Happy Birthday To Me

In spite of a certain cultural fatalism surrounding the practice, a lot of people still make new year's resolutions. I don't, though I do make yearly goals. My birthday falling 2 weeks before the start of a new year lends a certain similarity to the thing, but the source of motivation is different enough that the plans usually stick rather better than they do for most people.

This past year I made plans which only partly came through. Arguably, I bit off more than I could chew; I would in fact argue against that. Sure, circumstances interfered rather badly with some of it, but there are 2 things to consider:

1. Parts of the overall picture which did work out were structural and less obvious than the stated eventual goals, essentially preparation in ways that I didn't realize were necessary.
2. A fair bit of what I did toward the goals I listed for myself was a giant exercise in going at things the wrong way.

With this in mind, I hereby reinstate my previous goals, with much more developed ideas about what they entail and will include. I'll probably cover each of these later in their own posts, so this is an overview.

Cernunnos
Pretty much the most dense symbolism of the lot, this guy - or rather, how he's modernly thought of - represents several goals in one image. If you're not familiar, he's... well, he's explained over here. The history there is pretty good, but the most important thing for my purposes is his modern usage, as an aspect of the male half of reality, Mother Nature's consort. That's really horribly condensed, and will get some explanation when I write the article about this particular goal.

Most of the general goal's practical applications come together in a specific goal to wear a costume of Cernunnos at Halloween, and likely to other costumed events as well. To do so, I'll need to do 3 things. Most obviously, I'll need to build the costume, which has some interesting issues. The horns, certainly, but also the feet. The images of him I most like are those with deer legs. For those I'll need jumping stilts. It'll give the correct leg shape and a properly intimidating height. Consequent to the parts, I'll need additional income to afford them. Big bunch of work in that sentence, but it speaks for itself. Least obviously (from my distant readers' point of view), I'm going to need a better physique to pull this thing off. That one also speaks for itself, and sets off a whole pile of work.

Cernunnos also represents some internal items of improvement I'll get into in that later article. For now, I leave it at this: I know what I'm supposed to be. Time for some course correction.

Camera
This year I will make proper use of my skills. They will definitely help in the above affordability issue. I used to do photography, Web design, and more, professionally and independently. About bloody time to do it again, even part time.

Singer
I'm a singer. Hired ringer for choirs. Front man in bands. Soloist. Section leader. I used to have a band, and it's time I regained that. I am going completely batty not making music all the time. Also, I have a ridiculous backlog of music in my head that needs writing. So I need to get cracking on that. If I can get a rock/funk/blues band rolling by autumn or thereabouts, we might be able to score a New Year's Eve gig, which would be really nice. Really, really nice.

German & Spanish
The goal is to be conversational in both by the end of 2014. I've a certain amount of learning in both but am essentially starting over in each case. Should be interesting to try. Confident I can.

Again, I messed about with each of these during 2013, and each had some notable problems, quite independent of each other. Most had to do with approaching them wrongly and sabotaging myself.

I'll have none of that, for the upcoming months. Stating the goals here, in the wide open, should help my daily accountability, and the trial and error experienced before works out as sort of a running start on the lot of them.

Here we go...