Within the Next Five Minutes

Someone decided to point out that a good number of my posts from last month involved descriptions of my love-hate relationship with work. In short -- I spent a good chunk of the last thirty days being a whiny little person.

As a result, I made a little resolution with the coming of the first days of February: For at least this month, I'll hold a moratorium on any mentions of my day job. That means that I'll force myself to find more interesting fare for people to read about, and you won't get to listen to me whine for at least a good ten posts.

When I realized this resolution, though, it brought my mind back to the fact that I never did post my resolutions for the New Year. For that matter, I think I wrote them all down somewhere and then promptly forgot about where they were... which means that I've obviously gotten a head start on what most people do about their resolutions. Nevertheless, this post could serve as a nice substitute.

So what I'll do right now is organize my goals for the next few spans of time. Make of them what you will, but beyond my preventing myself from constantly complaining about my day job, these are as close to resolutions as we'll probably see:

Within the next five minutes: Organize thoughts properly. Finish answering e-mail.

Within the next thirty minutes: Finish writing this post.

Within the next one hour: Get some leisure time in, for once. Continue reading that novel on Alexander the Great that you keep putting off.

Within the next twenty-four hours: Get some sleep. Finish the week's work in such a way as to not worry about it over the weekend. Scribble down notes for a short story.

Within the next week: Pick up a good book for one's collection. Get some more sleep. Organize an initial list of venues for story submissions and start planning things out. Reserve plane tickets and a hotel room for that trip to Bacolod City that you're planning for later this year.

Within the next month: Write at least one short story for the blog. Get some more sleep. Stop spending so much money on trying to forget about work. Play a few more board games. Get together with friends more often.

Within the next six months: Get more involved with the family. Set aside some vacation time (most likely for Bacolod City). Talk to the Philippine Copyright Office regarding standards and practices. Submit something to the Palanca Awards.

Within the next year: Write more stuff. Submit more stuff. Attend at least one workshop or discussion-type group on modern literature. Get my name in at least two books somewhere. Organize life properly -- tell myself exactly what I want out of it.

Well... I never said it would be easy.