2011 came and went in a blink of an eye didn’t it? Here I am on the precipice of a new year, contemplating what has happened in the year that’s about to wrap, and contemplating what I’d like to accomplish in the new one. The biggest accomplishment of 2011 for me and mine? The birth of my daughter. We welcomed her with open hearts and open arms in September and my life hasn’t been the same since.
Her birth and her life up this point have filled both my husband and myself with bittersweet joy. We’re so blessed to have her in our lives, but there’s a tinge of sadness there, because we miss her brother so much and he’s still such a big part of our hearts and our lives.
But contemplating her new life, and Ukiah’s very short one have made me want to do more with mine, and as such, and looking out into this new year coming up, I’m considering those very clichéd but necessary prospects, resolutions. As of right now, I only have two.
1. Read more.
This year has reminded me how much I love to read, and how seldom I read anything of worth through to completion. The one book I did read through to completion this year was Jane Eyre. This was the first time I’d actually read it, and I have to say I loved it! And I’ve come to the realization that I need to read more and actually finish the books I’ve started to read. In the past five years, I’ve started Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay twice and STILL have not finished it. I’m halfway through CJ Cherryh’s very awesome Down Below Station and still haven’t finished that either! I received an Amazon Kindle Fire as an early Christmas gift from my company and I’m currently in the middle of Micheal Scott’s The Alchemist but that’s only because I got halfway through Michael Scott’s The Necromancer before I realized that there were three books before it! So I obviously want to work my way through that series sometime this year. And that’s just the books I’m halfway in the middle of. I still have a list of books a mile wide that I haven’t even started yet.
I bought Swamplandia at my favorite bookstore ever (Hi City Lights! I love you! I don’t tell you that enough!) because it was so highly recommended and have not started it. My mother gave me The Book Thief and Little Bee with the intention that I actually read them and I really, really, really want to! I also downloaded a bunch of free books on that Kindle Fire that I want to get through. Also, I won a hardcover version of Emma (Thanks again at @PenguinUSA!) that I want to plough through. I’ve forgotten how worthwhile the act of reading through a book is and I want to rekindle (Ha!) my love affair with books if at all possible. I know it’s a heady proposition, having a child that’s not even one yet and trying to fit in reading, but I have to try! And I want to document this new love affair here if at all possible. Which brings me to my next resolution:
2. Write more.
As I wrote earlier this year, I’ve dubiously started writing again, which started with revising my completed novel and beginning the second novel in the series. I did revise the first one and began the process of trying to get it published, and I was rejected by my first literary agent! Woo! I’m still (slowly) trying to find a literary agent, or means of getting published, which hopefully will change this year as I’m going to try and enter this contest.
I don’t know how far I’ll get, if I get anywhere, but I have to try. So I’m going to try and write more. I’m going to try to write more pages of the second and third book in the series I have planned. I’m going to try and write more in this space (I’ve made that promise before, HA!) and my other blogs and I’m just going to try and write anything that comes to me. I’ve let too many good ideas pass through me unwritten and life is too short to let good ideas pass unnoticed.
Both of these are heady prospects given my full time job, my daughter, and my husband, but I want to make them work. Wish me luck!
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