The Sunflower Project

Well, friends and countrymen, I have to be completely honest with you: December and January have been rough on my happiness project. Which is not to say, of course, that I've been unhappy. Quite the opposite, actually.

In December, my goal was to be aware and charitable. Christmas at my house, however, took precedent, and happily so. I love Christmas.

In January, my goals are to expand outside of my established interests and comfort zones. One of these is to write another book (albeit, this one a children's book) from an idea that's been tossing around in my head for months. Yet another is to open a special-interest, news-and-humanity-driven blog. And that's only two of the resolutions.

On top of that, I got a long-term teaching assignment that may either last for one month or the remainder of the school year. Either way, it was unexpected for all parties, so the existing plans are... well, nonexistent.

If I'm going to be honest with y'all, it's a lot. Obviously work is a priority here for me, but so is this project. This month I will be doing my best to address my resolutions, and I just know I'll be so disappointed in myself if I don't at least touch each one, but I'm trying not to put too much pressure on myself.

After all, where is the happiness in disappointment and stress?

I expect February to be regenerative in terms of this project, especially since the tasks are not as monumental as November, December, and January have been. (They're driven, if you must know, by my desire to have me time. One of the resolutions, for example, is to color. Yeah, like, crayons and Disney. If you're judging, you know where the door is.)

Although, in better news, one of my hitherto unspoken New Years Resolutions was to attack my project with a renewed sense of purpose. I mean that I'll recommit to my commitments and I'll resolve to continue rolling over my past months' resolutions (see what I did there?).

I have not written a novel since I was 12 years old, and let me tell you something: that thing was in my infamous purple notebook, over 100 pages of handwritten text, and it ambled. Seriously, just aimless, endless ambling. I worked on it all through middle school and well into high school. My writing skills morphed and changed, I became more hormonal (and worked weird and unnecessary sex scenes into my novel subsequently), and experimented with different styles as I came across them in my reading.

It was a hot mess. An unfinished wreck of a mess.

But now, here I am working on a novel that actually has some direction and has -- gasp! -- a little bit of an outline. Yes, it's true, I went against my better judgement and outlined the last half or so of the plot. Crazy, I know.

But I'm amazed by my own ability here, folks. That sounds super "I'm awesome"-y, but I'm serious, I really doubted that I'd be able to do this. I thought I'd bail, I thought my timing would be way off and I'd be almost done with the novel at about 30,000 words, I thought each day would be a battle--

well... okay, most of the days really are a battle. It's hard to make time, and it's even harder to turn that time into usable writing. But aside from that.

I'm still shocked. It's going to need hellaaaaa editing before I swallow my fear and send manuscripts out to publishing houses, but dammit, I'm going to try.

Here I discuss my experiences in the month of September, which was mostly fraught with confusion and self-disappointment, but NONE THE LESS, I attempted, and for that I am proud of myself.