Meet The New Year... Just The Same As The Old Year...

So this is 2006?

Meh. So far it doesn't look or feel very much different than what came before. Not that that's entirely a bad thing. While a great many people seem to have spent 2005 raising hand-wringing to an art form and an Olympic exhibition sport, for the most part my year sucked far less than it could have.

Yeah, there are still bucketloads of unrealized dreams stacked everywhere in my mental garage, but on the whole, things weren't awful: I and my family emerged intact and in health, no hurricanes flattened our home or neighborhood (though Rita did put one hellacious scare into us...), the kids all had great years, I had some good fun and actually did some good for the species, I had opportunity and permission to pimp-slap the forces of dumpth a few times, and in a bizarre twist, my odd little dream of becoming a pro screenwriter seemed to putter forward with something resembling a purpose.

Over the course of the year I made a bunch of cool contacts, learned a lot about the business and about ways to improve my own writing and work habits, I had a great time (again) in October at the Austin Film festival, and (again) while there I made some cool connections which likely will pay dividends in short order, and cooler than cool I managed to complete not one but TWO screenplays in the year, and be well underway on a third.

When 2005 came around, my private goals were to improve and finish the year with at least TWO screenplays ready to pitch and promote. I made that goal easily, and if I'd really gone ninja-psycho-crazy-loopy-nuts gung-ho motivated, I likely could have had a readable draft of a third ready by close of business on Dec 31.

The goal for this year? More of the same, but just to raise the stakes, this year I want to finish THREE new screenplays, and have at least FOUR scripts out making the rounds. I think I can do that, especially if I dedicate myself to sticking to a fairly regular schedule of "writing no matter what."

WRITE, DAMMIT! DON'T WHINE—WRITE!

I have an outline well in progress, I have a list of more than two dozen cool movie ideas, and I have a strange sense that "everything is right on schedule."

Calm is not my normal mental state, so the lack of anxiety is starting to make me a bit anxious.

Which is, of course, comforting.

Onwards.
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