Happy New Year!

I had a weird idea it might be fun to try to write a little something something every day for a year and January 1st seemed like the logical starting point for that.  Am I disciplined or motivated enough to stick to something like this?  I have no idea.  This whole thing might totally peter out by January 3rd.  

To make it as easy on myself as possible, I'm implementing a "no rules" policy on here meaning this isn't necessarily going to be a linear narrative or a daily journal of my life or whatever, although it could be those things at times.  In essence my plan is to write whatever the heck I feel like on any given day whether that be a story, a summary of the day, a poem, or complete gibberish.  Or anything else for that matter.  Some entries might have a bit of length to them and some might be a couple sentences only.  

Will this be interesting to read for anyone else other than me?  Again, I have no idea.  I don't really have any clue what exactly I might end up writing.  And that sense of the unknown is what makes this idea kind of interesting to me.  Plus it would be nice to feel like I actually did write something every day, even if it's a sentence like "I have no motivation to write anything today."  I hope too many entries don't end up being something like that, but I'm giving myself permission to have some days that are.  Like I said, no rules.

This is definitely a sort of silly "for fun" project for me.  I don't want it to feel like too much of an obligation or like it's getting in my way of working on other stuff, so if I feel the need to bail on it, I will, but I think it'll be fun.  

So, I'll probably wrap this opening entry up pretty soon, but since it's the first day of the year I think I'll take a little lay of the land.  Sort of where I'm at this moment and where I might hope to go over the course of the year.  

I'm currently working somewhat slowly on my fourth book.  It's called the Infinity Box and it's the second sequel to the very first book I ever wrote Tourist Trap.  I'm actually pretty far into it so I definitely hope I get it finished off in 2022.  I think that's an achievable goal.

I'm also currently in the midst of participating in the Ultimate Sci-fi smackdown here on Wattpad.  This is basically a sort of writing competition in which you write short stories based on prompts and then some anonymous judges decide who advances until there's ultimately one winner.  This started in late 2021 and I've so far made it to round 2, although I'm currently awaiting results on that so I don't know yet if I'll be participating in round 3 or not.  

Last year I participated in the Open Novella contest here on Wattpad and my story Space Vigilante ended up on the shortlist, which I hear is a pretty good result.  I did enjoy doing that, although it made me put the Infinity Box on the backburner for a few months while I worked on it.  I haven't decided yet if I want to participate in the ONC again this year or not, but I'm definitely considering it.

In addition to writing stories, I also like to write and record songs for fun.  I was pretty lazy about doing that in 2021, but I've been involved with an online music project called Weekly Beats since 2014.  It runs every other year and the idea is to write and record a new song every week.  I think I'm going to try to participate in that again this year, which is another big commitment.  I'm probably biting off more than I can chew with all of this, but on the plus side this should hopefully be a creatively productive year.  Anyone who wants to follow my progress on that front can check it out here:  https://weeklybeats.com/cosmiccairns

I'm also going to do the Goodreads reading challenge again this year and aim to read at least 55 books in 2022.  That seems to be close to what I've averaged for the last couple years, so I think it's doable.  It should be interesting to check in at the end of this year and see if I've been able to keep any of this stuff up. 

All right, well that seems like enough for now.  If I don't accidentally forget that I'm doing this, I should be checking back in tomorrow.  Here's hoping for a good 2022!