New Year, New Job, New Goals

I'm not a big fan of new year's resolutions. My go-to resolution, if people ask, is simply this: to not break my new year's resolution. I'm not sure whether that qualifies as tautological, paradoxical, or both, which is why I like it.

But this year, some things came together to make the start of the 2016 a true new beginning for me.

Language Predictions for 2015

English is a vibrant, changing language. Some language change is good (e.g., drifting away from sexist language), and some is bad (e.g., incentivize, office used as a verb). But regardless of our personal reactions to language change, it is inevitable.

New technologies and unexpected situations can sometimes suddenly give new life to old words or bring new words into the fold. These types of changes can be difficult to predict. Other changes, though, we can see coming. (Did anyone really expect on-line and e-mail to retain their hyphens?) If we're thoughtful and observant, we can spot where trendlines might shift or innovations might occur.

2012: The Year of High Resolution

At the end of 2011, I set forth a new twist to the standard New Year’s Resolution schtick, resolving to do twelve specific things, one for each month of the year. Some good things happened in the last year, but as far as these resolutions were concerned, 2012 was pretty much a failure:

Good Intentions 2, Me 0

I was so relieved when February was finally over that it didn't occur to me that, holy crap!, February is over already! And guess what I didn't do in the last twenty-nine days.

If you said "get laid," well . . . you're right, but that's not what I'm going for.

What I didn't do was write a clarinet solo, which was the second of my twelve resolutions for 2012.If you remember, I didn't make it through my January plans, either — and I'm still plugging away at Infinite Jest.

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. There's an expressway to the devil's door with my name on it.

I did manage to get about eight measures sketched out — maybe 15 seconds of music — but not something I could call a song. Somehow I always expect composing to be easier than it is (especially considering this was an unaccompanied solo).

But, like reading Infinite Jest, I'm not going to give up on this one.

Time doesn't stop, so I must press onward to my March resolution, and that's to finally finish the first draft of my novel, currently called Circles. I'm currently about 40,000 words into it (though some of that is in longhand), and probably need at least another 40,000. Back in December, I thought I would work with NaNoWriMo-like focus and urgency to get this thing finished by the 31st. That is still my intention, though now I'm already a day behind.

It can be done, assuming I can figure out exactly how I want the thing to end. And assuming I can figure out how to kill one of the main characters.

Speaking of Circles, keep your eyes open here for some excerpts soon. I plan to start participating in Six Sentence Sunday to get some feedback and hopefully drum up some support and (dare I say it?) an audience.

The other important thing about March is what happens on the Ides. On the 15th, after given Caesar a few good puncture wounds over breakfast, I'll be giving an audioconference about copyediting for the Internet as part of an ongoing series of editing-related audioconferences from Copyediting.com. If you've got the desire (and the coin) to learn more about how copyediting content intended for the web is different from copyediting for print, go sign up.

Please.

As weird as it seems to me that someone would pay money to hear me talk, I promise you'll learn something.

Take that, audioconference!
Image via Wikipedia

2012 Resolutions, Month One: Infinite Jest, Definite Failure

I failed at my first New Year's resolution.

I even failed at the revised version of my first resolution.

I had originally planned to read both Infinite Jest and REAMDE in January. After realizing that finishing just one of those would itself be a chore, I revised the resolution to reading just Infinite Jest.

February started today, and I've read 437 pages (including end notes) of Infinite Jest. A great number of novels don't have page numbers in the 400s, and for many others, p. 437 would put me just a couple hours' reading away from finishing.

A Slight Downward Adjustment to My Resolutions

You might recall that the first of my 2012 project-based resolutions was to read both Infinite Jest and REAMDE in January. I knew it was a lofty goal &mdash both of these books are monsters — but I underestimated just how lofty it was.

Turns out it is simply too high for me to reach.

I started with Infinite Jest. My Nook Color says that this novel is 1,427 pages long. Assuming we omit the table of contents, title page, half-pages at the end of chapters, etc., the number of actual pages of reading comes down to about 1,394. I started reading on December 29, so I ultimately have 34 days in which to complete my first resolution project.

Not actual size.
Image via Wikipedia

Simple math shows that I must read an average of 41 pages per day to finish Infinite Jest by month's end.

And that's just the first book. Add REAMDE's 1,042 pages, and I would have to ingest 71 pages a day to read them both before February gets here, while keeping up my day job, my freelance work, my participation in the Indiana Wind Symphony, my responsibilities as a father, and this blog (to which, you might have noticed, posts have become rarer since I started this resolution project).

Infinite Jest is not an easy book to read, either. Reading 41 pages a day from this tome takes more time and more brain power than reading 41 pages a day of, say, the Hunger Games trilogy, or Stephen King, or even Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.

Today, I'm on page 230, plus another 20 pages of endnotes. Under the original resolution, I should have gotten this far some time on New Year's Day.

I've come to the conclusion that I set myself up to do the impossible, so I am downgrading this resolution project to make it possible. Or at least plausible. If I can finish Infinite Jest by month's end, I'll be content. I'll read REAMDE after that, at my leisure, while I work on a clarinet solo.

This way, I'm only 281 pages, or about week, behind.

A New Twist on New Year's Resolutions

It's New Year's Resolution time! Most of us, at some point, have made New Year's resolutions, and the majority of those who have done so have, at least once, failed to meet a resolution.

I'm no different. Every time I've resolved to lose weight in the coming year, for example, I've failed. Practically the only times I've been able to keep my New Year's resolutions is when I have resolved only to not break my New Year's resolution.

The problem is that most resolutions are too general, with no clear ending point or concrete indicators of success: lose some weight, watch less TV, not murder the in-laws in their sleep. While those are all nice things to strive for, there isn't really a plan there. There's no accountability, no consequences. They're easy to forget about two days, two weeks, or two months into the year.

So I'm not going to do that anymore.