So okay this year I want to: finish this freelance assignment on time, write that other novel that’s in the works, and finish also the first draft of that very exciting other novel, do the next assignment I said I’d do, get a few more stories published, get an agent FINALLY, go to the summer workshop, and while we’re at it become a full-time freelance writer living beside the Pacific Ocean with two cats and my filmmaker partner who is making his movies and maybe all our debt is erased because the loan companies think we’re very nice people or else there is always the lottery and I learn how to surf and I’m killer at it and my skin somehow toughens and I stop burning so much and I am intensely prolific and life has meaning and I see my baby sister all the time and I dye my hair dark blue and learn how to bake perfect chocolate cupcakes and when I go to sleep at night I dream happy dreams like I’ve heard happy people dream if happy people exist in their houses on the beach with their two cats and their perfect chocolate cupcakes.

Not so much to ask, no?

In the meantime, all I ask of today is to finish that plot summary I promised the editor. Simple, yes?

Not really. But I’m trying.