Time for a new calendar from your favorite Chinese food restaurant, “and don’t forget to hang up your cock!”
The Rooster has gone home to roost, and now the Dog days are far from over.
My Resolutions for 2018, Simplified
- Be completely not sick! (achoo!)
- Improve my Veganism
- Have better (regulated) eating habits
- Go to the Gym Every Day (or at least do yoga more often on the in-between days)
- Write more Fiction
- Stay pretty
- Lose more Weight
- Improve my Six Mile.
- Lose “Fanny Pack”
- Network better.
- Start a Zine
- Cover more Art Events
- Build Readership
- Be Published Somewhere New and Exciting!
- Get a salaried (or at least steady) position in my industry
- Save more money
- (ooo and maybe) meet someone special
2018 here we come!
New times, new methods. If you’re anything like me, you’re still tackling the same New Year’s Resolutions you made a spring and four millennia ago when the Babylonians began the practice! Well… maybe a few of those goals have been fulfilled during that time. Isn’t that good enough?
This year is different — somehow. Perhaps due to being the penultimate, eleventh sign in the Chinese zodiac, a Dog year — my sign — that somehow I feel some more optimism in the days ahead. If you’re not born in the year of the dog, I don’t know what to tell ya.
The Dog highlights dependability and a certainty in building material wealth, as well as being a loyal sign — perhaps to a fault. As long as this year follows through with focus, without the distraction of too many “masters” and with great energy, it’ll prove very powerful. In its numerology, it is expected to be just that, a year of culmination.
2+0+1+8
It’s an 11 year!
Or a 2 year depending on how one counts their numerology. Either way, the dog year meets the intuitive and peaceful one, in that hard work, will come to a head, guided and dominated by passion.
So as we make our New Year’s Resolutions, we ask ourselves. What would Babadook?
Realistically, what will you accomplish in a year’s duration? Is it a destination, or a journey? Is it something quantitative or qualitative in the result?
Last year, I had set several broad goals. That in itself was perhaps more of a qualitative objective. Improving a process — something ongoing — rather than achieving a specific result. Perhaps similar to the coming together of our favorite DC superheroes — and Aquaman, this year was a lot coming together, in separate parts of a greater whole, still yet completely defined.
Next year, I would venture to guess, will be more of a culmination of all of that business-side striving.
The deets: Hopefully, I see some more gains in veganism and exercise. I found more time for meditation and going to the gym towards the end of this year. Staying pretty consistently Vegan Before Six. Four pounds were lost from somewhere. Body toning with cardio, and most importantly: my heart feels like it may actually be getting stronger.
There have even been smaller surprises (accomplishments) made along the way! Studying certain things, writing particular pieces, and even starting a newsletter, weren’t particular items that I expected in January 2017, but still made the list: completed along the way to whittle down much larger goals little by little.
Next year will be more of the same!
Same, not sane. Isn’t insanity “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” according to Albert Einstein? Well, that may be true but there’s no way that you’re going to do everything the exact same way, year-after-year anyhow! Where’s the entropy in that?
Every year, we’re trying a new method at the old problems! Learning which way really works well for us. Because we’re not all the same, we can’t look to a single guru for guidance. The world is our lesson! Our greatest opponents, our teachers! For me, that means my opponent this year must be that evil me that tells to strive for less!
Do what I do. Don’t try so much.
Try to keep it simple. For instance: I just want to sleep right.
Brienna Parsons 