hey 2020! buh bye.

And now it’s on to New Year! Do you do res­ol­u­tions? I don’t really make res­ol­u­tions, but I kind of renew my com­mit­ment to try to be a bet­ter per­son each year. Reach out to people (some­thing that’s tough for me as an intro­vert), be more thought­ful, more com­pas­sion­ate. Before form­ing an opin­ion or judge­ment about someone, to remem­ber that every­one has a story, so maybe I should con­sider what that might be before I form an opin­ion or judge­ment. I have a story, so why would­n’t they?

One thing I will def­in­itely keep up is my weekly meet­ing with my Account­ab­il­ity Part­ner, Beth. We atten­ded a vir­tu­al course at When Words Col­lide in the sum­mer, the course was about mak­ing a plan for your work, so… my plan to release Gate­keep­er­’s Key as an audiobook, for instance. We had a chat and decided to be each oth­er­’s account­ab­il­ity part­ner. We have been meet­ing for a chat every Sunday morn­ing since August, to say what we’ve accom­plished dur­ing the week, and what we intend to do over the next week. It’s a great sup­port sys­tem, and helps us stay on track. That is def­in­itely some­thing we will con­tin­ue in the New Year. Beth cre­ates com­ics, and has also posthum­ously pub­lished her father­’s book, Talis­man of the Winds. Find more about Beth and her work at MoongateStudios.com. http://www.moongatestudios.com

I wish you all the best in 2021. If you’re going to make res­ol­u­tions, I encour­age you to avoid those things that put unne­ces­sary pres­sure on you. Instead think about a res­ol­u­tion that bene­fits oth­ers. Like, I will reach out to people I haven’t talked to in a long time and see how they’re doing. Or… I will write a let­ter each month and mail it to someone who will enjoy get­ting an actu­al let­ter in the mail. Goals that are achiev­able, and make you and oth­ers happy. If Cov­id is teach­ing me any­thing, I am learn­ing that life is too short to focus on the things that in the long run don’t really matter.

Happy New Year.