Brendellya Thomas

So it’s a new year with new goals.  My list is compiled and it’s a pretty interesting mix. Last year had a lot more professional oriented goals; this year I’m looking forward to more of a split between health and leisure.  My only two professional goals are focused on career change whatever that may be.   And I’m looking forward to more travel local and an another international trip, more recreational activities, and being fitness oriented. 

But first my goal for Jan is to learn to meditate, as easy as that sounds it’s really a process to fully learn the proper way to meditate.  It’s almost half month and I haven’t really succeeded yet, so I need to get busy learning how to be Still. 

Hopefully at the end of this year I can accomplish all my monthly goals or at least get 10 done at the minimum.  Last year I started about 7 goals in various degrees of completion.  If by some miracle I can check off all 12 goals, a goal for every month, I will be a very happy 2012er.  

This year has been a really interesting year.  I set out with an exciting list of goals at the beginning of 2011, some I accomplished, some still in progress, and some not started. One of the goals I’m happy to have started is writing.  I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time and I really enjoyed the experience; though I didn’t win. 

I fell short of the 50,000 word challenge, only writing 20,000, but I’m still happy with the results.  For me, writing is such a hard chore.   I really enjoy reading.  My office is stacked with shelves of books, paperbacks, hardcovers, novellas, anthologies, and graphic novels. I often daydream of my own plots and characters in my head.  But the thought of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) has always been paralyzing fear.

Writing has always been my weakest subject, my sentences sometimes run-on, my commas loose their way, and my subjects tense at the verb selection (haha…get it).  I pretty much suck at writing. 

I finished less than half of the challenge, but I consider it a major success.  Doing NaNoWriMo force me to commit to putting my thoughts in a tangible form, something most people never do.  I spent a great deal of time learning about novel writing, about what makes good novel prose, character view points, and the elements of style. And I’m still learning and failing, but I fail much less than before.  It’s still a challenge to write good effective and concise prose.  But I’m sticking with it for the long haul, because I intend to get this budding novel to a stage of first draft completion. 

My next major goal is to finish writing, revising, and hopefully share my vision with the world.  Whether that’s through submitting the manuscript to publishing houses or self publishing, I want to make this art of creation with words a new personal outlet from this point forward.  Right now the act of writing is still a chore but I hope it will grow into a new passion.

Hey that’s a major undertaking for me. But I accomplished the hardest part. I started. 

So, I setup a wordpress blog earlier this year and I did some minor customizing.  The goal was to fix some of the broken parts and at least post once a month.  Needless to say that did not happen.  I’m going to try out tumblr to see if posting snippets works out better for me and my extreme laziness.