Weekly Writing Intentions: January 7, 2023
Daily Diary, Day 858:
Here we are in the new year of 2023, and guess what, my weekly intentions are pretty much the same as the past twenty-four weeks (yes, that’s how long I have been writing Tides of Acerba!)
I want to continue to work on this novel, hoping to achieve at least 5000 new words by next Friday.
Last week, I actually got 6553 words written, and today I have written 871 words, a respectable amount. Who knows, maybe after this post is done, I will get another paragraph or two finished.
Another one of my ongoing intentions is to continue to work towards my other goals, you know the ones I wrote about at length last Sunday. Because of the rain and a flare up of bursitis, I wasn’t able to achieve my daily goal of getting in 90 minutes of exercise last week. However, I was pleased to discover that I was still able to average 50 minutes a day.
Today, I increased my walk from 20 minutes to 30, with very little pain, so with cleaning, my total was 75 minutes of exercise. We have more rain forecast for this week, but I am determined to improve on the daily total from last week, even if it means several very short forays outside a day in between showers.
While I cleaned and took my walk, I also started listening to a new audiobook, the second book in Alan Bradley’s second Flavia de Luce mystery, set in the early 1950s, where the protagonist is a precocious eleven-year-old. Such good fun.
This brings me to another one of my goals for 2023, which is to continue to live a life that includes joy. I’ve written about how much I enjoy writing, but today I read a couple of things that reminded me that one of the ways I can experience joy in my life is to regard everything with enthusiasm.
There is a new newsletter that I have just subscribed to, entitled, Everything is Amazing, and today the author linked to another author’s post with the title: “Make 2023 the Year of Maximum Enthusiasm.”
This second author has published this piece every year since 2010, and I quite understand why. It is such a good reminder of how to go about living a joyful life. Even though his examples are generally about doing things like hiking the Grand Canyon, something I have never done, have never wanted to do, and never will do, I do embrace the sentiment. Whether I am having a piece of dark chocolate after dinner, watching another episode of Slow Horses on TV tonight, or picking up the story of my young protagonist, Mei Lin, tomorrow where I left off, the key is to do so with enthusiasm and gratitude that so much of my day-to-day life is of my own choosing.
I will leave you with the one photo I took on my walk today, the wood sorrel (which a number of you kindly named for me) that is growing with such exuberant enthusiasm in my front yard after all the rain!