Mess Neutral

I love resolutions!

I love list-making in general, because while you are making lists, you are not yet involved in the arduous effort of doing what is on the list. Unless you made a list which said KEEP WRITING THIS LIST FOREVER!! in which case you would be caught in meta-list hell for all eternity!

WRITING A LIST OF FAMOUS BELGIANS HAD SEEMED SO EASY IN THE BEGINNING

New Year’s resolutions are a special kind of super-fun because they come only once a year which must make them more important I think. Also, sometimes it is fun to think ahead for a whole year, instead of never planning beyond the next cup of tea. I wouldn’t suggest using your NY resolutions to plan every cup of tea you’re going to drink that year though, that would boggle the mind! It’s like thinking about how big the universe is, or how we evolved from primordial ooze into The Cheeky Girls!

PHILOSOPHY TODAY

Last year I did exactly as I predicted on my resolutions, so this year I’m going to keep things simple again. I may further supplement these with some Advanced Level resolutions, which perhaps I can use in the future to rate myself on some sort of resolutionary league table!

Resolution #1: Work on “projects”

For a long time I said I was going to write a Mills & Boon. Guess what I have been secretly doing while I was away? No! Not writing a Mills & Boon! Almost had you there.

For reasons fascinating to me but probably to no-one else, instead of heterosexual romance I started writing a story about teenage girl-bands in space. Only a small genre-shift! Already this switch is paying amusing dividends: after my Mum telling my Dad that I was writing some “young adult” fiction, he started questioning me about this “adult” fiction I was supposedly writing and outright asked me if I was writing porn. Proof that you only need one pensioner to start a game of Chinese Whispers.

However, coming home has forced something of a hiatus upon me, and I am not sure how I am going to fire myself up to finish this cosmic adventure. It’s all about finding that perfect place to work, and I am struggling to create a peaceful environment here. I have scuppered myself with my own desires; in dreaming of a paradise where I would be supplied endless cups of tea, I failed to anticipate this would mean being disturbed every ten minutes by someone asking me if I want another cuppa. Sometimes twice, because they forgot what I said by the time the kettle boiled.

Such existential revelations are my bread-and-butter, now that I am an Aspiring Novelist!

I am plotting other projects too, but they are far too secret to talk about.

ONE OF MY MANY FAVOURITE "WHISPERING SECRET" STOCK PHOTOS

Resolution #2: Develop effective anti-distraction strategy

I confess, generous and frequent offers of tea are the least of my worries; when it comes to distractions, I am my own worst enabler. I do recognise the brittleness of my concentration and make regular, feeble attempts to shield it from the many enticing and perilous diversions that exist, winking at me from the internet.

Usually this means burying all my RSS feeds ever so slightly deeper, hoping each forced click stokes my guilt so much that when I finally reach that red-link district, I will be so overwhelmed by my lust for those brazen bookmarks that I shut the browser completely.

That never happens.

I cut out computer games, refuse to get a smartphone, got bored by most TV and gave away all my books. I am truly trying to steel myself against this world of modern distractions we have created, but I don’t seem to be able to convince myself to give up reading articles about cyborg beetles or cul-de-sacs or Mormons.

And I don’t think I ever will entirely, because then I’d have to completely overhaul my personal belief system and topple knowing random shit from being the noblest of all human goals. I just need to work out how to not want to know it right now. How to procrastinate my procrastination.

This will be my most difficult task for 2012, but when I have come up with a solution, I will call it my DISTRATEGY, which sounds like a kind of military tactic used by a robot army poised to overthrow the world, which makes it really cool, which means I will try very hard to do it.

Resolution #3: Not waste first five months of year

I have exactly five months before I must return to reality. Whereas I had a clear idea about what I wanted to do when I left last year (i.e. go quite far away for quite a long time), I’m a bit more uncertain now. I guess what I want to do is pretty location-independent. As long as I can be somewhere mildly interesting, with enough space and time to pursue my “projects” and a connection to the real world, I will be happy. So, building villages in Africa would be out, but part-time goat-herding in the Swiss Alps would be in. I bet the Matterhorn’s got killer wifi.

Any suggestions/requests for how I spend the next five months will be entertained. Just remember I am rubbish at most things involving physical effort.