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Welcome 2014

Oh.  New Year’s Resolutions… let’s think….

Um.

I think they’re a lot like last year’s resolutions.  With the difference, I suppose, that this year I’m determined to get to the end of HSK4 instead of HSK1.  (I’m currently half way through learning the vocab of HSK3… words like ‘pig’s head’ and ‘green’ seem to be vying for competition in my list of things-to-remember-in-Mandarin at the moment.  高兴新年都!)

Let’s say, then, that rather than resolutions, I’ve got a few basic goals:

1.  Carpe Diem.  (Just get on with it!)

2.  Be more easy-going with myself.  By which I mean to say… I live my entire life as a freelancer, which means every second that I’m not working, feels like a failure.  And every self-indulgent thing I do, feels like a sinful blot.  And neither of these things are true, however deeply they may be ingrained.

3.  Go to the theatre more.  I’m a lighting designer.  Unless I’m being paid to take notes and re-program, I don’t get to go to the theatre much.  This sucks.

4.  Maybe actually bite the bullet and do an Open University Mandarin course?  Or a Physics course perhaps?  Or something else amazing.  Perhaps.

5.  Learn new stuff as much as possible.  Walk everywhere.  Talk to lots of people often.  Try and clean up my language.  All these things sorta get bunched together as they seem like on-going hobbies, rather than resolutions or even good causes.  The attempt to clean up my language, I hasten to add, is not because I’m particularly foul-mouthed… by technician standards, I’m cleanly-spoke.  It’s just that a technician’s definition of ‘clean speaking’ is so far removed from society’s norms that every now and then I walk into a room where I’m meant to be a writer, and I start talking like a lighting designer, and the rest, as they say, is obscenity.

6.  Learn to cook more vegetable dishes.  I was put off courgette, cabbage, leek, mushroom… well, most things, really… by secondary school cooking where the rule was, that unless you could wring out the said vegetable and get at least a cup of tepid water from the act, you clearly weren’t doing it right.  I wish now to challenge this ingrained convention in my understanding.

7.  Do more escrima.  I have a secret yen to one day be good at this.  I think it’ll take twelve years.  I’ll be… what… 40ish… by then?  This is a good age at which to be terrifyingly skilled at a martial art.

8.  And finally from a literary project, finish topsecretproject3, start topsecretproject4 and also topsecretsubprojects 5-7 of which all but one are bought and paid for and therefore Must Happen.

Who knows… if we’re really lucky I may actually get to say what these things are next year too.

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for 2014 to all.