New Year Projections

[aadler]

Like Tevye, I have a certain regard for tradition. One tradition is that of assessing the year to come and the goals to be addressed during that year. (Also, other people on my FList have already done it, which serves as a prompt.) So, here goes.

Fic writing plans

Last year, as I noted in my New Year’s Eve retrospective, I named five specific fics I had committed to writing, and wound up completing only one of them. (I did six other stories that year, and together they all totaled 380k, or 55,000 words, but still I didn’t do the stories I had named.) So, part of this year’s commitment is to finish the ones I failed to do last year: “Reversible Error”, “the Unforgiving Minute”, “Zulu Time”, and “Smoke and Mirrors”.

I also announced the intention of averaging out at one fic per month, and fell well short. (Seven out of twelve is barely half.) I’ll repeat that goal, again specifically because I committed to it last year and failed. Part of that will be served by yet another thing I stated a year ago: write something every day, EVERY day, even if it’s only a single page.

Continuing: recently I noticed idly that, while most of my fellow Buffyfic writers have moved on to other fandoms, I stay pretty much where I started out. That’s fine with me — I stick with Buffy because nothing else reaches me in quite the same way — but I’ve occasionally done fic in other fandoms and so know that I’m not only capable of doing so but find genuine pleasure in it. One of my intentions for 2013, then, is to write one non-Buffy story for, say, every three or four Buffyfics I do. The first — I may start on it as soon as I post this — is a Hunger Games fic. (Yes, I know, trust aadler to wait till something is past its trend-date and then toss in his contribution. I am, after all, the guy who waited till 2008 to do his Xander-in-Africa fic, and then only a drabble.) Then there’s the Terminator fic I mentioned last year … but that one is a major undertaking, and I may not feel capable of tackling it in the middle of everything else. Past that, we’ll see. I want to stretch myself a bit; I may respond to whatever catches my interest at the moment — Dexter, Once Upon a Time, the Walking Dead, who knows — or I might bite the bullet and take a try at Yuletide this year.

Which brings up another area: events. Last year I really plunged, going for not only Remix Redux and my own Redux-inspired Circle of Friends Remix (cof_remix), but also Remix Madness, the Choose Your Author Ficathon (cya_ficathon), and letsgetitdone’s 2012 motivation-athon. That’s five different events, one of my own devising … in fact, only one story I did last year — “As Moonlight Unto Sunlight” — wasn’t done for a community event (though “Oaxaca Nights” was one I’d already been planning for years). This year I’ll repeat Remix Redux, Remix Madness, and Circle of Friends; I may or may not repeat letsgetitdone and cya_ficathon (they may or may not be offered this year), and I’ll put a lot more consideration into Yuletide.

That sounds like a lot. Still, I’ll try to do whatever I do within the basic framework I laid out at the beginning: twelve fics in 2013, four of which are the stories I named last year but didn’t get done.

Personal plans

One of them, of course, is the standard: lose weight. Is there anybody who doesn’t have “lose weight” as a New Year’s resolution, announced or private? Susan (the wife) fell off the wagon last year and regained maybe half the weight she lost, though, and she’s seriously focusing on it again, so this is something we can work together. Plus, for the first time in a long time, I have enough junk cleared away that we can get at the Bowflex, so the odds aren’t too bad. I have to lose six pounds, need to lose twenty, and would like to drop twenty-five to thirty. We’re already doing okay on controlling our diet, it’s just a matter of getting our activity level up to a good, steady level.

I previously (months ago) mentioned the possibility of embarking on a new career. Haven’t said anything about it in the meanwhile because so many possibilities in my life don’t work out — as in most people’s lives, I suspect — and I didn’t want to name something until I was actually engaged in it. I’m most of the way there, however; I did a training period, got approved, and am waiting for a few other things to come across. With luck, I could begin by the middle of January. It’s not a huge advance (step down, in some ways), but it’s new and interesting and SO MUCH BETTER than two years spent looking for work and not being able to find it.

I also will work on getting some of the junk cleared out of our house. Doing a little bit every day seems to accomplish more than trying to effect a massive change all at once, and that’s the approach I’ll attempt.

Last of all, if I start in on the new career that seems ready to begin, I’ll use some of the opportunities in that to begin studying Spanish on a regular basis. Arabic and Farsi didn’t work out for me — not enough opportunity to practice — but I shouldn’t have that problem with Spanish. I don’t know why language matters so much to me, but it seems to have reached the point that it does.

Family plans

Susan and I are already committed to visit our son Kevin in China, in time for their Spring Festival. I’ll meet his girlfriend for the first time (can’t remember if Susan ever met her before she finished college here and returned to China), and it may be that we’ll have things to discuss with her parents. I’ll need to make arrangements with my Reserve unit, because there’s a drill that comes right in the middle of the necessary period, but I don’t do that kind of thing often and they’ve been pretty good about accommodating me.

About my daughter — sroni — I don’t know. Kevin has been in China for fifteen months now, while Roni moved to Ireland less than four months ago. It probably wouldn’t cost near as much to visit her in Ireland as to go see Kevin in China, but frankly he’s more urgent right now.

And that’s it for family.

Military plans

Basically, I don’t have any. I’m in my last year of my enlistment, and due to age I won’t be able to renew. There isn’t enough time left for me to do a full year of deployment, if one came up quickly enough, and it’s very rare for my company to go downrange for less than a full year. Essentially, I’m walking out my time remaining. I wish I could do more — wanted to do more, kept trying to find a way to squeeze in even one more deployment — but all things come to an end and this one is ending.

The only thing remaining is some complications regarding getting proper credit for the years I served in the Air National Guard; that will be important in qualifying for a military pension. I already have 21 years in, and it’ll be nearly 22 by the time I’m out, but they have to be “good” years, and I need to acquire and present certain records in order to establish that they’re good. It’s a process, and I’m in it. There are provisions for extending my service past the age limit if I need more time, to allow me to qualify and/or get the documentation I need, but that’s quasi-service; I wouldn’t be able to deploy, I not only wouldn’t be required to qualify in physical training but might not be allowed to participate, I probably would have no duties … it would be an existence in limbo, and I’ll go through it if I need to but not if I don’t, and no longer than absolutely necessary.

I probably won’t even do NTC (National Training Center) or JRTC (Joint Readiness Training Center) this year, though I’ve been to both in the past. It’s great experience for deployment, but I won’t be deploying again, and the only reasons to take part under my current circumstances would be 1) to fill a slot my Reserve company has to fill, or 2) to be in place to provide guidance in training to people who will be able to deploy. Either might be possible, but at this point I’m ready to let go of what I can’t keep and let my military career come to its natural end.

Random observations on the present

Today was gray and dreary; not that cold, but discouraging, and I only stepped outside our house once, and then for less than a minute.

Just before Christmas, a crack appeared in the lower left corner of Susan’s windshield, and by three days ago it had already spread halfway across. We’ll have to replace the windshield … but that’s an expense we can’t meet right now, not while we’re trying to put away money for the China trip. Maybe I’ll let Susan use my car while we’re waiting, or she may prefer to keep using hers even with the spreading crack. We’ll see.

Finally, I am not pleased with the way things are going in our country right now. As Adam Smith observed, “There’s a lot of ruin in a nation,” meaning we can sustain a massive amount of damage and still come back from it … but the damage has been accumulating for a long time (at least since the New Deal, possibly beginning as early as Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘Progressive’ interventions), and everything has a point of no return. I’m not remotely qualified to judge whether the U.S. has reached that point, but I deeply dislike the fact that I have to wonder. We spent four years waiting for the time when we could bounce Obama out of office and begin the process of getting back on track; that, clearly, didn’t work out, so now the question is whether recovery will be possible by the time he’s finally gone.

***

2013 will be significant year for me, for a number of different reasons. I have plans, and I have hopes. I don’t have certainties. I’ll do what I can, but some things will just be whatever they are. So, here’s to seeing what those things will be, and how I respond to them.

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