Happy New Year 2013!

As the world completes its eternal elliptical path around the sun, it carves a path in the cosmos for the human race; so it comes to pass that one era end and another begins.

...or, rather, one year ends and another begins.  Maybe not an entire era per se.  Whatever.  The point is, 2012 has ended and 2013 begins.  Chances are that I'll remember 2012 as (maybe the final) year I got to visit Scotland and Germany, the year I visited my grandmother and some of my uncles in the States, the year I lost close to 30 pounds, the year the Mayan doomsday scare came and went so very uneventfully, the year of the Hobbit and The Avengers and Skyfall and The Dark Knight Rises, the year of the 57th Presidential Elections in the US, the year London hosted the Olympics and the Queen of England celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, and the year we were all blessed with that "whoop it gangnam style!" song. 

And yeah, it's also the year I completed a new novel:  Perfectly Inhuman, the epic rampage resulting from a cloned pop star going wild.  It's actually a pretty big deal, considering I came up with the story ten years ago.  It experienced quite a weird evolution in all that time, but it finally came together within the past year.  It's pretty amazing how so many ideas I had over the years wound up being pieced together with a bunch of new ones to make something really cool and exciting.  One of my prerogatives this year will be in editing, rewriting, and maybe even shopping it around for publication.  One can always dream, anyway.

More importantly, 2012 will be my final year living in England.  In a pretty short time, I'll have to move.  As nice as it's been to live in the rolling green hills of Yorkshire (rain and all), the conditions of my day job have ended, and I feel like it's time I transplanted myself to a new place.  I'm pretty used to moving every few years; spending more than four or five years in one place tends to get old, stagnant, perhaps even monotonous.  I feel it's time change things up again, to go to someplace new, take on new challenges, and see new sights.  The prospect of finding a new home in another part of the world is definitely thrilling.  At the same time, it's a little wearisome to think about the work involved:  having to pack up all my belongings, my car, settle my affairs, etc.  From experience, I know that the next few months will be fast and relentless, given all the work.

So yeah, I have a lot to look forward to in 2013, from that alone.  Who knows what other surprises 2013 will have for me, and all of us?

Moving and writing will not be the only things on my mind.  It's only customary to mull over some New Year's resolutions:  stuff that's really nice to contemplate, but rarely ever gets done.  In fact, the one resolution I always bring up - losing weight - wound up being most of the way fulfilled last year, the year I didn't bother making that resolution.  Isn't it funny how that works?

With at least some conviction, I do intend on sticking with these.  My top five resolutions this year are:

1. Finish all the writing projects I've started.  My to-do pile currently has around seven short stories and seven novels that remain unfinished.  To say nothing of the stories I've finished and never bothered to proofread.  Despite all I have to do, I have a bad habit of dreaming up new stories to make and starting off new drafts.  For now on, I need to focus on finishing stuff up before starting anything new!
2. Publish something! For the love of God, I gotta do something with all the stuff I finished! Even if it's self-published, I need to get something out there!
3. More blogging.  I've had plenty of ideas for good or fun blog posts, I just get lazy sometimes and don't bother putting them up.  Well, that's gotta change.  I hope to get somewhere between 10 - 20 posts a month, as life allows.
4. I got plenty of other things that need to be finished.  I got over two thousand photos from the past year or so that needs to be sorted through.  I got video clips since 2010 that I need to edit and compile into viewable segments (I might even post them on youtube, see what happens).  I resolve to finish all these things off before 2014.  
5. Get below 200 lbs and stay that way. 

You'd think these resolutions would be easy, but finishing a dozen stories, sifting through thousands of files, and dieting will be work, I'm sure.  However, I do hope that these things will make 2013 a productive and satisfying year.

And for everybody else out there, I wish you all a Happy New Year!