Listen to my rambles, children!

Welcome to 2012, everybody! Are you as excited about this year as I am?

Good.

2011 was an intense year for me, and one of fluxion, too. I’ve started 2012 with a fresh outlook, a whole set of goals, some plans on how to reach them, and a commitment to getting there. PipHunn.com languished as a placeholder for me for several years, holding my email (pip@piphunn.com if you ever feel like shooting me a missive!) but little else.

Well, that’s going to change this year. I have several projects underway:

Warped and Spineless: I realised in late December that it’s somewhat iniquitous that I can’t draw. Hence, I’m going to spend 20 minutes a day before bed doodling in a scrapbook I’ve brought myself, and in late February this year I’m going to finally start putting ink to screen (you know what I mean!) and putting some doodles up both here, to go alongside my essays, and also in a semi-regular webcomic I’m now sketching out ideas for, tentatively titled Warped and Spineless.

Hyper-Critical: My review website, Hyper-Critical, has been unloved and un-updated, much like a 15-year-old’s diary. Not this year. My goal is 100 reviews and interviews this calendar year, both to force myself to read all the books I’m buying and also to hone my literary critical skills. Watch out there for regular updates.

Essays: Man, I’ve got opinions coming out the wazoo. I feel like the Internet is an appropriate place to store most of them, both for the public’s entertainment (I do tell ribald stories on many, many occasions). I will be posting two essays, blog posts, rambles or stories here a week, and will pimp them out if I think they’re appropriate for human consumption.

Short Stories: I’ve committed to 26 short stories this year, one a fortnight. I’d like to get at least one of them professionally published this year, so we’ll see how that goes. I want to both re-find my voice as a writer, get some professional editorial feedback, and start down the path to being a full-time writer. With that in mind, I’m actually resigning from my day job in five working days – the 25th of January 2012 will be my last day, which is wildly exciting.

Website Writing: My alternate sources of income, apart from doing paid coverage work for the excellent Magic: The Gathering website, mostly involve my business partnership with Ash Cartwright, technicolour-haired poker playing extraordinaire and all-around Electric Gentleman. The income from these ventures should, hopefully, keep me from starving to death while I’m achieving everything else.

Measurable Goals

One thing I’m consciously doing this year that I’ve failed to do previously is be precise in my goals. As Steve Pavlina would gleefully point out, there is little point saying ‘I want to be fit’, and a great deal of points to be earned in saying ‘I want to weigh 47kg with sub-15% body fat’.

Some of my goals are private and are to do with my relationships and personal life, but many of them are not. So what I’m going to do is post the goals here, sans-explanations, and then check back in on them at the end of each calendar month and see how I’m progressing on them.

I’ll try and find a way to separate posts about my personal life from ones designed for entertainment or spreading in order not to bore and confuse everyone. I’m sure that WordPress has the capacity to do that… In case it’s not obvious in my business relationship, I’m the Beard, and Ash is the Suit.

My public goals, as they stand:

• Pay off my house. I start 2012 owing $120,000 on it.
• Make $2,000 in one day in partnership with Ash.
• Weigh 90kg with 10% body fat or less. I currently weigh 74kg. Take photographic evidence
• Finish a novel and have begun the process of publishing it through an agent. No self-publishing!
• Finish 26 short stories, make at least 1 professional sale.
• Review 100 books on Hyper-Critical. Interviews to count as a review.
• Write 100 non-personal blog entries / essays.

So there we are. Some stretch goals, but there’s no point in aiming for comfortable, measurable things. Good luck to me, and to you, in all your endeavours in 2012!

Cheers;
Pip