Personal and Professional Goals.

  

Louis Shalako

 

So far this year we’ve accomplished more than one personal and professional goal.

When you're a writer, all of this is sort of bound all up together in one big ball of wax. We live our work around here.

We’ve published three short novels in the 60,000 to 70,000-word class. We’ve optimized and learned how to use our new computer.

We ditched the old Neon and got another half-decent used car.

We are well on the way to getting our teeth fixed.

It’s not even the end of June yet.

What that means, ladies and gentlemen, is that we can now set a few more goals, because there are still six months left in 2015.

We've been kicking ass all over the place; figuratively speaking because I'm not that violent. We're only slightly evil, ladies and gentlemen.

I’m not a big fan of wasting time.

For one thing, I’ve lived here for three and a half years. I still have sheets for curtains. I’ve never hung a picture in this place.

One of my goals is to find a home. That might not happen this year, but it won’t happen ever if I don’t take the time and work at it a little bit.

I obviously have time to write one or two more novels. I obviously have time to write a score, possibly a hundred short stories, as well as the usual dozens and scores and myriads of blog posts.

I would like to get a webcam. I wouldn’t mind a professional microphone. I wouldn’t mind a half-decent 35 mm digital camera with a couple of lenses, flash, remote, tripod, etc. Video would be nice.

I could really use a winter coat and a better diet overall, in the long term, and every day.

I would like to afford a six-pack every day, and I would like to pay off my credit card, and I would like to do one or two things besides, such as go camping or even go to a frickin’ motel with a pool in some other town and just see what it’s like to watch TV and have nothing better to do than drink beer, stuff quarters into the vibrator bed and if the phone rings don’t answer it.

I would like to swim five hundred metres without touching bottom. Last year I got up to a little over three hundred.

But that was then and this is now.

I want to ride my bike more.

I wouldn’t mind having sex again before I die.

Other than that, I don’t much care for awards and accolades.

I would prefer to maintain my hard-won obscurity. My cat was killed by a car a few years ago, but then I've never owned a dog in my life. I wouldn't mind doing that, too. But first, a new place to live.

I might even be willing to fall in love again.

One more time, ladies and gentlemen.

Bear in mind, all of this has to be paid for, and then I still want to give away a billion dollars before I die.

That last one is a bit of a toughie, and we are really going to need your help. If you really believed in love and life and happy endings, the best thing you can do to help is to grab a free book.

That really would make my heart sing.

Thank you for reading.

END