…Or, at least, what I do for New Year’s Eve, which also happen to be my birthday, is refocus. Or try to.

As always, I have some areas that I want to refocus in. I wrote about these in my personal journal (which I’m keeping on my spiffy reMarkable 2 notepad computer! I bought this as an early birthday gift for myself). These areas are:

• Friends and Family
• Learning
• Faith and Spirituality
• Writing
• Daikaijuzine
• Community
• Health and Fitness
• Work

That last one was added reluctantly, of course, but it’s a necessity. While I’m not angling for a position as supervisor or (God forbid!) manager in my job, my boss does want me to take more of a leadership position in the project I’m part of, and to become a Subject Matter Expert in it. Considering I’m probably the least experienced programmer on the team (by no means incompetent, but I still have a lot to learn), this may be difficult to achieve.

I won’t go into details in all of the above, because it’s probably boring to you. I will say that I intend to go to church more, reach out to my friends and family more, take my writing even more seriously, set and achieve some new goals with Daikaijuzine, volunteer more, and take better care of myself. These aren’t necessarily resolutions. I just want to spend my time more mindfully.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s my next series of blog posts: each of these areas of focus in turn. Maybe boring. Maybe not. Who knows? We’ll see.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and things are mellow in my house and will continue to be so. I’m writing this blog post, and Jennifer is working on one of the jigsaw puzzles she got for Christmas. The cats are minding their own business. Even Guffaw, who is the rowdy crazy boy in the house right now, is leaving Jennifer’s puzzle alone, which is very good for him. Lunch will be soon. Soon I will go run some errands, including buying diapers for our foster kitty who has manx syndrome and is therefore utterly incontinent. I may do some writing too.

It’s raining, which cancels our plan to walk to Corti Brothers nearby and look to see what sort of food selection they have.

And so it goes. Which reminds me that I received a few books on writing and craft from my family. My very spiffy niece gave me Pity the Reader, by Kurt Vonnegut; my nephew and his girlfriend gave me It’s All Just a Draft by Tobias Buckell; my sister-in-law gave me Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. LeGuin; and my mother-in-law gave me Bill Bryson’s Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Consider that all the authors listed here are among my favorites, this should be a good writing and reading year.

I also decided to reactivate my GoodReads account, which I am really kind of loath to do, since GoodReads is owned by a certain major corporation that is slowly gobbling up all internet commerce. But I want to track my reading this year, and LibraryThing does not give me the functionality I need. Maybe I’ll spin up a tool of my own in PHP. That would be a good project, I suppose, especially if I integrate it into WordPress.

Right.

Happy New Year to you, and may your 2023 be a good one.

It’s a thoughtful day for Holidailies.