Resolutions not welcome

‘Tis almost the time to start working on New Year’s resolutions. But I’m old and decrepit, and have enough experience with those. Before you make NY resolutions, be aware that:

  1. You’ll probably decide New Year’s Day is a holiday anyway, then Jan 2 is when you have to go to work which is UNFAIR, then the weekend is coming, and you’ll reluctantly get to it on Jan 7, already feeling guilty. (Or is it just me?)
  2. You’ll totally adhere to them for approximately 17 days. (Or is it just me?)
  3. Your reserve to avoid sweets will begin to crumble when your significant other tells you his colleague Jerry did something. At this point your brain will start flashing BEN & JERRY in huge, red lights. (Or is it just me?)
  4. Your decision to go to the gym five times a week will begin to crumble when you realise how many weeks there are per year. (Or is it just me?)
  5. You’ll be ready to start preparing NY resolutions for 2020 around the 25th of January, 2019. (That will NOT be me.)

Instead of resolutions, this year I am trying to have goals. The nice thing with goals is that they’re not a binary 0/1 made it/failed sort of thing, unless you decide to torment yourself by thinking like this, at which point you’ve made New Year’s resolutions, then called it something else.

Imagine that on January 1 you give yourself a goal to become a bazillionaire. (Note the lack of “…before December 31st”.) At the end of the year, you find yourself being a mere multi-millionaire. If it were a resolution, being a mere multi-millionaire would constitute a big FAIL. Since it’s a goal, you’re doing tremendously well. Also, you’re now my best friend and can I borrow $100,000 please?

Without further ado, here are my goals for 2019…

Publish Storytellers

The current plan is to aim for March 28, since the book ends with the words “March 28, 1920”. (It would have been even cooler if I were to wait another year, but NOPE.) That’s the goal. I’m on draft 21 and hope to send it to the editor before the end of 2018 – all I need to do right now is re-read it again and hope to catch all the actual errors that are not related to gramer en spelink. The proofreader will lay her hands on it in February. Once I have the final version I will have ARCs – pre-release copies – to send around and hope for the best.

There’s a second goal, which is to record an audiobook. This might happen in 2019 or not. Whilst I had voice training, own all the necessary equipment and know how to use it, this doesn’t mean I am capable of recording an audiobook by myself. Yet if I pick someone else, that person would have to be a native English speaker who knows how to pronounce Icelandic names and phrases correctly. So I’ll give it a try myself first. It’s a goal – it has no expiry date. It might happen in 2025 when I am too famous not to have audio versions of all my billion-selling books.

Go on writing

That one’s kind of self-explanatory. As I wrote a few days ago, I semi-binned a novel that wasn’t working. The one I’m currently drafting seems to be going much better, but that might change, as I believed The Reluctant Deities was also going really well – until it wasn’t anymore. I might publish something else in 2019 or not.

One thing I know for sure is that once I send Storytellers to my divine editor (her photo is in the dictionary next to the definition of “patience”) my priority will be the Vikings Deconstructed book that will be offered free to subscribers of my newsletter (see top left corner). Since I mentioned this, I will also send my first ever newsletter – but not before the Vikings book is ready.

45 minutes riding, two days of horrible back pain. It was worth it.

Health

I’ve got a range of health problems that I could bore you to sleep with entertain you with for quite a while, but I’ll only mention that my physio, upon seeing the results of my latest MRI, informed me that my lower spine presents a deformation typical for people aged 65+. I am more than two decades too young for that. We’re working on realigning my spine, which is painful but has already brought some results. It’s very unlikely that I will ever forge again, but I want to ride an Icelandic horse again without being unable to breathe for two days. And get my lower spine to an age below 60.

Today and tomorrow we’re also eating all the chocolate we have at home, so that we can start 2019 with a clean slate, our fridge filled solely with broccoli, chicken breasts, and non-fat non-sugar gluten-free salt-free caffeine-free organic yoghurt*.

* This will not happen.

Árbæjarsafn Open Air Museum

Iceland

Like I was ever going to skip this section.

I’m planning (I’d say “we’re”, since Husby is an essential part of everything I do, but to be honest I’m doing the planning and he’s trying to keep me from accidentally taking all my things and moving over) to spend as much of September or October near Akureyri. I already know I will have to visit the Icelandic Lava Show in Vík (which conveniently is far from both Akureyri and Reykjavík), visit Árbæjarsafn again, and…there are thousands of waterfalls I haven’t seen yet. And 52 forests. I want to see the inside of a volcano and the inside of a glacier.

How much of this is going to happen depends largely on my health and money. I’ve already worked out how to travel on a budget, but there’s no way I can buy tickets to a volcano tour on a budget. There are also no budget horse rides that I know of and I can’t bring an Icelandic horse in my hand luggage (this is totally not based on personal experience).

Personal life

Do you know what? I am 100% satisfied with my personal life. My goal is to continue being 100% satisfied with my personal life. This might or might not happen because, well, life. But if I only manage 99% I’ll be good.

Ah, wait. One thing. I will not shave my hair off again. I’ve now done it about five times, it always seemed to be a good idea before I did it and for the next three or four days… and then I inevitably realised growing it back will take literally years. My goal for 2019 is to have longer hair at the end of it than I do now. If I even mention something about cutting my hair please cuff me to a radiator or something. Or just tell me to re-read this paragraph.

Spend a lot of time by a lot of fires

That’s my goal for pretty much every day. I’ll finish here, because I’m cold and need to make a fire.

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Or perhaps goals? If yes, would you be willing to share any?

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