I came home, to Memphis, with Grand Plans. To take blues guitar lessons, or drum lessons, or learn Japanese, or to write the Great American Novel. This has not happened. My plans were too grand, and the first two plans, the lessons, require driving, which I cannot do.

So I am scaling back some, and setting a more long term plan for living. This will be brief. I will make some vows, to do some doable things for the semi-foreseeable future.¹ These vows are as follows.

1. not writing so much law stuff, or at least not so much that it takes up all of my time

This vow will be difficult, because I rather enjoy writing law stuff. But it's quite time consuming, and I need to make time for the next vow.

2. write fiction

I have said this over and over again through the years, and have yet to finish any of my longer stuff. I have a fifty-page beginning of a big project thing somewhere, and a much longer one-hundred-and-thirty page attempt elsewhere. I am not vowing here to finish these. I have a much better idea now. And a better plan of attack. I will actually, gah, structure it first before I begin writing. I will not just go chapter by chapter, because my former chapter by chapter approach always gets me stuck at a particularly tough chapter, and gets me frustrated about the other chapters that would be easy to write but I haven't gotten there yet. This attempt will be better, more thought out. Third time's the charm, right?

3. read more fiction

This, I think, is a necessary part of 2. I have been very very successful with 3. But I do need to know when to stop. Or at least slow down. Because, again, the time-apportionment thing. Can't spend all my time reading, or I will have no time to write.

4. getting fit

A plan I already accomplished, once upon a time, and therefore see it as not entirely impossible to reaccomplish now. I have an exercise bike, I have weights, I have been using them for at least one and a half hours a night. I have been combining this with 3.

5. not getting distracted by random projects that will take too much time away from 2.

The problem with 2 is that, while it is something I terribly terribly want to try to do, what with all these stories bubbling in my head,² it is also something that is easy to get distracted from. By much more easy- to- accomplish- but- nevertheless- production- worthy things, like law review articles (but I've already dealt with that in 1) and columns for science magazines and poli sci book chapter proposals. Things that shouldn't really be that easy to accomplish, but somehow end up more easy for me to accomplish than 2. Anyway, I must avoid getting distracted by these things. I am, sadly, eminently distractable. Long term projects are difficult without external forces (like dissertation advisors, law review editors, etc.)

6. Date a writer

Yes, all of these vows tie together, and yes, I have a writing thing. Or, better said, a creation thing. So when I say writer, I mean someone creative. And not in a hokey creative way, like those flaky people who do amateur poetry slams³ and wear runes and scarves and things but creative in some intellectually mathematically crazy smart way. Oh, and when I say writer, not only do I mean someone creative, but I also mean someone creative with a big nose and perhaps tattoos and a shared dislike of driving and a shared like of soba and homebrewed beer, though not necessarily together.

7. On second thought, maybe 6 is not so important

8. Do good at the same time

Of course of course of course. I'm just reminding myself.

9. Buy blue and green

There is actually a word for this color I'm thinking of, but it's in my linguistics book back home, so I will have to put it in later. Anyway, that's my new color scheme. I figure it's good to have a color scheme, so I won't have to waste time with trying to match. I figure that blue and green and black and white and all the colors in between is enough for one person to work with.

10. Go North

I'm thinking Hokkaido. I'm thinking Longyearbyen.

11. The problem with these vows

Is that I'm manic. I vow to pick doable things, but once I get going, making lists, they escalate, and things like North start coming in, and I start thinking, seriously thinking, things like yeah, I can do that. I can do that too. My overestimation grows exponentially. I start thinking things like oh yes, I can learn to read Japanese in a year and figure out what Gen'ichiro Takahashi is saying (who I'm absolutely sure I'd like, just from reading a single translated short story of his, because he is that good). Of course I can get a PhD or at least a master's in linguistics or economics on the side.

But I really can't. Or, worse really, I could. I think. Do one of those things I mean and still hold down a sixty, seventy-hours-a-week job. I don't think I'm being totally immodest by saying I'm fast and overproductive that way.

But then I couldn't do more. I certainly couldn't write actual big-project fiction. So my vow, really, I guess, is to work towards big-project fiction. And have a life at the same time. And stop myself from making giant crazy grand plans most of which I can't accomplish and the rest of which I shouldn't because that would mean I wouldn't have the time to write.

2. The weird thing is, and I've told a few people this already, is that these stories, they're really just things that I want to be able to read. So in many ways, I would be quite happy if someone else were to write the stories that I imagine would make good stories. So it's not an ego thing. It's a see-in-print thing. If that makes any sense.