New Year Resolutions



Feel free to keep tabs on my progress and call me out on any of these...
  • Watch more hockey.
  • Leave random happy drawings in random happy and unhappy places for random people to keep. Randomly.
  • Go all “YOU SHALL NOT PASS (my lips)” to soft drinks.
  • Learn all the lyrics to the songs I always try to sing during my morning and evening commutes.
  • Record myself singing along to those songs and add them to my web site (www.matusic.com).
  • Write in my Q&A a Day every evening. I skipped the final 95% of 2014. Shame on me. 
  • Follow that up with some sudoku or reading. A big juicy brain like this doesn’t maintain itself, people.
  • Help Wendi get her craft and blogging beeswax of the ground and on to your computer screens.
  • Speak at TEDXAlbany.
  • Home improvement projects. That deck isn’t going to build itself. And the shed won’t demolish itself. Well it will eventually if we leave it up long enough.
  • Set the zombie books aside and read some of the modern classics I’ve been missing out on.
  • Purge a majority of my wardrobe, because I wear the same 15 items in a sort of awkward rotation.
  • And then buy a few new things because sometimes I go places that command nice clothing.
  • Start up the Albany Drink and Draw.
  • Keep up with the ice skating. Jake and I just started and we’re both getting better. We really enjoy it.
  • Stay the weird course of weirdness with my drawing and writing (see pic above). 
  • Fewer movies/shows. More podcasts.
  • And maybe some audio books. 
  • Utilize the gym in the lower lobby of Upside Collective's new building in downtown Albany. A big juicy body like this doesn’t maintain itself, people.
  • Blog more.
  • Make sure the posts are entertaining to both the readers and the writer.
  • Improve my After Effects skills so I can throw down some quick animated shorts.
  • Quarterly promo post cards.
  • Posters. The weirder the better. And then sell them online or at festivals. For cheap.
  • More museums visits.
  • Work with Jake to launch a game app. That kid is full of great ideas. It’s about time he started paying out.
  • Write letters. Add art.
  • Work on some chapter book and graphic novel ideas.
  • More live baseball games. Including a trip to Yankee Stadium with Jake.
  • Take better advantage of everything the SCBWI has to offer.
  • Same with AIGA.
  • Visit my folks more often.
  • Same with my sister and her family. 
  • Set up a small screen printing daily-o for basic paper and t-shirt prints. And then sell them online or at festivals. For cheap.
  • Network more often. And enjoy doing it.
  • Which means I should attend more conferences and talks. And I’m cool with that.
  • Meditate daily, or at least when necessary, which will probably be daily.
  • Get back into throwing heavy things. It’s worked as a form of meditation in the past.
  • Check this list periodically to make sure I’m on track.
  • Complain less. Thank more. Like so:
Thanks for reading. Have a fun, exciting, productive and prosperous 2015. Best of luck with your own resolutions.

-G

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Illustrator's Observations and Lessons Learned at the 2012 NESCBWI Conference

Image
Draw the environment before adding the character. If you're modeling for a drawing class, the Angry Hulk pose and Tebowing are crowd pleasers. Surround yourself with talent and you'll eventually win a door prize. My drawings need texture. If Brian Lies is speaking, I'm listening. I dare anyone not to blush when a group of attractive lit agents and writers shout your name from a balcony. All of the illustrators I met were extremely cool people. But not all extremely cool people can be illustrators of course. And then there’s Hazel Mitchell… Honored to have sketched in the Octo-Puss in Boots book. BTW, Casey Girard is cool as hell. Love and care about each character and the rest will be easier. You don't have to know how to play the banjo to play the banjo. Speaking of banjos, Russ Cox deserves every accolade thrown in his direction. Harry Bliss is a comedic genius. Meeting my Facebook and Twitter illo pals was e
Read more

Avast, You Scurvy Rats! It's The Next Big Thing Blog Tour!

Image
The Next Big Thing blog tour started in Australia, but it's sturdy sails soon caught a mighty wind (ewww...), sending it on a tour of the seven seas. The object of the tour is to bring awareness to authors & illustrators and their current work. A treasure chest filled with thank ye's goes to the very talented Wendy Martin for tagging me. I've been asked to answer 10 questions about my current book-in-progress, after which I'll tag three others who aren't just amazing illustrators and writers, but good friends as well. Now weigh anchor and set a course for some long-winded answers! 1. What is the working title of your next book? Pirates Go Shopping Some of the original character sketches. Can you tell which ones my son didn't like? 2. Where did the idea come from for the book? I entered the 2011 Picture Book Dummy Challenge organized and run so well by KidLitArt founders Wendy Martin and Bonnie Adamson. Sitting at our dining room tabl
Read more

Illustration Friday: Stay

Image
Man, I love Illustration Friday , but it usually slips my mind until Friday rolls around. But this week I remembered to sketch, scan and illustrate (Adobe Illustrator CS5 on an iMac) an entry for this wee's topic: "Stay". Let's hear it for small victories! My first "Stay" thought was to draw a doggie. You know: "Stay!" "Sit!" "Heal!" "Get a job!" I decided instead to take the road less traveled and chose the title of a song that is definitely less listened to these days compared to my wild rumpus days known as the mid 1990s. Stay was written and performed by Lisa Loeb. It was on the soundtrack to the highly over-rated 1994 movie, Reality Bites , which tried to appeal to the Generation X population that had come of age with the John Hughes' movies. Some bought into it, but I knew right away that Ben Stiller wasn't going define the person I was going to become. Still couldn't resist picking up the soundt
Read more