Novel!: it has Been Re-Outlined. If i’d written it properly i’d have already had a sense of what order everything happened in but hell, it was NaNoWriMo. There’s parts where i destroyed countries just to add words.
Next step is to go through and redesign the characters. Some are horribly, horribly unrealistic. Granted, the unrealistic ones are mainly minor characters, but they still need to get whipped into shape.

Tarot: I understand almost all the cards now (and the ones i don’t know i can guess fairly well), and know several spreads for reading purposes. Sweet. I learned in kind of an odd way so i’ll probably do a big long rambling 43things how-i-did-it style post at some point, once i have all the cards down.
I haven’t done any readings for anyone else yet (unless you count novel characters. They get tons of readings) – but i’d kind of like to read another real person at some point. I don’t think i’d ever want to be a professional reader but it’s definitely going to be a different experience. Certainly can’t do anyone in my strict Protestant family. Not without first giving big long explanations as to Why This Is Not Evil.

Yoga: I started up again on Saturday, with the YOGAmazing podcast. Saturday i just went with the longest episode dowloaded, figuring i’d work on it for twenty minutes and see how far i got. Erm, except the longest episode turned out to be a weight-loss one, ie ‘aerobics which happens to use yoga poses’, and my has-not-done-yoga-in-six-months body couldn’t keep up. The Yoga for Geeks episode is much more my speed :P And because it’s designed to be done at a desk anyway, i can actually watch it without having to set up some contorted system of balancing my iPod on a chair and craning my neck to be see whether i should be in down-dog or up-dog.

Dyeing hair blue: It’s… erm… turquoise. Dammit. And actually a really nice shade of turquoise, but not what i wanted.
Maybe, when my hair is back to its natural colour, i’ll try to dye it dark blue. Previous attempts turned out black but i have light blue hair dye now, so… maybe?
If that doesn’t work i’ll have to go to a stylist and have it Professionally Done.

random other stuff

• I love alternative-goal-setting strategies. Already mentioned David Turnbull’s design-a-perfect-day post, but since then i’ve also found Donald Miller’s post on writing your goals out as a story (i’ve heard ‘imagine your goal already done’ before, and ‘find a way to force yourself to accomplish it’ before, but put in the sense of climactic scenes and inciting incidents it sounds cooler.)
  And while it’s not really ‘alternative goal-setting’ in the strictest sense, Naomi Dunford’s unstupid goals post is good too. In summation: if it is a stupid goal you’re more likely to not bother and then feel emo-low-self-esteem-bad about not accomplishing the stupid than you are to awesomely do it.
• There’s also the awesome goal of reading a book a week, which averages out to forty pages a day, something most people can knock out during a coffee break or two. This is something i really need to do, especially with fiction. I more or less quit reading fiction a while ago; i think in 2009 i read two Scott Sigler books and Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, and everything else was non-fiction. The truly bizarre bit is i’m currently reading Reading Like a Writer, which kind of requires reading fiction. And no, it wasn’t a gift; i paid good money for a book telling me special ways to read stuff i don’t normally read at all. Sigh.

Related posts:

1. iPod Brains
2. Blue Munny!
3. Bleached Christmas

At least a few of the ‘cards’/pages are going to be my major goals for the year, with the intent of reminding myself what i’m trying to do with my life and encourage myself to come up with new goals should i decide not to follow through – i accomplished remarkably little this past year, and it has nothing to do with lack of planning. I simply got sick of some stuff, or realised some things simply weren’t fitting in with any of my other goals and were only taking up time, energy, and finances without enough payoff to make them worth the effort. Things which seemed cool on their own were nothing more than an irritant when combined with other goals. And so i let everything die and didn’t replace any of it. Fail.

This year, i will stubbornly keep up with everything – even the stuff i technically quit. All of my planned goals are getting a little ‘why do i really want to do this?’ explanation to go with them. If i decide to replace something, i will focus on finding something to match the old ‘why’ while coming up with a new goal which matches better with current goals.

And all this gets crammed in the Exosherry, so i can always remember it.

Related posts:

1. Recognising Shoddy Tarot