"I will not call anyone nellie or butch, unless that is his name."
This isn't a resolution thing - as any fule kno, serious resolutions are for Valentine's not for the new year - but a statement of intentions thing. So this year you can shout at me if I fail to do the following:
- learn Japanese. Japanese is challenging because it's completely unlike English - not just different writing systems, but completely unrelated vocabulary and syntax and everything. But it's not as challenging as some languages would be; the pronunciation is not exceptionally hard for an English speaker (not as hard as Chinese, for example) and of course there's lots of it around to practise on on the web. I'm starting off by fiddling around with whatever learn-yourself-Japanese stuff I can find on the web and by learning the hiragana, one of the three writing systems. I don't really know how I'm going to get the rest of the way. I'll have a look in Waterstone's tomorrow.
- get out of my job. I don't know that I want another one that's just the same sort of thing with possibly more money and fewer asshole colleagues (if you work with me you know who I mean); at some point you've got to do something you actually want to do. If only I had a better-defined idea of what that is.
- draw more. I've not been doing very well at learning to draw, partly because it is rather disheartening to be doing it badly. But you never improve if you don't practise.
- finish decorating my billiard room. I've got some sort of idea of how it's going to look and as I'm not hugely inconvenienced by not having the room available to use, I can take my time and do it properly. So no deadline, but it's only a small room and so some evening and weekend time should get some progress made.
-blog. I'll be blogging progress on all of the above and attempting to write something about the musicals I see - I seem to have a lot of strong opinions that nobody hears except my mother in the car on the way home from the theatre or Jarrod at work the next day. Now everyone who wants is going to be able to hear them! So possibly just my mother.
- be clearer. Now I have written this list one thing that is clear is that I am unclear - I don't seem to know how I'm going to do the things I want to do or really why. We'll have to see how that goes.
