Endings and beginnings...

What happens when you chain yourself to your desk for a whole month in a desperate attempt to get your thesis written? Well, a thesis, apparently. That and a lot of coffee drinking, which of course aided the cause. I have completed the thirty one days of concentrated writing which I dubbed Thesis Month with three chapters (an introduction, one on DeLillo's Falling Man and one on Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist) which total around 22,000 words, 16,000 of which were written in the last month alone. I still have one more chapter (on McEwan's Saturday) plus a conclusion and all of the suggested revisions from my supervisors to write over the next 20 days but the end is in sight and it looks like it is going to be possible.

This thesis will be, by far, the longest single piece of writing I have ever done. Normally I churn out blog posts or articles that are 1,200 words in length without too much difficulty but despite my love of writing, there has always been this weird mental barrier in my head when it comes to writing anything very much longer. Especially something with chapters. Locking myself away for a month has made me realise, though, that what all of the best writers have said is true: Writing is work and you just have to keep showing up at your desk every day until you get it done. Previously I had tended to be one of those "write when inspiration hits" types which, you can imagine really doesn't work so well when there are strict deadlines and academic penalties involved. Anyway, two more months and this thing will be submitted and I will be free of tertiary study for the first time in 12 years! The possibilities of what I will do with the extra time are endless including reading what I want, whenever I want, purely for the hell of it. Heaven is just around the corner.

In other news, I have been given an exciting new job. The place where I work, The Community Services Center in Taipei, has an English language lifestyle magazine aimed at the international community living in Taipei and beyond. Recently, the editor who had been doing a fabulous job of looking after this magazine decided that she was going to step down and to my absolute joy my boss asked me if I would like to consider doing it. Of course I accepted, joyfully and with many fist-pumps. I have just started work on my first issue due out in February. Yet another reason to get this thesis done and dusted so I can focus my attentions on this new project, also known as My Dream Job.

Once I have got the thesis out of the way I will be spending some time thinking about the direction I want to take this blog in and being more committed to writing it on a regular basis. I have been having a few thoughts about what kinds of books I want to spend my time reading and also thoughts about how much Taiwan I want to include here. But I want to finalise one commitment before I take on another to ensure that both get the love and attention they need. It's almost like I can't really and truly celebrate the new year until I finish the thesis because I can't make new goals and resolutions until I have. But that's OK - it just gives me another reason to pop a cork on a bottle of something a bit special at the end of the February!

I hope you're all well and have had a wonderful Festive Season with your loved ones and that 2012 will be a fantastic year for you. Also I want to thank you for bearing with me during this period of blogging silence - I even gained a few new followers which I am most grateful for. Happy New Year!

A non-literary post

It's a funny thing that the end of the year does to us all. All of a sudden there is this mad impulse to try and condense it, make a 'best of' list out of it, make some sense of another year that has, by all accounts, rocketed by while we were standing agog wondering how time got to moving by so fast.

So here we are again: December 2009, not only the end of the year but the end of another decade - the so-called "Noughties". Lord knows what we're supposed to call the next one, but I guess we have time to figure that out. This decade was a particularly significant one for me as it saw me moving from being a teenager to an adult. Ten years ago I had just finished my sixth form year at high school in New Zealand, I wanted to be a doctor and I had a huge crush on some guy in my Chemistry class. Ten years later, I've just gotten married (not to the guy in my Chemistry class!), moved countries and embarked on the career I've come to realise is my true passion: books and everything to do with them. It's a cliche, I know, but it really is amazing how much difference 10 years can make but also how quickly it passes us by.

In any case, what I really wanted to say was I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year. Look forward to seeing you back here in 2010!

Resolutions - you make 'em to break 'em

Well, some people do. Surely. I hear all sorts of crazed plans for the year, the likes of which I have heard in several years preceding, which have never made it to fruition. Usually those poor saps making these wild plans end up despondent by mid-Feb and start to resent the new year before it's really had a chance to prove itself.

I've been there. Many times. 

"I'm going to drop 2 sizes this year!!"

"I'm going to be completely tidy this year!"

"I'm going to get an A+ average!"

And many other things that never seem to happen if I promise them at the beginning of the year.

I find I am far more likely to achieve something like that if I begin at some obscure and non-eventful time of the year, like Mid-September for example. Or if I don't make a weighty claim that places a huge expectation on my shoulders. Letting yourself down is the worst kind of failure as you really, at the end of the day, can't kid yourself or offer any of the half-cut excuses you can try and get away with to others. Start with a realistic goal and expand from there as and when success comes your way.

So upon reflection of what this year is likely to contain for me (massive change, a fair amount of stress, crises of identity etc) I figured that the best resolution that I could make for 2009 would be to be kind to myself. To roll with the punches and not sweat the small stuff. To enjoy the experience of this year as much as possible but to know when to sit quietly in a room with nothing but my iPod and a mug of tea. 

This is the resolution I have made for 2009. This has got to be the most humane resolution I have ever made and then again the most important one yet. Being kind to yourself is not technically difficult but can be hard to achieve for certain personality types (mine included)  - the types of personality who are constantly hounded by the "Should Monster". The Should Monster is a hairy, loud bastard of a monster who bullies its targets into feeling bad for all of the things that they haven't done and inflicts amnesia upon them about the things that they HAVE achieved. It's a mean and insidious S.O.B. 

But no more! This year I am banishing the Should Monster back to its cave. It's time for a new type of resolution and a new approach to a new year. I can't do absolutely everything and I am not Super Woman. But you know what? That's O.K. with me.