It feels like there are 2,009 things I want to do in 2009, so I had better add “learn to prioritize” to the list!

My personal goals for the coming year are to take better care of myself (better eating & sleeping habits, more physical activity), improve my relationship with time, hone my intuition, and speak from the heart even when it’s scary.

I want to make more comics, so a big goal for me is to draw them every day, in the morning. I also plan to set aside specific time every week for other things that are important to me: Trees & Hills duties, website stuff, engaged citizenship / activism, etc. I need to regulate my computer usage so I can spend less time in front of the screen.

Naturally I will continue devoting a lot of energy to Trees & Hills (there is a LOT to do), but I need to devote more to my personal comics work than I did this year. My main focus here will be resurrecting my minicomic series Square Dance (a 5.5″ x 8.5″ catch-all for my comics work). I hate to risk jinxing myself by announcing plans like this, but I intend to produce three 32-page issues of Square Dance a year: one each for the spring, fall, and holiday touring seasons. I have some other comic & zine ideas in mind, but they will be prioritized behind Square Dance. I hope to place work in some more anthologies.

In 2009 I expect to be a more engaged citizen. From the get-go I will be working with one or more anti-nuke groups to produce a comic for late winter / early spring as part of the effort to prevent the relicensing of Vermont Yankee, and may help out in some other ways. Throughout the year I will be working with The Sustainability Project on the Monadnock Community Gardening Initiative in a variety of ways: making comics about food and gardening, but also the less familiar tasks of trying to lay groundwork for tool banks, community gardens, and skill-share networks. Yowza! More reasons to budget my time better.

In the fall, I look forward to officiating a wedding in Minneapolis!

That isn’t even everything, but I would hate to drain the coming year of any sense of wonder and surprise for you. It’s going to be quite a year!