Resolutions

It occurred to me that I never wrote a post about my New Year's resolutions... and, you know, it's probably too late to do it now. But tonight I took a quick look at my list, just to see how I'm doing with them. Many of the resolutions refer to things that are going to happen (or not happen) later in the year, such as *Move back to Boulder, *Get a job, and *Get twins settled in kindergarten. Others, such as *Walk regularly, *Go to sleep earlier, and *Stick with WW, are coming along reasonably well, which is to say, sort of OK, sort of not OK, you know how it is.

I have noticed, through the years, that often one resolution will knock out another. They compete for my time, and I have only so much time (not to mention almost-five-year-old twins). I can't write AND sew AND keep up with photo albums AND play the piano AND read AND watch movies AND walk AND go to concerts AND blog AND do volunteer work AND do art projects with the kids AND have a garden AND AND AND. Some people can probably fit all these things into their lives, plus more, but I can't. And when I start working again I especially won't be able to.

The resolution that seems to be knocking out others this year is *Spend at least 1 hour (preferably 2) on writing, at least 5 times a week. Now that the twins are in daycare from 9 to 2, I have a lovely little writing niche in my days. I get home around 9:15, do some chores, and am sitting at my computer by 10. I write from 10 to 12, and then there's time for lunch and more chores and errands before the twins get home. It's completely fabulous.

On the subject of writing, I have some news. Again this year, I made the first cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. If you go to http://www.amazon.com/abna and click on mystery/thriller, you'll find my name and entry (which incidentally has the same title as this blog). I will probably not make the second cut, but I'm having fun.

Today the News Review (local Ridgecrest paper) published a book review I wrote of David McCullough's John Adams. Only in Ridgecrest can you write a review of a 12-year-old book and get it published. And last week the brochures for the Ridgecrest Desert Wildflower Festival came out, and they contain a poem of mine! It's nothing special, and they left out a word, and there's a word in there that should have been a different word... but I'm still kind of tickled. Never expected to have a poem published. Here is the corrected poem:

My little boy can recognize one flower,
and as we walk along he points it out:
"Dandelion!"
said always with such confidence, such pleasure.
"Yes," I agree, but add, pedantically,
"Desert dandelion."

We've had so little rain this year that I'm afraid there won't be many desert dandelions around in the spring, but you never know. Meanwhile, I'll keep writing.