I do have a few goals, honest I do

I enjoyed a very friendly lunch today with the local bloggity babes, to honor both the birthday of honey b. and the visit of the great and powerful bek. I inadvertently told sue-donym, who has devised a great plan for weekly resolutions this year, that so far I'd set none for myself beyond spending the first part of my year figuring out what resolution to make. Now that I think of it, that's not true. There actually are a few goals I'm already aiming at with some degree of clarity and purpose, if not the traditional new year's rigidity. But I wouldn't go so far as to call them resolutions. That word gives me the heebeegeebees anymore. Gunshy, I guess. So how about:

seven to nine pounds of me gone by El Paso time
shoot a photo (or more) a day, for fun
journal every day (journalling ≠ blogging)
put my face in some scriptures every day, no minimum time requirement
some kind of enjoyable exercise daily—no imposed structure, just shaking it up a little
I'm leaning in the direction of simple health-ifying habits as a general focus for 2008. I feel the need to put my life into better order without being hard on myself. Can it be done? Watch me.

There are some big projects that I must tackle in this first month of the year that are going to take a goodly chunk of my time for as long as it takes me to get them finished. But they are time-sensitive. First, I must compile, edit, and prepare the annual history for my ward, or church congregation. This will be the fourth year in a row I've done this. It's a little like herding cats, trying to persuade and direct a dozen and a half people to turn in histories of their individual quorums and auxiliaries, but I've learned to do it more or less without stress. Second, I have to shoot extensive photos of the entire inventory of Tryst Press books. We just got a new camera, not the tricked-out new Nikon of our dreams, but a decent and affordable D40 that will do the job nicely enough. I'm going to have to set up a little makeshift picture studio to tackle this project. Third, I'll be completely overhauling our fine press web page—it's going to be totally different, and much more focused on our books. I've got about a week to finish #1, and then the other two need to be done yesterday, basically. Rob's been working on designing new letterhead, and as soon as he's done with that, I'm off and running with the web stuff. I will heave such a happy sigh of relief when these jobs are done. I anticipate enjoying each process, but boy oh boy, what a tight schedule for a while. Maybe if I just let myself get lost in this work, some of those extra pounds I want to jettison will naturally fall away. (Oh, don't I wish.)

I almost forgot to mention my new pet project, which is only for pleasure and the sake of volunteerism. I've done my first transcription for a favorite podcast: WGBH Morning Stories. And I intend to do more. Morning Stories is a consistently terrific podcast; if you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend you give it a listen. It's the sort of thing that gets me very excited about radio, about documentary, about personal essays and stories, about all things media-related, about writing, about sharing, about people. It's the good stuff, truly. And recently, a request for people willing to transcribe episodes was sent out to the grateful masses, and I couldn't resist. Like I have time for another thing right now. But it didn't matter; I just couldn't stop myself from raising my hand and saying, "Pick me!" And anyway, it felt right, and who can argue with that? If you also enjoy such stuff as this, maybe you'd like to contribute a little time as well. If you're interested, contact me, and I can tell you where to start. But do try the podcast on for size at least.

I ordered a foot pedal to go with some free transcription software I downloaded to help with this WGBH thing. I know, totally overboard. But maybe not really. I have tapes of my grandmother that need to be transcribed. I have other ideas. Project inspirations. A buzzing brain. Manic thoughts. Get me a prescription, somebody. Help!

I'll tell you what's a lot more like herding cats than motivating ward members to write a few pages of history, and that is reigning in my own impulsive nature. Fluffy bits of me are forever running here and there, scratching, spitting, hacking up fur balls.

Goodnight.