jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
Woo! The new year is here! A. and I had a quiet NYE, staying in and having a few drinks while watching multiple episodes of The Avengers (the show gets more ridiculous and hilarious the more I watch it). I may have also done a bit of TPoM editing as well. We were both in bed by 10 and did our usual bit of bedtime reading until we finally passed out around eleven. We were of course woken back up an hour later by the city's fireworks (both the official ones on the Embarcadero and the countless illegal ones in the neighborhood) and a few bros on the roof woohoo-ing. Hello 2016! Now shut up and let us sleep. We're old. :p

Yesterday we went for a long walk around the neighborhood, as it was a gorgeous day for it...not a cloud in the sky. We walked up Lake to about 4th Avenue, cut over to Clement, and stopped for lunch at Koja, a relatively new restaurant of fusion Korean-Japanese cuisine. We'd heard great reviews, and were not let down. Their umami fries (waffle-cut and drenched with pulled pork, coconut milk, sriracha, and onions) were amazing! Definitely a place to hit again. After that, we headed over to Green Apple Books, where I found a used copy of the new Greil Marcus book I've been looking for (he's my favorite music writer) and the new Maile Meloy YA book, which I didn't know was out. The rest of the day was spent about the house. I may have spent New Year's Day doing boring errands such as laundry and doing a bit of cleanup in Spare Oom. We also watched the classic movie Charade with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. That movie was so much more fun than I remembered it being!

But! I also spent it doing a lot of writing-related things as well. January 1st is always when I update the writing schedule whiteboard above my desk, so I thought about what I wanted to put up there. Two of my longterm projects (Books 2 and 3 in the trilogy) will finally be finished and released out into the wild later this year, so I chose to leave them off. Instead I focused on newer projects: the Walk in Silence book, hitting daily practice words, and maintaining a schedule for my two WordPress blogs. [After WiS is released, my next focus will be on the new Mendaihu Universe novel (and possible side stories).] I purposely left the weekends open for the time being, as I was planning on using those as either days off or project catch-up. And of course post here at the LJ.

After updating the whiteboard, I made good on it: I wrote 900 practice words, updated my personal journal, wrote a few WiS pages, and updated the WiS blog. Once I got into the rhythm, I just kept going with it. I even had time at the end to sit back and goof off a bit at the end of the evening. Yay!

Looking forward to this year...it's going to be busy, but in an extremely good way. :)
jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
The last week of the year always feels like a bit of a denouement, like I've been given time to put this past year's affairs in order, finish up what needs finishing, and wait for the clock to tick over to the next year. It's downtime, where I don't have anything last minute planned, but I should at least clean up and put things away.

As always, I'll be posting my writing and creative resolutions over at Welcome to Bridgetown, and posting my year-end music lists over at Walk in Silence, so that leaves me with the more personal resolutions here on the LJ.

So! What do I have on tap?

--Reading: I'd like to read more independently-published books in the coming year. Considering I'm now a self-published author, I'd like to read more books that were released the same way. This kind of ties in with what I've been doing for years on the music scene: using social media, indie epublishers (like Kindle and Smashwords), and other platforms (such as Kickstarter, Patreon, etc). I find a lot of these by word of mouth; either they follow me on Twitter, or they're suggested by another indie creator I already follow. I've made a pretty good dent in my TBR pile this year, and also culled quite a few titles for varying reasons.

--Music Listening: I've always been a bit iffy about streaming sites such as Pandora and Spotify. Not just because of the pittance the bands get, but that it tends to feel like I'm merely putting my own collection on shuffle. I still listen to a lot of terrestrial radio stations that stream online as well as internet radio such as Sirius XM, but now that I've signed up with Amazon Prime, I'd like to use that service to check out new bands that I otherwise might pass by. When new bands release music, I like to listen to the entire album and not just the singles, and sometimes it's hard to find streaming previews that I'd be interested in. It'll also help me rein in my music purchasing; do I really like the entire album, or should I just go with the few songs? Will I still be listening to this album six months down the road? In short: broadening my musical tastes, but calming my spending habits.

--Health: I've felt pretty good this year, having avoided any major illnesses and retaining my usual weight. The eating habits may have gotten away from me a bit, and our visits to the YMCA fell apart near the end of the year (due to weather, laziness, and Day Job hell), but again, that can be easily rectified. I wouldn't mind losing a bit more weight and getting back to the gym more. I really should cut back on the sweets. It's high time I got another eye exam (it's been 2+ years, I think). I should also continue my visits to the dentist. I'm at that age where I'm starting to feel the aches and pains, especially in my joints, so maybe a few checkups are in order as well. In short: Meets Expectations, with Room for Improvement.

--Life in General: One of my recent thoughts was expanding my horizons a bit. Since I spent most of 2015 giving myself a more stable platform mentally, emotionally and creatively, I'm ready to widen that platform with new possibilities. Try out new things, think about things from different angles, things like that. I'm also ready to let go of some old and tired habits as well. I'm not aiming just to fix my time management, only to clear it up a bit. I've done a lot of that this past year already, so it would mainly be a lot of small fiddly habits and distractions that I no longer need or want.


And that's about it for now on the non-creative end of things. Looks like 2016 will be a year for completely new things, and I'm looking forward to it. :)

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