Resolutions 2012 (The Semi

RESOLUTIONS 2012 (THE SEMI-COHERENT RANT EDITION) I do this yearly, and yearly I appear to be disenchanted by the same failures whereas being impressed by some shocking successes. I keep promising I’ll be more healthy, which is fat folks code for “lose weight.” Nope. Still a gentleman of beneficiant proportions. I keep promising I’m going to cease using four-letter phrases. Not even fucking shut. And that one had a bonus three letters. I’m going to strive both of those again. I have to survive my 40s, at least, and I typically sound like an uncultured beast, surely beneath a man of letters like myself. I’m not offended by swearing, of course. My mother is, like the father in A Christmas Story, a world-class cusser. I grew up with the F-word like different individuals develop up with . . . I don’t know . . . Catholicism. But at this level the swearing factor is much less in regards to the phrases themselves, or any sort of worry that I’m offending anyone else (I’m solely offended by individuals who take offense to w hat other people are doing), and more about self management. If I need to be less of a potty-mouth, I ought to be able to be less of a potty-mouth. The rest of the resolutions, about watching much less TV, taking part in extra games, writing moreâ€"stuff that’s really extra important to me, profession-sensible, I did pretty properly on. I even have been taking part in extra games, largely by way of PS3 (Flow, Dead Space, and Castle Crashers are faves), however we still haven’t played last yr’s Christmas board games Risk: Halo Wars and Smallworld. I’ll try to repair that in 2012, too. Maybe we need to institute a Family Game Night. Definitely we should do that. I even have written extra, thanks to 2 exciting tasks in particular: Arron of the Black Forest and The Fathomless Abyss. I did end that city fantasy novel, and simply completed an extra revision inspired by some suggestions from an editor who’s opinion I worth. That’ll get into circulation again instantly after the new yr. And I accomplished two work-for-rent assignments: The Warhammer short story “The City is Theirs” for Black Library and the fast-and-furious How to Start Your Own Religion for Adams Media. The solely writing project I resolved to do final 12 months that didn’t get carried out was a screenplay. I’ll get on that this 12 monthsâ€"the concept is right here, just need to make it breathe. So that’s it for the fast evaluation of final yr’s resolutions. A mixed bag of success and failure. I don’t swear extra, and I’m no more fat now than I was a 12 months ago, so a minimum of I’m holding steady on some stuff, and attending to work on others. Let’s go forward and stipulate that at the beginning of every year I’ll attempt again to be healthier, write extra, learn more, and so on. For 2012, I wish to do something slightly greater image. One large uber-decision that I suppose is not going to solely make me a better person general in 2012 but could have a ripple imp act that will help me clear up those different issues that I continue to battle with. In 2012 I resolve to stay totally in the future. I know, that sounds somewhat Oprah Winfrey, but hear me out. Like (I daresay) most individuals, I tend to complain about what has occurred, bemoan what might have occurred, and endlessly endure over what ought to have occurred. And I do this extra usually and with greater vigor than I plan for what’s about to occur or exit looking for what may occur. For occasion, as a lot as I tried to not, and mentioned I didn’t, I did maintain a grudge about how issues came to an end for me at Wizards of the Coast. No matter how many occasions I promised I wouldn’t, I nonetheless kept my ear to the bottom there, still gossiped with individuals who, like me, have better issues to do and more necessary issues to worry about. I’ve been gone from there for eighteen months. It’s someplace I used to work, and though my time there was nicely spent and important to me, I use the teachings learned there (each positive and negative) daily, and I will still keep up a correspondence with a small army of fine pals and valuable allies from TSR/WotC previous, current, and future, I hereby resolve in 2012 to spend no extra time struggling over why I received fired from there as I do over why I don’t work for Rose Records anymore. Like WotC, they might have done issues in a different way in order that I didn’t get bounced out of a job five days after the delivery of my first child. That was enjoyable. At least Hasbro had a better-than-average severance package deal, and my children had been older. But it’s by no means just WotC. Believe me, most days go by once I don’t actually spend any time thinking about Wizards of the Coast in both a optimistic or adverse gentle in any respect. I additionally bitch about politics, together with things that have happened, that everybody appears to just accept had been unhealthy, however that will not eve r be fastened. No one will stand trial for causing this melancholy we’re in. Most folks participate within the huge lie that what’s happening now is a “recession,” and even have the balls (pardon me) to make use of the word “restoration” in any but the previous tense. This is the sort of shit (pardon me once more) that makes me loopy. This keeps me living in a shoulda-woulda-coulda life that’s of no use to anyone. No one needs to hear me bitch in regards to the Hope and Change candidate I was excited to vote for but who has modified fuck all (pardon mâ€"aw the hell with it) and most of us are solely much less hopeful now than we were in 2008. Okay . . . see what occurs? This is not any good. You’re no higher off for having read that, and I’m no better off for having written it. Here’s one factor I’ll do, proactively, to maintain myself moving ahead: I will stop watching the TV news. I know this looks like I’m simply putting my head in the sand, but I’m the kind of one that, when confronted with an issue, sees that as a request, a challenge, a mandate to repair it. But I can’t gentle a fireplace underneath the legislature. I actually have no access to President Obama. I can’t discuss Al Qaeda out of this crazy shit they’re doing. No one at Goldman Sachs is going to take my calls, not to mention provide me their apology for cashing out on America. I can’t stop radon from leaking up via the ground. Who do I call to convince tv networks that when people are being forced out of their houses daily for the sin of getting sick with no health insurance the details of a perfect stranger’s product-placement celebrity wedding isn't just unimportant and uninteresting however obscene? If I might, I’d invent a clean, renewable vitality supply that makes fossil fuels obsolete. I’ve sat by way of the endless “health reports”: carbs make you fatâ€"no, it’s fats that makes you fatsâ€"no, wait, it’s fruit, no riceâ€"no, wait, it’s . . . shut up already. The sugar business releases a examine that claims that corn syrup is unhealthy for you and it’s reported as science. Then the corn growers pay a few million dollars for a commercial to inform you that sugar and corn syrup are the same factor. Finally Michelle Obama warns you to stay away from each of them. It will drive you mad. It will. I can’t stand it. I even have actually sat through episodes of TV news reveals which have made me so offended I couldn’t sleep. Commercials for payday loans and bankruptcy lawyers ship me into panic attacks. The re-introduction of Depression Era applications like “layaway” makes my palms shake. And supposedly “upbeat” tales of nameless millionaires paying off strangers’ layaway gadgets for Christmas doesn’t make me really feel betterâ€"that’s not hopeful, that’s another sign of the pathetic, whimpering finish of the American Dream. I can’t carry this weight anymore. I don’t know how to start to repai r any of those issues. So what’s left to me after an hour of all that is impotent rage. I flatly refuse to crack and go off on some kind of shooting rampage, so the one different risk for me is to step out of the madding crowd and get on with doing what I do. I write tales. I’m going to focus on that. And generally, I’ll should do research and I will, and Twitter will inform me if one thing massive happens, and I’ll hunt down knowledgeable and balanced data on occasions that curiosity and/or impact me directly. But don’t ask me about Wizards of the Coast, Kim Kardashian, Rick Perry, or Rachel Maddow. I’m not going to have an opinion. I’m going to get to work. I’m going to work my ass off. And if the one hope for middle class Americans like me is to purchase our way into the 1%, nicely, then, 1% right here I come. I’m not saying I’m all of a sudden going to “sell out”â€"after all, as quickly as I put pen to paper to write the Baldur’s Gate novelization that ship well and totally sailedâ€"it just signifies that I’m going to level on the dawn, not the sundown, get busy being busy, and do for me and mine. After all, they got this Depression on. â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans Nice resolutions! It all works for me. I strive to not dwell too much on where I fell brief (to be fair I can only bear in mind one actual decision I made final yr), but I try to concentrate on what's coming. I even have a great list this yr and I look forward to nailing every one!