In Focus

Instead of making New Year’s Resolutions this year I decided that I was going to try something new.  I’m going to focus on four things.  When I think of the word focus, it has a general meaning, but it also has a specific meaning in photography.  You focus on your subject.  You can have a wide variety of focus points, depending on where you are looking at your focus.  We’ve all seen the movies where the cameraman focuses his lens on one thing in the foreground and then the focus shifts to another thing in the background, it’s a way of getting our attention on different elements in the frame.  We might see a girl in the foreground minding her own business and then focus changes to a man in the background looking at the girl.  Depending on many different visual clues this could mean anything from the man is in love with the girl, or obsessed with the girl, or he means the girl harm, or he is the girl’s father or husband, or anything!  We only know that the man is looking at the girl because the cameraman has given us the visual clue.  What we make of it depends on how the scene is acted, the context of the scene the roles, what has come before and what comes after.

So here are my 4 things that are coming into focus for me this year:

   1.  My Career--I’m an Author.  I want to promote the books that I have out now, and keep building my titles.  I ran across a good piece of advice a while back.  Even if the first book isn’t selling, keep writing and adding to your titles on your author’s page because if someone does like what you write, they will want more.

   2.  Reading--As  an author, I want to continually become a better author for myself and for my readers.  One way to do that is to keep up with reading other writers and learning from them.  I might find that I want to be the kind of writer that Pat Conroy is rather than the kind of writer that John Steinbeck was which is who I thought I want to be.

   3.  Happiness/Contentedness--I am old enough now to know what makes me happy and what does not, and I want to be contented in my old age.  I don’t want to live with doubts and regrets.  So I want to focus on removing the things that make me crazy and focus on things that make me happy and contented such as the things that are pictured below.  Knitting socks, reading, learning new things, watching good movies and TV shows on Netflix with no commercial interruptions, and playing words with friends on my Kindle.  I no doubt will write another Blog on this topic in the very near future.

  4.  Simplicity--In years past I have made lists, calculations, step-by-step procedures, strict schedules, and in depth goals that I then just ignored.  This year I want to adopt a new form of simplicity.  So what I'm going to do is just keep my spaces clear and if there is something that needs to be done, I will simply lay it on the table.  Then as soon as I have time, I will do the thing.

So there you have it.  And again, I plan to do some more Blogs on these four focuses as I go through the year.  So stay tuned.  Follow my Blog, follow me on Facebook.  Check out my Pinterest Boards, Follow me on Twitter.  Check out my Author pages on Amazon and Goodreads.  And stay in touch!  I would love to hear from you.

Cindy Koch-Krol, 1/4/16.