As I head toward my 45th birthday, I realize that unless I live to be 90, I'm beyond middle age. This has caused a steadily expanding ruckus within the depths of my psyche. It is a din I can no longer ignore, suppress, or rationalize away.

The impending arrival of 2011 is doing a number on me as well, as did 2010, 2009, 2008, etc... The only way out of this rut as I see it is to actually start doing the things I've only dreamed about doing. Like Langston Hughes, I don't want my dreams to dry up, fester, stink, crust over, sag, or eventually explode. I've decided that 2011 is the year I bandage, bolster, and birth a variety of life long dreams that have accumulated like baggage over the years. This is the year I risk coaxing my desires out of private obscurity and into the urban landscape of my daily life.

In 2011 I will query at least 30 literary agents, and in 2012 I will query 31 more. If Kathryn Stockett gave up at 60, we never would have been blown away by The Help.

In 2011 I will take at least 3 writing workshops because they force me to bind my butt to my chair, fix my fingers to the keyboard, and strum deliriously like rain on a tin roof.

In 2011 I will get through Guitar Fundamentals 1 & 2 at guitartricks.com. My new guitar arrived today.

2011 marks the end of the drooping, fetid, decomposing dreams that have hung around my neck like a sandbag for the past 20 years. I will not explode, nor will I go quietly. Let the wild rumpus begin.