A Surtist New Year

Happy New Year one and all. As 2016 ends worldwide, and 2017 begins, it is often a time of introspection. A time for individuals to look at their life and try to find ways of enhancing them in the coming 12 months.

Now, many people look at it as a negative:

1. Give up smoking

2. Drink less alcohol

3. Join a gym (more a negative for the regular gym goers, who find January a painful time)

4. Eat less takeaway food

5. Read more books (though again, this surely must be a positive)

A Surtist view would be more a progressive target for the entire year:

1. Be more creative (paint a picture, pen a poem, write a song, scribe your novel)

2. Improve your health (a generic consideration, rather than a targeted giving up aim)

3. Being more considerate of the World at large

4. More time with family and friends

5. Read more books (sorry, had to include this one)

Accepting that not all the targets will be met is important, and not to get pulled to deeply into the details. Knowing that some days will be difficult to achieve any aspect of the targets, but other days will be particularly productive.

Not all my own 2016 targets were met, family ill health slowed down many aspects, but I have completed my first novel, proofread it time and time again, and it is now ready for my wife to go through it before I send it out there. This will happen at some point in 2017, and next I will go back to an older novel idea (I seem to recollect being about 20k words in to it), and look again at my comic styled children books.

As always, for me, January is an incredibly busy month, so my own targets will only begin in February. So I’ll be unlikely to write much more in the first month of 2017, but plan to do more thereafter.

I once again wish everyone a Happy New Year, and hope you all achieve some of your targets.

Best wishes

Paul A. Roberts