2014 and 'The Plan'

I rejected new year’s resolutions this year almost as fervidly as I rejected dry January.

I’m all for self-improvement but the first few of hours of a new year should not be spent sitting primly in front of a crisp new notebook, jotting down whimsical yet thought-provoking ‘dreams’ for the weeks and months while sober. No, January 1 should be spent curled up on the bathroom floor, hugging a bag of bread. One eye should be glued shut by an errant false eyelash (even if you are male) and your booze, ash and vomit covered clothes should be in hurled mess in the bath. Ideally, a child (possibly yours) should come in around midday to drape a towel over you and say ‘there, there’.

This is why I have waited until February to write of the year ahead, lest my thoughts be lost in the tidal wave of positive thinking spewing out of my dearest friends’ sauvignon-starved brains.

Now, there was no good reason for my not doing dry-anuary; I succeeded admirably last year and did a bit of dry September once. A bit. But screw it, there was still drink in the house come January and I was damned if I was going to let it spoil. (Booze spoils if you leave it untouched for more than three days. It’s a fact, look it up, it’s definitely probably true, ignore the French).

Thus, with a few extra weeks of excess accomplished, I met February with a more agreeable stance on my general well-being. Plus I have a show coming up in just over a month’s time that requires Victorian costume i.e. skirts so tight that you look permanently faint and furious. And when hiring my outfit, I was so taken with a fetching lilac number that I insisted to the director that it fit perfectly when in truth I lost a kidney moments later. If I want to survive this show, those extra 5lbs have to go. (It won’t be a booze free month, you understand – I have Places to Quaff and Quarrel at and I’m also probably a drunk)

But it was when I reached this point of determination on one element of my life that my brain began to get ideas above its station and started trying to make me do other things.

Let me put this perspective. I am writing this the night before I attend a Cuban salsa class.

ME.

As I said, I don’t like new year’s resolutions because they are invariably hollow, doomed to fail and are made on your bathroom floor as you recant your sins. But now that January and all its pious judgement has finally died, I’m suddenly all up in the rest of my life’s face.

Hmmmm...(I’m musing)…learning a proper dance has been on my ‘to do’ list for a while…and it would be nice to learn some steps other than the Kate Bush freestyle/Michael Jackson disgrace/shuffling the cards/stabbing the hooker moves I’ve worn out so thoroughly…..of course the blog is my biggest priority this year, but there could be room for other stuff…pretty stuff…and it's not like I don't enough to do already. Aside from the day job, blog, am dram, music and trying to fit in eight bottles a gin a week...

My mind was set, and a plan had to be drawn up. So here it is, for you all to gaze upon. For what is the point of a life plan if you don’t publicize it so that others will envy and hate you and wish wish WISH they were you?

Oh. Sorry, I mean (sigh) I’m publishing my 2014 plan so I will be compelled to do most of it because if not I don’t know the social media Gods will find me in the night and cut off my hair and the lands will dry up and probably something like a plague upon my houses and various wombs.

Plan for 2014, in no particular order

1. Make more phone hats
2. Write something every day and be totally brilliant at it
3. Complete my writing schedule and monthly plan for the blog (instead of scribbling random words and obscenities on open Word documents and then accidentally sending them to my boss)
4. Launch weird vaudeville/cabaret music act, and therefore sing in public at least six times. Or in pubic, as I first wrote. Either suits
5. Pick a name for the music act. We have it narrowed down to two, and we need to move on because it’s just getting sad
6. Run three big-scale digital media projects at work
7. Buy more light bulbs for the living room so that I can see what I'm doing for once
8. Drop final 5lbs and reach target weight
9. Reach at least 500 followers on Twitter. Because I NEED this
10. Ring up the security alarm company and ask them if cats make a difference to the sensors, and pray that they don’t
11. Take a dance class. Attempt to be good at it.
12. Boost the blog’s pageviews and reach X by its first birthday (I have the figures written down somewhere but I’ve had some wine and I don’t want to go looking. But I do have a target! I think)
13. Cook a new recipe once a month (I cook all the time, so I am being realistic, and because of no. 8)
14. Go to Paris on Eurostar
15. Engage with more bloggers and contribute to at least two forums regularly
16. Read at least six novels (look, it’s not much for some of you but with the amount of shit I am doing already, even this is pushing it!).
17. Go to Edinburgh and photograph the shit out of it
18. Write more songs
19. Fuck, this is taking a while. Better put on some espresso
20. Buy espresso
21. Decorate the main bedroom. Somehow. Maybe a few pictures will do…the espresso will help me plan this
22. Write honestly about my ‘crashes’
23. Improve my French (when I say improve, I mean for the love of GOD make it better)
24. Shop at more thrift/charity shops and try fixing up three outfits myself
25. Direct a play (I’ve added this because I know I’m already doing it in the summer)
26. Continue last year’s furniture up-cycling prowess (I’ll share details in the future) for other people as well as for me
27. Once current blog features have bedded in, set up film review feature because it’s your true love
28. Ooo and that should include a regular bad movie night!
29. Continue to dream about writing part-time and using one of those nice shared-office spaces with similar type! And then imagine hanging myself in that office
30. Maybe do some vlogs!!! Maybe….

And that's that.

******

I just wanted to say that I’ve felt a bit bad for Facebook this week. All it did was try to brighten up your day with a film just about you, and suddenly everyone is baying for blood for such cursed sentimentality. Twitter positively went in to melt down due to the sheer volume of hate.

Oh Facebook was fine when you wanted to show off about your big night out, tell us all ‘I’m just so confused right now’, or post pictures of your awful children. But when FB reaches out to you, you fling the gesture back in its face like so much rotten meat.

And on its BIRTHDAY!

If your film was filled with banal updates and pictures of you looking fat, you only have yourself to blame. You should lived better, and been less fat. And have words with all of your friends for only liking posts involving someone’s death or a new home. They only did so because they want invites to parties or wakes.

But the truth is, I feel bad because I’ve been neglecting FB on a personal level, when it has been a good and loyal friend. Once a FB addict (but only for the most witty reasons), I have now moved my daily ramblings to my blog and have started courting Twitter as a result (bigger audience). Poor Facebook barely gets a look in from my personal account, and when I do update, it’s only so I can scream “read my blog!”. I’m a bad Facebook friend, but a worse friend to Facebook.

This should be another aim of mine this year: to better balance the love on social media. Assuming I have time. Or that any of you notice.