Hoping for Good Spins in 2017

Christmas closes out the year in mellow reflection. New Year’s Day starts a new one in hopeful anticipation. What we anticipate is often in the form of plans and predictions. Our plans are what we want to make happen—determined resolutions to reach goals important to us. Our predictions are what we expect to happen irrespective of our goals. When done well, predictions can serve as a program brochure for the coming year. 

I’m no prophet so I won’t make predictions for 2017. I’ll just note a few trends I think you can bet on. I’ll also note a few of my plans you might find interesting.

Regarding plans, first and foremost, I’ll complete my Power of the Ancients manuscript. This is my novel that’s been in progress for several years. A lot of that time has been spent in learning the craft, but I did manage to pound out a 140K word manuscript. In reviewing parts of it with my writing group, however, I realized it was too scattered. It wasn’t forming enough of a cohesive story.

Then I found Shawn Coyne’s The Story Grid and that book pointed out where my problems lay with Power of the Ancients. Basically, I need to craft the story in a format more akin to the conventions of the SF Post Apocalyptic/Thriller genre and remove parts that don’t support that format. I can already tell from the story grid I’ve put together that this process will greatly improve the novel and enhance its potential to “work.”

Next, I have a long (and growing) reading list to get through and do Ray-views on. Some of these are books I want to re-read so that I can review and include them in my Get-A-Clue reading list. This could actually be a good literary project. My intention is to produce a list of books that I believe provide the open-minded reader with clues as to the world’s reality—who is in control and how they make things work, the reality of climate change and geoengineering, the true nature of society and governments, how the current world culture came to be, where it’s all heading, the reality of transcendence, etc.

All the material I glean in putting together my Get-A-Clue list could lead to compilation into a book, or maybe a series of blog posts, or even some kind of serialization in issues of Annotations . 

My wife and I have put a lot of emphasis on health and fitness this year and we’ve both reaped much benefit from the effort. We’re considering letting this fitness momentum carry us into some endeavor, like a series of day-hikes-to-backpacking expeditions. My thinking is that we can plan a series of day-hikes, break into camping, then do overnight backpacking, and culminate the year with a hiking-camping experience at Panthertown.

I like to find literary slants for most things I do so, if we do this, I’ll keep a journal that I’ll make blog posts from, and you can follow our progress. When we’re done, I’ll evaluate the experience and the material I gathered with an eye towards a book.

That’s the highlights of what will keep me busy in 2017. There’s much more that I’m considering. Those considerations are near-overwhelming, actually. If you’re interested and get something from my work, you can follow my progress in this blog (Ray’s Journal). 

Now regarding predictions, I almost don’t want to go there. If you follow this journal you’ll know that my opinions of this world, of its politics, of its prospects, are pretty dark. What hope we have, I believe, has to come at a personal level. If joy can only come from living in a world of rule-by-law, of peace among neighbors, of unmolested nature and unrestricted human potential, then I fear there can be no joy. Happiness has to come, if it comes, in spite of the world of men. Perhaps it’s always been that way.  Nevertheless, let me offer a few things to look for.

* Trump will take office. I don’t know what was behind all the recount and “faithless electors” hype, because if Trump was not acceptable to the world’s ruling oligarchs, he would never have gotten the Republican candidacy, much less the presidency. He will be no more a champion for the common man than Obama was.

* Attempts to oppose the world’s oppressive regime will arise. Movements in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street will appear spontaneously around the world, but will not last. Nothing but collapse will stop the juggernaut that is hell-bent upon destroying the earth.

* Cries for war with Russia and China will sound loud and long in the “news” media and in popular entertainment. There will be much fighting in the world, but World War III will not happen.

* Restrictions on Internet access and website content will increase, though much of the censorship will be by propaganda (”That’s a fake news site!”) and behind-the-scenes disruption (websites erratically going down). 

* Global warming will push steadily on. 2017 will be warmer on average than 2016. Geoengineering efforts will increase and talk of it as a “potential” for mitigating climate change will be done openly. The intent will be of steering the general populace to accepting it. Meanwhile, chemtrails will blanket the sky with toxic haze, only to be stopped by eventual worldwide financial collapse.

Perhaps you see the dichotomy in this post. I’ve expressed some positive hope and plans for 2017 at a personal level, but see only negative returns at the world level. I think that’s the way it is. The two (individual life vs world civilization) have been in such conflict for at least 10,000 years. They are the yin-yang in synergistic spin producing good, bad, and indifferent results.

My New Year’s wish for all of you, my readers, is for many good spins in 2017.