Goals, resolutions, or whatever you want to call them

So I am currently at work, and I wouldn't normally even think of blogging while at work, but our server is terribly slow with our current project and a lot of time is being spent waiting for things to load and save and close and all that. So I thought I'd use some of that time to finally blog again.

On this last Sunday afternoon I visited my married friends Whitney and Paige Jones at their home. They'd invited me over for a cheese fondue, but as that is not really one of my favorite things, I went merely for the good pleasure of a social visit. That is something I don't do enough, I've determined. I conversed with them and another married couple they'd invited for awhile, and then Whitney asked if I had time to watch a documentary film he'd spoken to me about. I did, and we watched the film Truth and Conviction, a documentary about three LDS teenage boys in Nazi Germany who started an underground resistance movement. It is a fascinating and powerful story that is criminally unknown in our culture. I highly recommend it.

During the film, Whitney and Paige's hometeachers showed up. We paused the film so they could fulfill their responsibilities. The lesson was about death and making the necessary changes in our lives now rather than later because we never know when death might befall us. They asked Whitney and Paige what they would do differently with their lives if they knew that death would be upon them shortly. I, too, pondered the question, and I wondered what I would do if I knew I had only one month left to live. Sure, I'd probably want to do fun and crazy things like skydiving and whatnot, but two things really impressed themselves on my mind. If I were to die soon, I would spend as much time with my family and friends as possible, and I would strive to write as much as humanly possible during that final month.

I believe I would feel a serious and urgent necessity to write all that I could, put all of my thoughts, feelings, ideas, and hopes on paper, basically leave as much of myself behind as possible. Maybe that's egotistical of me; if it is, I am not too apologetic about it. It's hard to describe why I want to be a writer. It's kind of like when I made the decision to attend BYU. I'd always wanted to attend there because my parents both did, but it wasn't until I visited the campus for a few days that I felt that I needed to go to BYU. There wasn't a specific reason for that feeling, but it was very real and I acted on it. When it came time to think of how I wanted to spend the rest of my life professionally, I went through a lot of possibilities in my mind. I'd make a pretty good lawyer, sure, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing something just for the money, even if I would be very successful at it.

All throughout my teenage years I had written poetry, most of it laughably terrible and (now) often embarrassing. It was a form of self-expression, when I had something to express, but it was also a manifestation of my teenage dream of being a rock star. I thought I would write song after song, but that never really panned out, probably because the other guys in my band never really got good at their instruments. Towards the end of my high school experience, writing became an important outlet for me. Expressing myself became essential to my happiness, even if I was only writing in a journal for my own sake. Then other forms of writing came into play (personal essays, my unfinished novel, short stories, etc), and writing became more than just an occasional emotional outlet, it has become a sort of necessity, like the act of writing is just as important to my self-fulfillment as the product of the writing.

This post was not meant to be this long or in-depth; I'm often long-winded with these things. The purpose in sharing all of this background info is to set the stage for a few pronouncements, new resolutions and goals that I wish to publicly announce. I feel like I am not writing enough, not doing enough to seek my personal fulfillment and further my personal development as a writer.

Quite simply, I am not writing enough and something must be done. Here is what I propose and commit to doing, my personal writing goals:

• Writing daily, in whatever form, for at least fifteen minutes
• At least 3 blog posts per week
• 1 story for my personal history project per week
• 1 personal essay draft every two weeks
• 1 personal essay revision per month
• More submissions of my work to literary journals
• Resume work on A Certain Kind of Weird, my unfinished novel
  

There we have it. Feel free to call me out on these goals and my progress. I actually thrive as a writer when people create and hold me to certain expectations. I feel that my goals are both challenging and possible and will help me become the type of writer, and human being, that I need to be.