Oh wait, it's a whole 'nother year?

Atomicate alerted me to the fact that I posted only the title to a post - Combatting The Great Dark, Strategies, without posting any strategies... Apologies. I've been sick and started to write it and then was like, aaaahchoo, and left it. The strategy, fwiw, is to listen to lots of disco. Yeah, sometimes a little wockachicka is the only way to go: Bee Gees, Irene Cara, George Michael... it helps me, anyway. 

It feels a little weird to be not posting about the noggaration happening all around us, but I'm opting out of anything not Daily Show-related. Which means I'll be watching the Daily Show after the fact and that's all I can  commit to at this time. But I do have tomorrow off, so, yay noggaration, for selfish reasons! 

This week is going to be chock full of event: Wednesday night I'm going to see Atomicate's band Bette Noir at Bangkok Blues, and then on Thursday I'm going to see Shawnie B star in Greater Tuna the Little Theater of Alexandria. I love seeing my friends creating culchah, so I'm excited.

I'm going to be missing writer's group for music time. It's a workshop week, and the workshop title is Goals. The plan apparently is for everyone to go around and say what their writerly goals are for '09, because saying your goal out loud makes it real and then the group can help you plan out ways to reach your goals and hold you accountable and whatnot. So by missing this crucial meeting, they can't hold me accountable for anything! Ha ha, suckers. 

But it's a good idea. Goals are good, right? Sure. So I figgered I can blog the goals, writerly and otherwise, and you, my five or sometimes six or seven readers can bear witness. Please don't try to hold me accountable tho'. Or if you must, please use the carrot and not the stick. I like carrots. Carrots are part of the plan. 

1. Lose a bunch of weight. Always and forever, this is a goal. I'm still totally planning to get it done. I have to anyway or the back pain will NEVER EVER NENVER NEVERNEN NORFEN NIRVEN go away, and that would be bad. I'm going to join a gym in February, when all the New Year wannabes have dropped out. I admit that over the holidays, good intentions were jettisoned in favor of marzipanimals and beef wellington. I'm only huuuuman, flesh and blood, a chiiick.

2. Do good at work. No, seriously this time... I'm going to care about doing my job well. I will care about it despite the fact that often, striving to do your job well means poor performance reviews and lots of people at work being annoyed with you. Don't ask me why X equals Y in that equation, but often it does. But no matter! I will not let weird corporateness turn me into a corporate slacker! As a first step towards do-gooderness, I completed several online training modules today... and I took notes. Yeah. 

3. Write every day. 

4. Finish stories. 

5. Revise said stories. 

6. Share said stories.

I'm getting better with writing every day. Finishing stories... well, that's harder. And you have to have a finished story before you can revise it, right? Maybe? I don't know. 

And to get even more brain-stormy, here are things I've thought I'd like to write that I've never sat down and tried to write. Maybe posting them here will motorvate me to write them, or kill the ideas forever so I can think about something else.

A Mummer Show

I've always wanted to write and perform a Mummer's Play with my friends. I don't know a ton about them, but the tech kids in college did one and it was awesome. I'm attracted by the idea of broad comedy, costumes made out of paper, basic themes of good vs. evil battles, and making my friends do something stupid with me. Also rhyming couplets, I like those too.

A Musical

This one would be a collaboration with Atomicate. We were thinking a roller derby musical. It could also include rhyming couplets. 

A Novel

Am I serious? I don't know. I do know that I keep saying, "I should write a book!" A novel is a book. So there. 

Found Stories

I've asked my mom and sister why they don't write. Both of them read like crazy, and are certified editors, and write very well. My sister says she's not creative (a blatant untruth) and my mom says she doesn't have any stories in her. The logical me-centric question then is, do I have any stories in me? I think I do, but more to the point, I think everyone does, because we tell our experiences in stories because stories are happening all the time. 

Example: on my first official day at work, I went to the deli downstairs to have lunch. I sat at one of the tables in the hall outside the deli and had just tucked in to some beef with broccoli when I heard a loud clatter behind me and a woman started yelling "Oh my God! Somebody help! She havin a seizure!" I turned around and a woman at the table behind me had fallen off her chair and was lying on the floor twitching. A crowd immediately formed around her and several people called 911 and then shouted that they had done so and that an ambulance was on the way. Her table-mates crouched down next to her and were telling a man in uniform who she was; it was her first day at work too, her name was Marie, and she'd seemed fine until now. Marie came out of the seizure and started moaning without words. She sounded terrified and struggled to get up, while her friends tried to hold her down and said, "Marie, stay down. Stay down, Marie. You're ok now, you're ok! Just stay down, honey!" I stood at a loss; I couldn't do anything, but I also couldn't just sit down and continue eating my lunch while this woman who was clearly in terrible distress was on the floor behind me. I felt sick but also hungry, and remembered when my back went out, and how time seemed to slow to an agonizing crawl while I stood with this awful new pain and the worse knowledge that there was nothing anyone could do, not the paramedics or my friends, there was no help and I was just stuck there until the pain went away to the point where I could function again. I felt bad for Marie on the floor because time was stretched out again for her while she waited for an ambulance to come on her first day at a new job, and how embarrassed she must feel on top of everything else for her new work buddies to see her like this. I stood for a minute and then packed up my lunch and brought it upstairs to eat at my desk. 

So my point is, stuff is happening, and it is a story. So I want to write stories that I see happening, which is like journaling, but different. 

Goals. Done and done.