New Year Resolutions

Swapna HaddowScrapbook

My Year Five teacher introduced me to New Year resolutions.  I suspect now, after a heavy couple of weeks of partying the Christmas school holidays away, he gave us the cop-out assignment so he could sleep off his hangover in a pile of PE bags in the adjacent storeroom.  It was Spring term’s equivalent of the first day of Autumn term’s ‘What did you do over the Summer holidays?’ essay.

I had decided back then that resolutions served no purpose.  Mainly because I had resolved that year to declare my undying love to my then crush but instead that September declared he was gross for trying to drink from the class gerbil’s water bottle.

Twenty years later I think I might give this resolution idea another go.  I’m going for a mash-up of resolutions and goal-orientated missions for the year and I’ll let you know at the end of the year how I got on.

Finish my manuscript for my young adult novel and submit to an agent

Be more thick-skinned about rejections

Be more positive about getting published

Spend more time with my husband and stop giving preferential treatment to my son

Spend more time with my son and stop giving preferential treatment to my husband

Recapture my nine-year-old enthusiasm for writing, despite the tedious assignments from hungover teachers