It's always the same thing. Every year about this time, the major media outlets collect a purportedly random sample of the general population and breathlessly ask them the same question:
What resolutions have you made for the New Year?
About half those people come up with some inspiring, aspirational goals that promise to get them back in shape, buy them some quality time with their family, and cure their bad breath.
The other half of the people take a more practical approach. They refuse to make any resolutions, explaining that they're all a waste anyway since everyone gives up two weeks in.
I'm somewhere in between.
I recognize how difficult it can be to stay true to such life-changing objectives. But I also recognize how important it is to try to improve ourselves, all through out lives.
That's why I don't call what I make "resolutions." I call them "goals." To me, at least, that makes them sound less threatening, less final.
No, I don't always meet my goals by the time I say I will. But you know what? I've found that I often meet them years later.
In 2022, I set a goal of becoming an adjudicator for the ariZoni Theatre Awards. I didn't make it that year, but I did the following year.
In 2019, I set the goal of leading a workshop at the Arizona Thespian Festival. I didn't get in that year, but I did in 2023.
And, in one my longest gestating goals, in 2016, I'd hoped to publish both Kill the Critic! That finally came to pass last year.
So I think it's important for you to set yearly goals for yourself. Even if you don't achieve them right away, just the act of putting them down in black and white makes them more likely to happen in the first place.
And so with that bit of unasked for advice, I give you my goals for 2025.
1) Finish six plays.
Admittedly, this is an aggressive goal, one more than the number of plays I finished last year. But I can't let up. Now that I'm trying to make an actual living at writing, this level of productivity has to be the new normal.
2) Publish six plays
This I have less control over. I may write the greatest play ever written, but if it doesn't meet the needs of my publishers, they're not going to publish it. So it's vital for me as I'm writing to keep in mind what the market needs. And for the amateur market, that largely means plays that are easy to produce: few props, few or no lighting and sound effects, a single set. And always, always, some kind of hook that'll get eyeballs on the script and, eventually, butts in seats.
3) Get a picture book accepted for publication
I've been trying to break into the picture book market now for--whoa!--twenty-eight years. Some of those years I'd write three of four manuscripts that I submitted to publishers (and were promptly rejected). Other years I didn't write a thing.
But now that I'm writing full-time, I've decided to kick start my picture book writing again. In October, I submitted a humorous picture book titled Okie and Firecracker to my agent, Stephen Fraser at the Jennifer Di Chiara Agency. I haven't heard back from him yet (which reminds me, I really need to check in with him!), but I assume it's still making the rounds of the New York publishing houses.
In the meantime, I'm allowing the ideas for some new picture books to simmer in the back of my brain. The last picture book only took me a week to write so it fit in nicely between plays, when I'm often stuck for ideas and need to fertilize my gray matter by working (and playing) in a different genre for a while.
4) Foster gratefulness
Lately, I've tried to include a more touchy-feely goal in my yearly to-do lists. Last year I focused on mindfulness. This year, I'm going to focus on gratefulness.
As a perfectionist, I find it all too easy to obsess about things that are going wrong. But there's a lot more going right in my life right now and I want to boost that by reminding myself of those things. If anything can bring more good into my life, it's being thankful for the good I already have.
5) Spend more time with Honey
I haven't written much about Honey the Wondermutt on these pages, and I should. She's been a wonderful part of our lives for ten years now. And that passing of time has been weighing on me more heavily this last year.
Honey's a lab/beagle mix that our daughter Ashley got from a shelter in Tulsa when she lived there. We don't know much about her previous life. But we know she was abused. She has a scar on one of her back legs to prove it, probably from being tied up by a chain.
She was super scared at first. So scared of the world that she didn't want to go for walks. So scared of me that if I came into the room where she was, she would leave.
But eventually she came around. She learned to love walks. and when I started giving her pieces of my banana, she learned to love me as well.
A year later Ashley ended up in Tucson. A year after that we ended up in Phoenix. Ashley moved in with us after she lost her job in late 2018 and Honey quickly made herself at home in our home. She loved watching the neighbors go by from our courtyard. She loved running around our backyard (when she wasn't digging holes in it). She loved sniffing every single plant, it seemed, on our walks around the neighborhood. But most of all, she loved sunning herself on our back patio.
And that's why, when Ashley moved back to Tucson in 2023, she left Honey with us. It was the hardest decision she'd ever made in her life, and the most unselfish. But we all knew that between Ashley's job and her newfound passion for trail running, the alternative was to keep Honey cooped up alone in a tiny apartment for twelve hours a day, and she'd never be happy with that. Not after she'd experienced the doggy glory of rolling in fresh-mown grass or sticking her snoot in the perfumy richness of a lantana plant.
Honey turns eleven at the end of this month. She doesn't run like she used to. She's too stiff for that. But she still finds much to be happy about. And that's why this year I want to carve more time out of each day to just be with her, to savor the quiet moments as well as the playful moments, while she's still with us.
So, yes, it's important to me to learn to be grateful. But I expect the one who's going to teach me is Honey.
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