Asakiyume mita

I haven't made New Year's resolutions in quite a few years--like, since even before the pandemic--but this year I have a couple! I am sharing them. Accountability!

One is to try making croissants. It seems impossibly hard. But so rewarding!

The other is to make a more consistent and frequent effort with my writing. I have the Tales of the Polity novel that I'm working on, but for the past year or so, I've only been sitting down to work on it once a week, with rare exceptions. And/But also, I think I need to write some other, shorter, different things, because I have an urge to share. I have stories to tell, but if I can't share them, then ... well it's frustrating! I'm greedy--I can't wait however many years it'll be until I finish the novel; I have to share some other things. So I'm going to make writing a daily thing and see if that helps.

Eh bien, mes amis, and now I'm going to decorate some gingerbread for my next-door neighbors. The bougie neighbors are getting cats (they have two cats), bees (the mom loves bees), flowers, butterflies, and a guy on a snowmobile (I have no clue what the dad likes, but he does have a tow thing that Wakanomori is pretty sure contains a snowmobile, so I made a gingerbread guy on a snowmobile for the dad).

For the fun-music-playing, knife-throwing-training, rock painting family on the other side, I made mainly Gen-one Pokemon figures (Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Gengar, two each: one for the son and one for the daughter) because I know the son at least loves Pokemon. Also two squirrels and some snowflakes. The daughter likes wearing pretty dresses ("the garment should be flowing when the knives you're throwing"), so I did a gingerbread girl in a flowing dress, and the boy I just did as a gingerbread boy in an embrace-the-world stance.

ETA: I am ruining these by trying to frost them -_-

This'll be the fourth year running that I post resolutions.

I didn't do a good job with last year's. I didn't find a way to incorporate conversational Spanish practice into my learning, and I didn't work on the novel twice a week. However, this year I have two possible leads for conversational practice, so even though I failed last year, I think I'll try again with that this year:

(1) Continue to practice Spanish every day, and find a way to work in conversational Spanish every week. Grace period of a month to get that up and running.

As for the novel, what I found helpful was what I did in November, slip-streaming along with the NaNo crew--namely, keeping a tally of words written each day. When I did that, I put much more effort into at least opening the document and turning attention to it. So this year the goal will be ...

(2) to open the document each day and to record words written. If I don't write anything, but I stare at it, musing at possibilities, that's still something (I'll record zero words but note that I opened the document). If I undo a bunch of words and tinker, that's still something too.

A third, less-important-to-me resolution is to continue with Duolingo Portuguese. Still, it's a resolution.

(3) Do Duolingo Portuguese each day

I didn't used to do resolutions, but I did some last year, and I'm going to this year, too.

My resolutions last year were

(1) Learn Spanish. --I haven't mastered Spanish yet by any means, but I worked on it regularly, and I certainly know more than I did at the beginning of the year, and I'm going to keep at it this year.

(2) Make significant progress on my novel. --I made progress on it, but I can't really say if it was significant. This year, I'm going to phrase the writing goal somewhat differently...

(3) Do the hard things. --Wow, abstract goal or what. Nevertheless, having it as a resolution did get me to examine my instincts and reactions and maybe made me push harder at some things.

My resolutions this year are going to be more concrete, and process- rather than goal-focused.

(1) Writing: I've been writing one day a week pretty regularly. I'd like to increase that to at least two days a week. (I mean: creative writing: fiction and poetry. I write on LJ or Twitter pretty much every day, but I'm talking about the fiction and poetry.)

(2) Spanish: Do my Duolingo goal EVERY DAY. I can buy leeway by doing somewhat more on some days to make up for days I miss. But best would be to do a my goal every day.

(3) I wanted to have resolution related to noticing things, but not just "I saw this thing." I wanted it to be more like "I learned this thing," but I can't guarantee that I'll learn things regularly, and I don't want to be fudging it just to meet a goal. So maybe I'll make the resolution to record things I notice each day, and then gather them up at the end of the week and see if I've learned anything.

Here's something I wondered about, and learned today: whether or not there were elk in Massachusetts. Answer: no. We have moose though--I've seen one walk through our neighborhood.