Who Needs New Years Resolutions?

 

 Last month I set out to accomplish two things: finish a nanowrimo novel and blog every single day in the month of November.  Both were accomplished, though there were quite a few days I felt really close to giving up.

If you don't know what nanowrimo is, it's a month full of insanity.  For the month of November you commit to writing 50,000 words of a novel, but in the process it's okay if plots change, points of view change, etc, all things are possible as long as you keep writing.  If you finish you're a "winner," and a link to a PDF certificate of completion is provided.  All you have to do is finish.

This is my fifth year attempting nanowrimo, but failed the first three years due to being a college student.  Homework, tests, and class attendance is important after all.  Both last year and this year I pulled off the 50,000 words, though I must admit that the quality of my writing greatly suffered as my typing needed to grow faster to meet deadlines.  Though, regardless, I stumbled upon some great ideas for this sci-fi series I'm working on, and an idea for a third book spin off, which makes me giddy with excitement.  So even though I spent several days writing nothing but garbage, there are gems scattered about that makes it all worth while.

Above is a nanowrimo temporary tattoo that I got a few years ago.  This year I made a pact with myself that if I finished, I'd wear it.  Below is the tattoo pre-application.  It's totally imitating an HP death mark. 

 

 And of course my other goal last month was to post a blog entry every single day.  A couple months back I got pretty close, but I thought it would be cool if I was able to pull off both tasks, and now I have a happy literary/blogging habit.

This got me thinking, who needs New Years resolutions when you can start fresh each month with new goals?  They say that it takes 3 weeks of constant work to turn a bad habit into a good habit, or to simply form new good habits.

So what are my goals for December?  Besides getting the original song finished that Steven and I are working on, I've decided my goal is going to be to finally learn the Japanese kana (katakana and hiragana).  They're the phonetic characters in the Japanese language.  Not learning them is holding me back in my studies in a big way, and I've placed a few learning blocks on myself in the process.  I'm going to blast through those learning blocks! and get back to learning Japanese so I'm not able to just speak the language, but I also what to be able to write original Japanese Pop songs without having to translate English to Japanese.  So that's the goal!  One step at a time.  Anything's possible when you set your mind to it :0)