronting for someone who was alive well before the bloggosphere became a thing, I’ll take the tack of imagining I’m some kind of long-lived and wise immortal who can laugh at the rise and fall of trends. Muhaha.

Or, I’ll just be what I often am … retro, or a little out of step with everyone else. So be it.

In the spirit of being more in-step, I’m doing the kick-off post for the new year. I’m not a new year resolver type, but there’s something in rituals, or at least, little things we do to put our focus in the place it needs to be (even if we really could just go a few more days or weeks of the party season). I’m not going to say anything about 2020. Such words run the risk of saying far too much, or far too little, or running to tortured cliche.

So. I have three months left in the Arts Queensland grant timetable. Those activities are fairly well in hand. “Twenty-Six Letters” has been sent out to look for a publishing home, and now I’m working on the SF novel “Coderunner”. This is a book that I started writing back in 2011, and boy it reads like I had a lot of energy back then! In addition to that, there is the thread of my (really very good) day job that stitches my week together. That starts again this week, too.

I’m also kicking back into the 10% Happier New Year Challenge. Meditation is something I started formally more than a year ago, and it waxes and wanes in my life as it helps, and as I then become slack, and back again. This week I think especially I’ll need it.

New Years is a bit of a challenging time for me (as it is for many, I’ll guess) … the holiday come-down can hit pretty hard, the stuff you could gaily avoid before Christmas comes knocking, and there’s a tendency to navel-gaze at the gaps between the life/career you have and the one you might covet. But there’s comfort in routine in all that maelstrom, and in not running away from it. Easy to say. Teeth-grit easing into slow relax in practice.

And that’s all I think I’m going to say. The rest is doing. Wishing you the best in all your new doings, too :)