Making resolutions isn’t the most productive tradition ever – you’re promising things under duress that you don’t plan to deliver on. Worse is when we make unreasonable resolutions that we can’t deliver on.

Which is why I won’t make resolutions.

"Resolution" by Sneeu on Flickr

I did, however, set some goals for myself after writing that last post. Last year was only slightly better than a wash – great things happened, but I also very nearly bottomed out more than once.

So I’m making some changes, and I’m sharing some of those with you.

These are not resolutions – they’re changes I honestly want/need to implement, and I’ve arbitrarily set the end of 2010 as a deadline. Some of them include:

• Writing a song a week
• Recording at least twice a month
• Writing a poem a week (I already do this, somewhat, but I’ve been known to pull an old poem or two)
• Quit smoking
• Read books more than Reddit
• Hang out with my friends at least once a week
• Do more nice things for Kerry (flowers, dates, what have you)

I have no idea how many of these I’ll actually achieve, but I plan on being accountable for these decisions. They’re all attainable, and I’ll be satisfied if my success is less than 100%, so long as I can note some actual progress.

This list of goals is substantially less than complete, but I’m not willing to share every last detail of what I intend to bring to 2010. I hope that the year at least rewards good intentions.

I’ve started several songs since moving to Memphis, but I haven’t finished any.

I don’t think that means I’m done; however, a year and a half-long creative slump is easily the longest I’ve had. Through sheer force of will, and what feels like a dearth of other options, I’m beginning to claw my way out.

One of the strongest forces in my life is the lack of motivation. If I can’t figure out why I’m trying to do something – like songwriting – it’s difficult to make myself do it.

I’m sitting at Otherlands – one of the best places for coffee in Memphis – trying damn hard to dredge up ideas for this week’s creative projects (thankfully, The Great and Secret Thing is taking two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s), and listening to Dylan’s eerily beautiful Time Out of Mind, and wondering about its production.

Naturally, I’ve pulled the record up on Wikipedia and I’m learning less about the record than about Dylan’s creative process. Which is highly encouraging.

Dylan in Noblesville, originally uploaded by mutineersofindy.

Bob Dylan, of all people, gets discouraged, too. In an interview with Paul Zollo, likely from the same interview included in Songwriters on Songwriting, one of the most helpful volumes on craft I’ve ever read, Dylan says:

there was a time when the songs would come three or four at the same time, but those days are long gone…Once in a while, the odd song will come to me like a bulldog at the garden gate and demand to be written. But most of them are rejected out of my mind right away. You get caught up in wondering if anyone really needs to hear it. Maybe a person gets to the point where they have written enough songs. Let someone else write them.

I’ve been there. I am there. And though this Web site is intended to be a venue for my insatiable drive to write songs, I haven’t posted any. It might be a while yet before I do, but if Dylan can keep putting out records despite his discouragement, I can try likewise.

Or, to put that a little more strongly: If Bob Fucking Dylan feels like he can’t write songs, then what business do the rest of us have feeling sorry for ourselves?

We have two options: pack it in without really trying, or put it out there and stop worrying about stupid shit like whether our little experiments are worth anything.

The problem was that I was looking for a pen, but couldn’t find one. So I dumped my whole bag out and got rid of the trash.

Which is when I realized how much stuff I carry with me every day.

I carry this crap EVERY DAY

All of which I honestly feel is necessary, even if I don’t use it every day:

• Nice Panasonic headphones
• Ancient, big, heavy iBook
• iBook charger
• work-branded thumb drive
• Lego-shaped thumb drive
• Four books
• Two iPods
• iPhone
• No fewer than six Molskine notebooks (each of which, I swear, serves a different purpose)

It’s no wonder my back is sore most days.

The fact of the matter is that I need to further declutter. Hard decisions need to be made about what stays home.

Because I never did find that pen.

I knew this particular bit of bad news was coming; Scripps has been trying and failing to sell the ailing Rocky Mountain News since December. Scripps has been suffering huge losses at the paper.

I say that I saw this coming, but the actual announcement of the closing comes as something of a suckerpunch.

The news comes as so much of a suckerpunch that I need to emphasize my editorial independence on this one. No one else knows that I’m writing this – until it’s up.

It’s fair to neither the employees of the Rocky Mountain News nor to their families that no one was told that tomorrow (Friday) will be their last day until today. And rather than simple “life isn’t fair” unfair, this treatment of employees borders on injust.

Kerry works at the Commercial Appeal, another Scripps paper. She works for the online department – she and her immediate co-workers are/will be the saviors of the newspaper industry. If, that is, they aren’t beaten to within an inch of their morale’s life by incidents like this happening within their employer’s parent company.

I strongly believe that the Commercial Appeal is going to weather the storm, a statement I can make only after having met the stalwart crew of the online department, because they’re doing what they believe in, because they care too much, and most of all, because the paper has never missed an issue.

The people I know there are too damned stubborn to be the people around for the Commercial Appeal’s first missed issue.

But I can’t say that I don’t worry. The morale of employees at any business directly affects the morale of their families. I try to stay positive, knowing that Kerry is in a position which will remain vital to the newspaper industry throughout this awkward pubescent transition to the industry’s new world, but the simple fact that she’s aware of the possibility of another suckerpunch causes me to worry, too.

I don’t have the heart to look up any public radio reportage on the Rocky Mountain News’ closure, because I’m afraid that it’s all going to be tinged with the sense of superiority that comes from working in any other form of media.

I’m looking at you when I say that, Bob Garfield. You know, there was a battle between radio and television, too. Just like the one between newspapers and the internet. Guess what? TV won. And you still have a job – two, actually, in radio and print. Your living depends on dead media.

But if radio can evolve and find a market in a TV world, then surely newspapers can do the same in an internet world – this not taking into account the fact that much of the internet experience is already based on the newspaper model, an advantage that few commentators have noticed, and few small-town daily newspapers seem to have realized either.

My thoughts and prayers – such as they are – are with the employees and families of the Rocky Mountain News. If you people are anything like the people I know at the CA, you’ll pull through and end up in a better place.

Madison Mosaic Mural (13/365), originally uploaded by The Spacebase.

I sort of inadvertently picked up a third job today – one of my Apple Store coworkers is working on restoring a mosaic at a MATA trolley station near downtown on Madison, and she needs help. So Nicola (left) and Jim (right) and I are acting as said help.

When we took the sketch out to the site this morning, it turned out that some grave miscalculations were made in transferring the original sketches to the materials we will use in making the new mosaic.

Everything is too big.

Mexican Potluck (11/365), originally uploaded by The Spacebase.

lots of pots at the potluck. Isn’t THAT inexplicable?

(My stomach is still recovering.)

Kerry Celebrates (10/365), originally uploaded by The Spacebase.

Kerry and I bought iPhones today. This marks her financial independence. We celebrated by drinking (rather good) champagne in a can through (rather collapsible) straws.