Blog 20 – Be Resolute in Resolution

12/31/11

I’ll be upfront: I think the entire idea of New Years Resolutions is stupid. If you wait for an arbitrary deadline to create a list of crap to fix in your life, it’s unlikely you will. This is not me being a defeatist, perhaps a contrarian, but I am more than open to creating a list of goals for a new year in which I turn thirty. I propose a single-letter typo correction on the whole issue.

Here is my list of 2012 New Years Revolutions:

Artist's rendering of how a stroke creates lightening bolts in your hair.

1)     Don’t have another stroke

I suppose this is fairly outside of my control and relies more on the ingenuity of doctors, but as a list of goals, it behooves my arterial rebels to be reminded that blood clots are lame and should be annihilated with extreme prejudice.

It’s a funny thing. I make jokes about having one, and sometimes I feel strangely terrible about it. No one ever knows how to react, which is funny because I don’t really either. A lot of the time, I second guess myself on even tweeting something about it out of a fear that everyone is like “oh, there goes stroke-boy again, shaking the pity trees of every last leaf.” Given time, everyone around you returns to normal, sometimes even forgetting the devastation something like that left in its wake. Unfortunately, when I do forget, I wake up and have to scour my phone for who I should bother today for a ride to buy something as innocuous as groceries. I live with it, and we’re all feeling this out together. I never know how to approach any situation where I must ask for help when everyone has their own lives charting a course for a new year. I’ve actually walked to the grocery store (which is a bit over a mile away) more than a couple of times with a backpack (which I promptly fill up with IBC Black Cherry and forget everything else I was supposed to buy.)

It’s not bad; it’s just weird. The exercise is surprisingly good for my dead leg, and I enjoy the time outside, but I will need to put together a better system in the new year, which goes hand in hand with not having another one—especially not a “Crytogenic” one.

This is a panel from when my novel was still a graphic novel. Davide Fabbri is the man.

2)     Get my book published

Clearly, I’m aiming low with this list, what with two seemingly improbable goals to attend to. I have been chomping at the bit to jump in and make narrative and grammatical fixes to the seventh draft, but there has been movement down the path-to-publish that prevent me from doing this right now. Should someone pick it up, I’m sure I will get very busy quite hastily.

I actually wouldn’t mind a few more opinions on the current draft, so if you find yourself bored and want to read a novel about an eleven-year-old boy and a mysterious stranger fighting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, drop me a line at [mikeyzilla at gmail dot com] and we could probably work something out.

And then I was all, 'PEW PEW PEW,' and then were all like, 'OHNOESDEATH!!'

3)     Finish up all the craziness with Borderlands 2

Working with everyone has been a blast. Anthony Burch is a madman with a frightening ability to make you laugh in so many different ways. There’s so much amazing in this game that I can’t wait for you guys to get your hands on; I just wish I could talk more about any of it.

I will say, the intro, was an exercise in biting off far more than I could possibly chew. Love it!

4)     Finish writing my horror movie and film it

I have an entire journal of notes that I’m still in the process of turning into a workable screenplay. I’m always looking for a new and fresh angle to tell a story with. It was odd, from the outset I wanted to make an actually frightening movie—one that makes you want to walk out of the theater, but never from gross out scares or a vague and strange form of intolerance. The film is quite straightforward in plot, but I think the execution of familiar elements in refreshing ways makes it horrifying. I will never understand how every schlocky cynical cash-grab that comes out of the major studios never once considers that characters must be the central point of emotional connection to the material. Titanic, for all intents and purposes, is a horror movie—only James Cameron knew that the movie only succeeded by attaching his audience to the characters before the horror could occur.

More news as this evolves.

That concludes my list of things to accomplish in 2012. When I sat down to write this I was expecting to write a couple of goals and then make a list of increasingly silly resolutions like “clone a panda who can make me oatmeal in the morning,” but apparently I had more to get off my chest. I’ll be funny next time, I promise.

Enjoy 2012!