2012: The Beginning (...of the End?!)

New Years resolution #1:  blog more.  :p

Seriously though, it has indeed been a long time since I bothered to write anything down here.  November was fairly busy, but I managed to participate in the National Novel Writing Month challenge and produce a rough draft of 50000 words.  It's a nice accomplishment that reinvigorated the joy of writing fiction, and helped me see that a combination of perseverance and time management can allow me to squeeze more writing time into a day.

Unfortunately, my momentum was lost in December.  A lot of it has to do with me being sick during the holidays.  I must have had a sore throat for three weeks; it's the most horrid virus I've had in years, and it might actually be the sickest I've ever been.  It's not fun being sick during a time when one is with family, celebrating the holidays.  It's especially not inspiring for getting any writing done.

Thank goodness, the New Year has passed and my sickness has abated.  I haven't gotten around to writing as much as I should, but I managed to finally finish editing a manuscript I've had for years (a nice vampire novel with lots of bloody action), I've started a fun piece of fan-fiction (Star Wars with attitude), and I'm reaffirming my conviction to finding publishers and reaching out to them (unfortunately, such conviction tends to vanish as the year progresses, so we'll have to see if I can keep up the queries.  I'm getting half a mind to just make another print-on-demand novel...).

Although I haven't been posting movie reviews here, I still love the movies and enjoy writing about them.  With a number of thrilling new movies coming out this year (titles like The Hobbit, Prometheus, The Avengers, and more), I'll certainly try to stay on top of it and post my thoughts here.

So, as it is with previous years, I'm starting 2012 with the notion that I can be more productive and get some real stuff done.  My ambitions are overshadowed, however.  We all know that 2012 is a magic number of a year, for it is the year in which the Mayan long count calendar ends.  Many folks believe that this means it'll be the end of the world; I'll be expecting an awful lot of scare-mongering in the media, and perhaps some mass panic as 12/21/12 gets closer.

Do I believe that the apocalypse is upon us? Well, from what I've read around the Internet, scientists find no creditable threat to Earth.  Fanatics may claim that the Earth's magnetic poles will switch, or the galactic alignment will screw us over, or some other planet will swoop on over and snuggle up next to our planet...but scientists can discount a lot of these theories.  Just do a simple search, and you'll see the counterarguments.  That being said, these are still very disconcerting times.  Just recently, the Doomsday Clock was advanced to five minutes till midnight, meaning that we're slightly closer to the threat of a worldwide thermonuclear war.  Combined with the threat of global climate change (which scientists affirm is really happening), poor economy around the world, and continuing social unrest, I think chances are tragically good that the human race may be the cause of its own demise.  And who's to say that it won't happen this year? At the very least, this could be the end of one era and the beginning of another, meaning that massive social change could be inevitable.

Whatever happens, I just hope and pray that catastrophe doesn't befall the human race.  I have faith that we'll see 2013 the same way we passed through the years 1999 and 2000 without anything happening.