There's still one day of January left, but I think we're close enough to the end to call it more or less over. And we're easily close enough to call my first attempt at building some life-altering momentum one month at a time more or less a failure. The plan for January was to finish the first draft of the manuscript by tomorrow. I know I was all clever and mysterious in not revealing that goal back when I started, and that turned out to be a really bad idea. With nobody knowing what I was trying to do, there was nobody to hold me accountable for it. And what do you know? I didn't follow through.
I started off strong, getting back into a rhythm of promising myself 1,000 words a day and holding that pace for about a week. But then it started dropping off as I renewed my hatred of January and its continuous cold and darkness and ice and wind and cold and depression and darkness... yeah. Thanks, Earth. Much appreciated. Then I also got all fired up about trying to reinvent something in my classroom again (harkening back to that "attention span of a goldfish" thing)... and then I dug out an album from the iTunes library that got me aching to revisit an old manuscript that I still feel has a great concept but misfired in the first draft... and then I learned that "Homeland" was only available through On Demand for another two weeks so I had to watch two or three episodes a night to get through them all before they disappeared (and seriously? What exactly was the big deal about "Homeland?" It wasn't anything special).... anyway. You probably see a pattern. Distractions. Obstacles. Things I could have powered through had I chosen to, but did not.
But it's not that I didn't get anything done. I have a better idea now of how the story is going to come together, and I really need to just sit down and force myself to get through it. To refer back to my Sam and Frodo analogy, I did make it down the hill. But then I looked across the plains of Mordor and thought, "Oh crap, I'm never getting across." So in the interest of momentum, I'm announcing that it's my intention to finish the first draft of that bad boy by the end of February.
But I also have to push forward with a new goal for the month; just because I didn't pull off the first one doesn't mean I'm off the hook for the second. But this time I'm putting it out there. For February I'm going to take the decision-making out of being healthier. Whenever I find myself in a situation where I have to choose between something that would be good for me or not, I will automatically make the healthier choice. This covers what foods I eat, whether or not I exercise even when I'm not psyched about it, doing whatever will be the best thing to minimize my stress at school... any area where a healthier choice is available, I'm going to try my darnedest to make that choice. I'm not asking anyone to be my accountability police force on this, but I'm thinking if I put this out there into the world, simply knowing anyone at all is aware I'm trying to do this will heighten my already overdone self-consciousness and at least guilt me into doing what I know I should do anyway. I guess we'll see how well that works in four more weeks. And seriously - what better time to try and be health-conscious for a month than the shortest one of the year?
