New Year’s Goalsetting

The new year is the time to make resolutions, right?

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.

Bulldog at the Garden Gate, Approximately

I’ve been feeling terribly discouraged. Though I’m producing a poem every week for The Great and Secret Thing, and blogging regularly for Radio Sweethearts, I’ve been feeling that my creative powers are waning.

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.

Dylan in Noblesville, originally uploaded by mutineersofindy.

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.

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.