The final dismantlement…
I don’t really have resolutions. Those are for the people who will be congesting the Weight Watchers meetings for the next few weeks, making it longer for me to weigh in and bolt.
My goals for the year are to wipe the slate clean, cross off my few remaining goals, and then rise up from the ashes and decide who I want to be afterward. Trying to question the looming identity stuff is just another form of procrastination, so my only two goals are finishing the weight loss and finishing the novel. Everything else is in the way.
The thing that I’m also starting to get serious about this year is family planning. I don’t think I have the finances/ability to raise a kid on my own, but I’m planning to take steps to start getting ready in some sense. I think phase one will be joining Book Buddies, a program where volunteers go and read to sick kids in the hospital. Might also look to offer nanny services to local gay couples, etc. We’ll see.
The other thing that will appear here regularly is based on the Oprah Winfrey show, of course. She recently had Heather Small on her show to sing Proud, which has been a regular rotation song on my iPod even before that appearance. It is usually the song that I play on the walk from the locker room to the cardio machine. Oprah sells T-shirts that read "What have you done today?" (the chorus of the song is ‘what have you done today to make you feel proud?’) that, were they in colors other than black and white, I’d already be wearing.
The Oprah idea is to come up with things you’re proud of every day, not necessarily huge things. Like today, I am proud that despite it raining and my lethargy, I dragged my ass to the gym and did my workout. Some days you’ll have a bunch of things, some just one or two.
So, I hope to post my WHYDT section on here every day. Oh yeah, I plan to post more often this year, as well. I’d love to say daily, but that seems so… optimistic. Heh. I’ll certainly try. I think the problem is that I always write a lot when I do post, so it seems hard to just pop on, write a few lines, and call it a day. If I can get over that, I’d post more often. Hell, my bubble tea place has a free Internet terminal I could even post from, but I don’t. (I’m obsessed with bubble tea).
I feel like I need to write this down now, part of my visualization. For a while now, I’ve kind of had this weird mental picture. It never used to make sense. I had this vision of writing my second book in public, for probably more than a year now. The idea was that I would have an office set up in a storefront, and every day, I would just go and write a book in a store window. Behind me, there would be an LED screen that displays the last couple of words I wrote (the idea beind that you could stand there and read things as I’m writing, if you’re bored or something). And, the whole thing would also be available as a webcam. This will be after the first book is published, and I’ll sign books when I go out for lunch, leave for the day, etc.
I always pictured doing this in a particular block of San Francisco, near Virgin Records. The strange part is there was no obvious place to do it. There used to be Virgin Records, then Planet Hollywood, then a Birkenstock, Ghirardelli chocolate, and a toy store. Then a few years ago, Planet Hollywood went out of business. It stayed empty for a while, but a few months ago, the lot was purchased by Cody’s Books, a local independent bookstore.
So now, right where I always pictured this happening, the perfect venue exists. I just wanted to post this now, so in 2007, I can seem all prescient and say I’d been planning this all along (even before a bookstore existed there). So, see you at Cody’s in a few years… I just read the Marilyn Manson autobiography this week, where he always saw things that would occur in his future, and they often happened exactly as he saw them, so… just figured I should write my visualization down now, rather than seeming surprised when it happens.
Anyway, there you have it. 2006 is the year where my old life ends, and the new one begins. First, I have some last few items to clear up (body, book, boy), all of which should occur well within the first half of the year.
Happy New Year.
