But of course, there is always a hamartia AND MINE IS A FAILURE TO AUTOSAVE.

So I'm at this point in my life where I'm at this lull between my life for the past year in my hometown and my life in a new city, where I'm in the process of moving, but not really panic mode because I still have a couple of weeks, THEREFORE this is the time in my life to crackdown on my whole "writing should be a right now, not maybe some day thing" resolution. So I made plans to go to the library and sit in the quiet with my headphones and get things done.
Yeah, I...well. See. I had to plan. Like. There were these things in my head floating around, and I couldn't get them to stop floating, so I had to write them down with little references to like, Lost and Mean Girls in my notebook. And then I had a headache one day, and Adam Lambert was going to be on Ellen anyway, and by time my headache went away, I would have missed Ellen! And I love Adam Lambert, and Ellen gave this underprivileged science student a scholarship and I totally cried!

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I didn't actually sit down and do anything remotely productive until today. So I went to the library, wrote quite a bit that I was fairly proud of, was super into it, and....Word stopped autosaving. It was weird. I couldn't figure out why, so I just went with it and decided I could save manually after i finished this sentence/thought/paragraph/page/etc.

You see where this is going.

Humans have this sort of fatal flaw where we think we're borderline invincible, I think. Like, people generally tend to think that Worst Case Scenario isn't going to happen to them. Logically, they know it can, but in their heart of hearts, they don't believe it. And while I'm as guilty of that as anyone else, I also have a healthy dose of paranoia that keeps it in check and reminds the logical part of me that I am as susceptible to the universe's whims as anyone else. It also has me scrambling to Web MD everytime I so much as cough.

But when it comes to little things, like oh, look they've taken out the outlets at this desk...oh, I don't need to plug in my charger, I'll just sit here anyway. And why isn't Word autosaving oh well I'll save it when I'm done! My computer's really old and tends to shut off without warning when the battery's low, but I'll totally notice and finish with plenty of time!

All of these things were so, so wrong.

In the grand scheme of things, I lost like 800 words, maybe, which is annoying, but not a big deal. I can recreate 800 words. And it's certainly nowhere near a disaster. But it's a nice little reminder that I should probably never try to outsmart technology or situational misfortunates because I'm inevitably not smart enough to do so, I just have a really big ego and think I am.

Aaaaaand now I have 800 words to recreate, so I'll be getting on that now.

On my attention span and resolutions.

I can't think of a single time in my life where I have seriously sat down and thought about what I want to resolve to do in the new year. Not in a holier than thou, what's the point in resolutions, the idea of a new year, new start is just an arbitrary denotation of the passing of time sort of way-- actually, I do always make resolutions, sort of, I just never think about it or officially declare anything. This is probably because while I'm the kind of person who frequently has grand ideas and expectations for herself, I'm also the kind of person who moves onto the next grand idea within two weeks. While I always have the same general interests, what's getting me excited tends to go in phases. I used to feel like I was annoying and flaky, but I moved on from that.

...Get it? I WAS FLAKY ABOUT BEING FLAKY. LIKE. THAT'S FUNNY!

And really, how am I supposed to predict the course of an entire year to make goals? Last year, I did things I couldn't have ever guessed I would have gotten the chance to do. Last year, I was a photo double and stand in for a film, which a) I didn't know was a thing this time last year and b) provided me with a much cooler ice breaker fun fact than "I'm half-Greek."

My point is that sometimes you don't know what you really want to accomplish until you do it.

My real point is that I suck at follow through, but I'm really good at excusing myself for it.

But this year, I resolve to make resolutions my attention span can handle.

1. Move to a bigger city. This is a cop out, as it's something that's already like a 75% done thing. But whatever there are no rules, there are no resolution police IT'S FINE.

2. Write more. Finish the first draft of Thing I Have That Sort of Resembles A Novel I Think? Edit that draft. Find critique partners. Edit some more. By December, try to have something that wouldn't embarrass me if I were to start querying agents. Query agents. Maybe write a short story and try to get that published. I'm sick of thinking of writing as a someday thing.

3. Keep a blog for at least a month but preferably longer than that. I've had so many failed blog attempts I literally cannot count them anymore. I've tried to music blog, pop culture blog, film blog, fashion blog. Yet, I have had a livejournal that I've kept fairly active for 7 years (stop laughing, I have a lot of feelings), a twitter I use like an on-going conversation with someone who deeply cares about the minute details of my day, and tumblr where I reblog quite possibly everything. So I know I'm capable; I'm just capable of talking about myself, not things that are globally relevant or remote academic. So I'm not going to promise that this blog will be a thing, but I think if I do it with the idea that it doesn't have to be anything other than writing with myself as the character, maybe I'll do it.

4. Finished Lost. I typed that thinking it was going to be a joke resolution, but when I did I realized I was completely serious. I never watched the show when it aired, but the whole series is on Netflix. I'm almost done with season 2, and I'm sucked in enough that I feel like I need to see this through. Breaks for emotional detachment are both acceptable and necessary.

So there. No huge, immeasurable goals for my character or anything, but I am going to do those things! All of those things! For at least a month I will try to do those things. And damn the attention span that says I won't! Internet, I'm counting on you to hold me to this.

(for the record, as I write this, I'm procrastinating writing the scene I said I'd get done today AND the next episode of Lost in my Netflix queue.)