News From Point Resolve

January 2

I miss Bloom County. Berke Breathed could have had a field day with the past year's political up-and-downery. There's not another strip that replaces B.C. in my heart. Where else can I find that combination of sarcasm, viciousness, cynicism, open-heartedness, optimism, and invitation to joy?

Bloom County always had really great Xmas and New Year's strips. I remember Point Resolve fondly-- the denizens of Milo's Meadow would go up on the cliff and shout their New Year's resolutions.

So, here are my resolutions (or maybe goals is a better word) for the new year, in all their minute splendor:

• Finish writing a novel this year. Any novel. I don't care which. Probably Ferocious Dreamers.

• Try to sell The Genius of Deceit. Send the manuscript to agents and publishers. Figure out this whole novel-selling business.

• Find a writing group.
  

• Find a better home for Tropism (and the rest of my vast internet self-promotion machine) than Geocities. This isn't a super-high priority, since Geocities doesn't annoy me overmuch, but I'd like to get space on sff.net, at least, if not my own domain.
  

• Find a job I don't hate (more than the usual baseline amount of hatred, anyway), and keep it for more than six months. I'm really tired of job-shuffling, and I know there's more of that upcoming in my future.
  

• Write more letters.
  

• Be nicer to my body.
  

• Become more fiscally responsible-- like a goldfish growing to the limits of its environment, I tend to spend to the limits of my means. It would be nice to save some money.
  

• Cook more, eat out less.
  

• Live with Meg. Somewhere. Living so far away from her is intolerable. I have so much fun with her, she makes me so happy, I need to be with her. I can write anywhere, right? And she doesn't want to live anyplace that sucks-- I don't think I could stand to go back to rural N.C. or a similar place, but she doesn't want to live in such an environment, either. So after she graduates, there's going to be some kind of change allowing us to live together. The exact nature of that change depends on whether she gets into a grad school, and on which grad school...
  

• Keep in better touch with my family.
  

• Write better stories.
  

• Sell more stories.
  

• Don't get so bogged down in the details of trying to sell more fiction that I forget the real, fundamental joy that the writing process gives me.
  

• Read more non-fiction. Fill the more gaping holes in my knowledge of history and philosophy.
  

• Try my hand at writing some non-fiction, and, if possible, selling it.
  

• Attend a convention or two.
  

Nothing too crazy there, hmmm? But a couple of those things are guaranteed to shake up my life considerably.

I had a long talk with Meg last night, about us. Personal stuff, relationship stuff, what we both want out of life and from each other. Pretty emotional. There are issues we have to work on, of course, but I don't think they're insurmountable. Every cost-benefit analysis I do of this relationship ends up with lots more benefits than costs.

But such analysis isn't the most important thing, anyway. The important thing is that, in quiet moments, I look at Meg, and I know there's no one I'd rather be with right now than her.