Posts Tagged With: New Year

2016 New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Michelle Proulx

It’s not really until you take a step back and look at the past year that you get a true appreciation for how your life is going. And I have to say, my life is going pretty well. Not bragging or anything — just grateful. I may not be a best-selling author or a brilliant neurosurgeon or anything, but all in all I’m quite satisfied with where I’m at. And that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?

And now, the resolutions! In no particular order, this year I would like to:

Write every day. It doesn’t have to be a lot, and it doesn’t have to be any good, but I definitely want to get back into the habit of daily writing. NaNoWriMo is a fantastic motivator, but I want to have that kind of motivation all the time. And I’m so tired of having all these amazing stories floating around in my head just waiting to be written down, but stuck eternally in limbo because I don’t have the mental discipline to sit down and actually write them. Currently I’m working on a few projects (including Cerulean Bound — banged out the first chapter yesterday!), and hopefully at least a few of them will actually get completed this year.
Get down to 140 lbs. I won’t tell you where I’m at right now, but let’s just say it’s above where I should be. Not drastically so, but enough that my old pants don’t fit, which is both frustrating and inconvenient. I don’t have plans to become a bikini model or anything — I just want to fit in my pants, dammit! I’ve managed to drop about 12 lbs since I started counting calories back in September, so hopefully I can keep it up.
Stop sweating the small stuff. I fully admit that I have some anger problems. Not in the sense that I randomly flip out at people — I just find little stuff irrationally irritating, and after silently fuming about it for a bit (or a while), I have to take a step back and be like, “Michelle, for the love of sandwiches calm down, it’s totally not a big deal.” So ideally I’d like to be able to go straight from “getting irritated” to “calming down”, and skip the “fuming about it” part entirely. Because, at the end of the day, all I really want is to …
Be happy. Let’s be clear — I’m pretty darn happy already! I just want to continue being so. That means doing things I enjoy, spending time with people I enjoy, accomplishing the things I set out to accomplish, and generally feeling content with the life I’ve carved out for myself. Part of how I’m going to do that is every night I’m going to write down one thing I did that day that I’m proud of or that I enjoyed. And then, whenever I’m feeling down, I’ll flip open my little notebook and remind myself of all the reasons I have to be happy. And, hopefully, there’ll be a lot of them!

So those are my resolutions for 2016. What’s on your list?

Oh, and … HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Unrelated media of the day:

Categories: Random | Tags: 2016, New Year, resolutions, writing | 9 Comments

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Michelle Proulx

Okay, okay, I’m a little late to the party — six days late, to be exact. But I’m here now, so Happy New Year, my lovely blogging friends!

Like all bloggers, one of my resolutions this year is to blog more — specifically, I intend to read other people’s blogs more, and try to update my own blog a few times a week. I’ve been doing fairly well with my ‘eat healthy’ resolution thus far, so hopefully I can carry that success over into the blogosphere.

A quick review of 2013 (only the good things)

Published my first novel! And it actually has good reviews!
Published my first short story!
Got my first fan art and fan fiction!
Became VP of the London Writers’ Society!
Didn’t screw up being VP of the London Writers’ Society!
Got a raise!
Finally moved out of my mother’s apartment! (well, sort of — actually, she moved out and transferred the lease to me)
Got a car! (again, mother’s doing — she gave me her old car and bought a new one)
Got asked to be a bridesmaid at my best friend’s wedding!
Learned how to walk in nature for more than half an hour without having a nervous breakdown over bugs being freakin’ everywhere!

I’m sure more awesome stuff happened, but those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I haven’t had my morning tea yet (one of my 2014 resolutions is to drink more tea), so my brain isn’t working at 100% capacity yet.

Looking ahead to 2014

My re-write of Chasing Nonconformity, the sequel to Imminent Danger, is going slower than I would like … but it is progressing, so I’m cautiously hopeful about getting it done in the next month or so. I finished revising chapter 14 last night (out of 48), so I still have a ways to go, but several of the upcoming chapters don’t need to be changed at all, so that should make life easier. My announced plan last year of a January 2014 release date for Chasing Nonconformity was wildly optimistic, and definitely won’t be happening. Maybe I can still swing a spring 2014 release? We’ll see. Fingers crossed!

Other than that, I have a few other things coming up. My best friend’s wedding is in August, so lots to do to help her prepare for that. I believe we will be getting together once a month to watch Disney movies and make invitations and place settings and whatnot. And then there’s our possible move to Nova Scotia, which may or may not be happening after the wedding. My brother is graduating this spring, which I’m super proud of him for accomplishing … my mother bought a new house, which she’ll be renovating over the next two years or so … I may or may not be publishing another short story, assuming I ever get it back from the depths of my mother’s unread inbox …

So a big thank you to everyone who followed my ramblings in 2013! I’ll try to do better at following your own adventures this upcoming year … promise! Happy New Year to all!

Unrelated media of the day

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/E1UDmGR

Categories: Blog-related, Writing | Tags: 2014, author, baguette, books, ebooks, elvis, New Year, resolutions, voldemort, writing | 38 Comments

Resolutions still count if they’re a day late, right?

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

As you will recall from yesterday’s post, I was supposed to write about my resolutions but I ended up doing a shameless plug for my book instead. And look — I just did it again! Shame, Michelle. Shame.

Anyway, I really do want to share my resolutions, because I’m pretty sure they’ll never happen if I don’t get them written down somewhere that I can’t retract them without attracting public ridicule. Therefore, my 2013 Resolutions:

Stop eating dairy. I don’t actually know if it’s the cause of my poor stomach hurting, but it seems as likely a culprit as any. So goodbye to pizza, ice cream, cheese, and assorted dairy goodness, and hello to … soy? I’m regretting this already …
Exercise daily. I keep reading all these articles about how our sedentary lifestyle is killing us, and it freaks me out. Therefore I resolve to get up and move every day, even if it’s just having a dance party whenever a good song comes on the radio.
Write daily. Okay, everyone and their mother has this resolution (assuming their mother is a writer). But I’ve been really bad about this over the last few months because I’ve been focusing on getting Imminent Danger published and working on my blog. Bad Michelle! So now I have to write every day whether I have time for it or not.

That’s probably enough, right? Three is manageable. If I add any more, I’m just going to get confused. And believe me, I confuse easily.

Tragic Imminent Danger Update:

Mother is going through the final proof of the book to make sure there aren’t any typos. Then she found this sentence:

“He was taking them to Alpha Centauri to sell them to a faceless megacorporation, and there was precious little they could do to about it.”

Did you catch the typo? The copy-editor didn’t. I didn’t. But mother did, so now I’m worried about all the other little typos I didn’t catch. For that matter, why didn’t Word Spell Check catch that? Le sigh.

Related link of the day (for East-coasters):

Writer’s Digest Conference East (New York: April 5-7)

Unrelated image of the day:

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/91XAS

Categories: Random, Writing | Tags: darth vader, imminent danger, lactose intolerant, New Year, New year resolution, polo, resolutions, Sedentary lifestyle, writer's digest, writing | 35 Comments

2012 RAWR!

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

RAWR! because 2012 was the Year of the Dragon. Obviously.

I have officially returned from my Christmas vacation. Went home to visit the paternal unit, ate some turkey, watched Modern Family, went shopping on both Christmas Eve and Boxing Day (guess which one was busier?), got a Nintendo 3DS so I can play that new Kingdom Hearts game … and now I’ve returned to my apartment, my mother, and to the many hours of cleaning I will need to do in order to prepare for our New Years party tonight.

Phew!

Anyway, I’m in a reflectory (totally a word) mood since it’s the end of the year, so I thought I’d share my top picks for 2012. And then I have to work, because I’m still behind 14.75 hours for the month of December, and it ends … well, today.

Top Movie of 2012

Dude, it’s the Avengers. How could it not win?