Jim's quiet musings . . .

Okay, it's the new year. The big 2002. Time for some changes. I gotta lose some of this flab that I have acquired and blame on the cold weather and my good cooking. It certainly isn't my fault. I am making some New Year's resolutions. Never really did that before as I always thought it stupid and corny. So, I'm getting stupid and corny in my old age . . . so what?

I am adjusting to my laptop. It was confusing at first . . . the PC, the laptop, the PC, the laptop . . . decisions, decisions. Actually, I feel very grateful that I should have to make such decisions. I need to simplify though. Did I NEED the laptop? Well, no. I don't particularly like admitting that but I have resolved myself to TOTAL, BRUTAL honesty this year. At least when writing in this blog.

I was already a pretty honest sort, so I thought, until I discovered my propensity to convince myself of things that certainly were not true. I vow from this point forward to "attempt" to be totally and brutally honest with myself.

Now, one might immediately contemplate that this idea is commendable, righteous even. Hummmm. An interesting thought. What a claim. Here lies a man who was totally and brutally honest with himself and others. He died without friends. Ha.

Does one need to always be honest to himself or others? This brings to mind the 9th step of Alcoholics Anonymous . . . . "Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others." Sounds like one hell of a loophole for a person like me, so capable of rationalization. "Nope. Gonna skip this guy cause it would SURELY injure him!" Ah, so one would think that our existence in life could not be had without a little rationalization and justification.

To be totally honest both to self and others, would certainly make things interesting wouldn't it? I certainly would NOT be where I am right now if I had been totally honest in life. Would you? How the hell did I get on this subject? Oh, my New Years resolution. Well, to hell with it. I'm human you know.

It's been a while since I wrote words down. It feels funny at first but it really gets rolling after awhile. Coffee helps immensely. My friend Peter (Naked Blog) in Leith, Scotland (to the right of Edinburgh) says he likes my stuff. I guess I really needed to hear somebody likes it. It gave me the extra "UMMPH!" I needed to get started again. Peter writes brilliantly and is published. I love reading his stuff and recently told him that his words remind me of how much I don't know, which brings me to yet another thought . . .

I have a fear of dying dumb. Well, not "dumb" actually, but educationally challenged. That is the politically correct phrase I guess. So, that brings me to the REAL subject of this blog. My TRUE New Year's resolution (see, you thought I was being honest before). I am going to attempt to read more, write more and submit more. I know I've got it in me.

One of my first hero's in the writing field was a woman named Claire Robson. She is a published writer from England who taught a little informal amateur writer's course a few years back at the Poet's Cafe in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I learned a lot from that small course and I also began to develop my first feeling that I could actually write stuff that people would read.

One night Claire said, "You can't publish anything if you don't submit anything." Duh. Sounds pretty simple right? Not so. My brain, I've learned, has a gigantic editor in it that I need to avoid. So, I will write. Some of it I will write here, some on paper. Some of it will suck. Some of it will shine. If nothing else I will be able to say I've written. Nothing gained, nothing lost.

Happy New Year. -Jeeem-