New School Year's Resolutions

Most people start thinking about their goals for themselves come New Years.' They start thinking about what they feel they need to improve in themselves; what are their good qualities, and what are the things they don't really like about themselves and want to work on. For myself, (I think perhaps this is common for students period) I find that my mind is much more full of those thoughts come the beginning of the school year, rather than January 1st. It is at the beginning of the school year, as I'm sorting through last year's books, wading my way through the dishevel of my desk, still in the exact state it was last June when I closed those books.

By the by, I was thinking how one's desk has a queer feeling of time standing still through the summer. It always seems like one of those enchanted castles from fairy tales, with everything about it suspended in time from June to September. Perhaps the calender on the wall has something to do with this, reading "June" all through the summer till you go to change it come September. (At least this is what happens to me. I never touch my desk during the summer, there are much nicer places to go to write or draw during the Summer- places that don't have that ominous schoolwork feel to them.)

So here we are, September 3, 2012, dusting one's spaces and writing up a post on goals for the school year. I don't quite want to say 'resolutions' as the word resolution rather has a distasteful ring to it of things incomplete hanging over your head, don't you think? This mostly has to do with the fact that most of us set our resolutions much too high and then give up as soon as we slip once. This is why I'm not going to say anything about keeping my desk/room in states of perfection, as I know this to be quite an impossible task for myself. I'm not saying I couldn't, but doing that would, I fear, drain all the creative energy out of me and leave me unable to write, draw, create, or think even, due to a little too much perfection for comfort. I need a little bit of scattered paper and stubs of pencils lying about to be comfortable. I will say that I shall try to keep things in a better state of order, but I shan't strive for perfection, merely organized chaos.

I am going to lay out a few attainable, workable goals, though.

1. Blogging. This is my blog for the coming year, and I'm planning on creating frequent posts on all matters of things. I shall say nothing about making each post a work of art, but just that I shall post regularly and put into words those many posts that I'm always coming up with in my head, but never writing.

2. Writing. I want to write a little every single day. Whether this is writing in my new journal book, or fiction writing, or blogging, I want to get up each morning and sit myself down with a cup of coffee and really truly write.

3. Going to bed at a decent hour. (This will, of course, be the hardest for me.) I'm going to turn off my Internet at a reasonable hour each night, and if I stay up a little later I want to be able to spend that time in reading. This means not getting lost in the many corners and paths of the Internet.

4. Getting up in the morning.

5. Walking. I want to walk a little each day, and when I say walking I don't mean the necessary walking I do anyways, but going on long rambling (or of course brisk purposeful) walks.

6. Drinking more water. (Might I just add that while 5 and 6 may not seem strictly relevant to getting school work done, I assure you they are. A healthy, energetic me is going to be more happy and productive with her day, rather than the slothful me who can't keep her eyes open.)

I think that's all I shall say for now. Of course getting actual school work as a goal goes without saying. Also I shall just add a link to Victoria's post Homeschool Tips from Setonite, which I thought was very good.

Also. The Lady of Shalott, because I love that poem and this is beautiful.