So this is 2025
I thought the flying cars would run on hydrogen
Happy New Year!
How does a New Year make you feel?
I wanted to feel like I was at a strategic planning meeting that was going well. I wanted to have sixteen markers in various jewel tone colors and a clean white board that I could organize and sort into life, love, money, taxes, work1, work2, work3, kid1, kid2, house, legal, books, movies, art, theater, and miscellaneous. But once I put life down, it all felt like the same category.
Instead I have been working on focus. As you know, I have a tarot card on my wall. You’ve read my posts on multitasking and ADHD and parallel projects. I have spent the first week of 2025, trying to remind myself to focus on one thing at a time.
In practice this looks like “finish” one thing before moving to the next.
In ACTUAL practice it looks like… “the minute you want to drop a task, push yourself for another minute to see if you can make the task a tiny bit more finished before you walk away from it.”
It has been working rather well, to be honest. I just sent out a poetry collection to a publisher - unsolicited so it might not get picked up but still, pretty great to have done something that forward-thinking! (also if you have a favorite poetry publisher please send me the recommendation - bonus points if they illustrate their books)
What are you focusing on improving this year? Do you set numerical goals of some kind? Resolutions are interesting, since they do not have to be achievable goals. Resolutions can be wishes, hopes, goals or dreams.
It’s a lovely word “resolve” - to solve again.
Writing News
Don’t forget I’m reading 20 minutes in Queens this coming Tuesday! First Tuesdays Reading Series. Here’s the official blurb:
First Tuesdays Presents
M. M. De Voe
Date: January 7, 2025
Where: Espresso 77, 35-57 77th Street, Jackson Heights, NY 11372
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 PM (open-mic sign up at 6:30)
Other: $5 minimum purchase at the food counter.
Information: Richard Jeffrey Newman
M. M. De Voe can be read in various anthologies, literary magazines, poetry collections, horror magazines, sci-fi dailies and on her free weekly Substack called “This is Ridiculous.” All this and a story collection, A FLASH OF DARKNESS, that Kirkus Reviews called “ominous, masterfully-crafted psychological fiction” as well as a first-prize winning productivity guide for creative writers with kids, BOOK & BABY. She is the founder and Executive Director of Pen Parentis, a literary nonprofit for writers who also are parents.
Held on the first Tuesday of every month, September through June, First Tuesdays is a neighborhood reading series with a very hospitable open mic. Anyone who wants to read is welcome. Indeed, almost every month, someone gets up to read their work for the first time. Our featured readers have been among the finest writers in the area.
Random Final Thought
We should always have resolutions. If we see something we could do that we think would make our life better, we should do it, no matter the time of year. Because of this, I've never quite been able to identify with New Year's Resolutions. The only case I can make for them is one might be more likely to actually carry out the new resolution if it comes at the beginning of a new year. I guess. But it does seem like a reckoning would be more likely at the beginning of a birthday year, since that has a definite and more sobering meaning for most people.
In answer to another of your questions, I don't think a resolution of mine would ever be numeric. If it is, then it's probably going down the road of something I can't control....But I suppose somebody could do something along the lines of saying they wanted to send in 100 applications or something, which is something they could control.