Last Friday, we had the misfortune of attending the funeral of the baby boy of a very close friend of ours. He lived a matter of hours and the beautiful, emotional service proved – if there were ever any doubt – that there is little in life more powerfully heart-wrenching than the sight of a coffin that can be carried by one person.

What the day did bring home to me, however, is just how right my theories about children have always been.

Our friends have a beautiful young daughter who will now no longer be a big sister and she was wisely, kept away from the raw grief of the service itself, but did come to join us for the gathering afterwards.

Watching her and her cousin tearing around, enjoying the attention and huge selection of people from whom to choose their doting affection, brought so much of life into focus.

I’ve always said that as adults we can all learn valuable lessons from young children. Until a child is into their school years, the most important thing in the world to them is whatever they happen to be doing at any given time.

As we grow older all manner of outside pressures, fears, hopes and dreams invade our personal space and lead us away from moment-to-moment living into a world of “what next”.

In the theories of zen, being in the moment is known as mindfulness; a state of being where one totally invests oneself into the moment/task at hand. Watching the children running around on Friday showed just how wonderful this can be.

As the song goes, life goes on. It’s hard, yes, and the pain will never truly pass. But the last thing anyone wants when they pass on is for those they leave behind to call a halt to their lives.

We owe it to everyone that has gone before us – be it in the recent or distant past – to live a life that’s full, happy and appreciated for every second. There’s always a time for sadness and we never want to be ignorant of the pain and grief that death causes, but we must always strive to stay focused on the important part of life: the living.

That list represents the essence of everything I want to do over the next 12 months, the things I want to focus my life on and what I think will bring me the most happiness and fulfilment throughout the year. But is striving for “more” of something too generic an aim? Should I have more specific, more focussed goals?

Schools of thought on goals, aims, targets or whatever you choose to call them vary widely all around the world and across the internet. Some people live entirely without goals, others suggest a single goal at a time. Still others suggest a whole raft of long-sighted goals that you take baby steps towards achieving every single day. So what’s the right way to do it?

I suspect, like just about every other productivity hack, life-style design tutorial or future-planning tip, trick or tool, the answer is whatever works for you. Will I be more successful this year if I lay out all of my aims and objectives in clear, concise points, posted somewhere obvious to keep an eye on, or will I be better off ignoring everything a taking things one day at a time, one piece at a time?

Knowing myself, I suspect I’m somewhere in the middle – I don’t like planning a long way in the future; my life has always been far too uncertain for that. But I also know that without some sort of target, I tend to rest on my laurels a bit too much and wait for opportunities to present themselves. If I’m truly going to be able to achieve the long-term, big-picture goals I laid out at the turn of the year, I feel that I need to set myself concise, short-term targets for the steps I need to have taken to make things work.

The plan, then, going forward into the year, is to find and set myself manageable goals and to make them public via this blog. We all know a little bit of public pressure (and support) can do wonders to focus the mind and achieve a motivation that tends to be lacking when we’re focussed purely on a goal within our head.

Look out, then, for my first few major short-term goals, which will hopefully arrive on here as soon as I’ve settled on them in my head. It’s then up to you to keep me on track – bug me on Twitter, hit me up on Google+ or harangue me over Facebook; anything you feel you need to do to keep me on target to achieve what I want to get through.

Call it crowdsourcing for life. Let’s see how it works.

For my overseas readers, Panto (or Pantomime, to give it its full title), is a peculiarly English tradition of theatre where the lead boy is usually played by a girl, the main comic character is a man in drag and the plot is usually taken from a fairy story, historical events or classic children’s tale. And yes, it’s for kids.

Look around the theatres of the UK over the Christmas period and you will see numerous and varied versions of Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington (another peculiarly British story, about a former Lord Mayor of London and his cat), Snow White and many others.

Although it sounds like some kind of drug-fuel hallucination, the real fun and value of a panto can only be genuinely enjoyed by going to see one. I heartily recommend it to anyone visiting the UK over a Christmas period – they are a treat not to be missed.

No, they’re not the best-produced or slickest pieces of theatre you’ll see all year. They’re not the height of comedy nor will the performances trouble any award judges, but they bring one simple thing into the life of adults that can often be lacking: children’s laughter.

The thing I love more than anything else in Panto is the laughter, the shouts, the screams and the boos of the children who love to hate the baddie, love to love the leading ‘man’ and love to be swept away into another world of fun, fantasy and frolicking like no other.

Sitting in the Gatehouse Theatre in Stafford last week, I watched a fun, entertaining show that I wouldn’t have seen were it not for Dan¹. But what really made it for me was the child in the row in front getting utterly absorbed in the whole thing. Rarely do you see a child so passionately involved in anything in the modern world and be allowed to shout, chatter and take part in the way kids are in these shows.

Christmas is a time for magic and miracles all over the world. And the greatest of these is the laughter of a child. Truly, nothing can beat it.

1. my Best Man

1. Write more.
2. Shoot more
3. Relax more.
4. Feel worthy

For those of you who want just a little more detail, read on.

WRITE MORE
I love to write. Writing is what kept me going pre-transplant and it’s what helped (and still helps) me make sense of the world around me. Sitting in front of a big white screen¹ and pouring out my thoughts gives me comfort and catharsis.

There are two things I want to achieve with my writing this year: I want to write a screenplay or a stage play that gets produced – by me or someone else – and I want to increase the readership of this blog.

I’ve spent many years wandering the wilderness with this blog since it started way back in the dark days of 2006, but I think this fresh new look at the life that’s been gifted to me allows me, I hope, to stick to what I’m good at: the joys and surprises of my life.

2012 itself will see me turn 30, get married and pass the 5-year post-transplant mark – a point only 50% of people who receive a double-lung transplant reach. After that, there’s currently no solid statistics for survival rate, so your guess is as good as mine. But I plan to keep going and going and to keep charting my progress right here, as I always have.

SHOOT MORE
I love taking pictures and I love making films. In 2012 I hope to to more of both.

I want to stop myself procrastinating over my ideas and just start shooting them. I’m greatly inspired by Danny Lacey, who’s 16mm short, Love Like Hers, I co-produced in the summer of 2010 and who has since gone on to great things; I believe his secret lies in taking action: deciding he wants to do something, gathering the tools and people and shooting it.

Equally, Philip Bloom, who collaborated on Danny’s latest short film, often shoots all kinds of esoteric subjects in the name of camera tests etc. More than that, though, he doesn’t stop to wonder if they’re good or bad, fascinating or not; he just shoots them, cuts them and gets them out there.

That’s the kind of fearlessness I want in my own filmmaking in the next 12 months.

RELAX MORE
I can be quite a highly-strung person. I can get too invested in things, too caught up emotionally and I can let my temper get the better of me.

This year, I dabbled with the teachings of Buddhism and Zen, largely through the extraordinary Leo Babuta and his Zen Habits blog. As I read more and learned more, I found more peace, more calm and more control.

In the last couple of months as the Christmas period approached and the workload started to pile up in the lead-up to the break, I started to let this new outlook on life slip and get away from me.

I want 2012 to be the year I learned to quell my turmoil; the year I learned how to be truly happy; the year I learned how not to judge others, but live in my own peace; and the year I learned who the best me really is.

FEEL WORTHY
For anyone who’s had a transplant, they’ll tell you there’s always a sense of doing right by your donor. I don’t mean survivor’s guilt², but rather the idea that my donor is watching and a desire to know that they are smiling down on me and everything I do; that when I finally meet my maker and my re-maker in whatever is to come, they can slap me on the back and tell me they are proud.

That’s why 2012, for me, is about connecting with and helping people to achieve the things they most want to get out of their lives. I’m working on both a free eBook and a new website to help encourage people to do just that – seizing life by the proverbials and living it the way they truly want to.

Of course, I’ve got other goals, smaller goals, things I would love to do, but these five things encapsulate everything that drives me and everything I want to achieve.

If I can look back on 2012 in late-December and see that I’ve taken steps towards achieving all of these, I’ll be proud. And pride in oneself and what you accomplish is far from a deadly sin, but rather the warmest of rewards for never wasting a moment.

1. I tend to write in a plain-text editor with as few distractions as possible
2. I’m blessed not to suffer that particular affliction – something I may blog about in the future

Thanks to my transplant occurring after midnight, it means I can enjoy two totally separate days:

The first day is dedicated solely to my donor, to give thanks, pray for their family and think of what they have done for me and everyone in my life by being so selfless at the worst of times.

The next day can then be exclusively a day of celebration, a day when I can allow myself to rejoice in the gift I’ve been given and the things it’s allowed me to do.

This time of year is always a reflective one for me. Four years ago today, I had no idea whether or not I’d make it past Christmas and, if I did, when the end might come. I’d reached rock bottom, my ultimate nadir, and I was just about ready to give up.

The call, when it came, didn’t feel any different to the four previous calls I’d experienced until the moment the transplant coordinator came into my room and told me, finally, that it would be going ahead.

Although I’ve tried, almost every year, to express the gratitude I feel towards my donor and their family, no words will ever be strong enough.

At times, when I’m at my lowest, I feel unworthy of the gift I’ve been given. I feel pressure to be the best I can be, to do things that I would never have been able to, to be remarkable in every way and to do amazing things. To not achieve the impossible sometimes feels like a betrayal of my gift.

Then I think of the world I live in, the people I love and who love me in return, and I realise that each and every day I’m here, sharing my life with the people around me, is enough to be proud of and aspire to.

Everything else is a bonus.

I was a finalist last year and even though, for various reasons, I was unable to attend a lot of the workshops and mentoring sessions, I learned more from this one competition than anything else since I’ve been writing.

Here are my Top 5 Tips for becoming a Red Planeteer:

Get your concept
It doesn’t have to be a barn-stormer, it doesn’t have to be epically plot-heavy, you just have to know what your one-off or series will be about – both overall and through this particular episode.

Write it
Much like Joss Wedon’s writing advice from Red Planet Prize creator Danny Stack’s blog, the biggest hurdle is getting the whole thing written. Yes, you only have to submit the first 10 pages initially, but you need to use that deadline to give you the motivation to polish the whole script.

I submitted late last year – right on deadline day – and I only had 10 pages. Being a writer, I then swiftly forgot about it all and when the call came asking to see the rest of the script, I had 4 days to write and submit the other 50 pages. I made it, but the speed of the writing shows in the quality of the final script; I know I can do better.

Take the time to write the full hour-long drama, don’t just do the bare minimum.

Craft the perfect first 10 pages
Although it may not necessarily be the structure you usually write to, you need to have introduced most, if not all, of your main characters in the opening 10 pages and your inciting incident for the episode’s plot needs to have hit by the end of your submission.

Imagine yourself as a reader for the competition – you want to create ten pages that finish at a point where the reader things, “I need to read the rest of this, just to know what’s going to happen”.

Revisit your screenplay and rework those first 10 pages until you’ve got the perfect balance of plot, character and pace that will suck your readers in and make them shout you for more.

Don’t confuse “events” with “plot”
Just because you want to grab people’s attention, it doesn’t mean you have to stage a massive car crash or alien invasion in the first five minutes.

In my script for last year’s prize, my opening ten pages were essentially a dialogue-heavy introduction of all the characters and the world they inhabited, which was as new to them as it was to us. We took a tour of their building, following one main character who would lead the show, meeting and greeting everyone as we went.

I knew that the strength of my idea would lie in the execution of the characters, not the nuance of the plot or the story. I also knew that my biggest strength as a writer was the dialogue I write. So I crafted 10 pages that showed off both of those.

Use the initial judging period to make it awesome
My biggest mistake last year was to forget about the competition. It seems like an age getting from the January submission deadline to the May/June/July call for full scripts from the chosen few, but it’s vital to use that time to keep revisiting your script and making it as strong as you possible can.

Send it to friends for their comments, read or watch other TV shows in your genre to see what their plotting and pacing is like, put it in a draw for a couple of weeks and come back to it fresh, but never, ever forget about it. When the time comes for you to submit your full script (hopefully), you’ll be ready with the very best that you can offer.

For more info on the Red Planet Prize, check out Danny’s FAQ on his Scriptwriting in the UK blog and, if you don’t listen already, I’d also highly recommend his UK Scriptwriters podcast, too.

Turns out I’m not.

Last week I went along to my usual transplant clinic for my 4-year annual review¹ and the team there noticed that my lung function had dropped a smidge.  Just a little, but close enough to the 10% margin of error than they would have liked.

On Monday this week, I was admitted for 2 days of tests and, happily, discharged on Wednesday with a clean bill of health.

In the grand scheme of things this is a very, very minor hiccup, but it has thrown me more than I expected it to. I feel suddenly insecure, unsure and concerned about the future. Have I been pushing myself too hard, do I need more rest, am I still far more vulnerable than I thought?

The answer to all of these is probably yes, but I’m sure a huge part of this is just continually learning to take the rough with the smooth and plan for these kind of troubles in everyday life as much as I can.

Right now, I don’t know what the immediate future holds for work, life and my work/life balance, but I do know that I’m going to be readjusting. But then, that’s something I think we should all be doing on a regular basis anyway.

1. I know, I can’t believe it’s been nearly 4 years, either

Many people think of zen as some weird mystic mumbo jumbo and don’t put much truck in it, which is fine.

For me, though, zen isn’t about meditation and ‘ohm-ing’, about converting to Buddhism and shaving your hair off, about throwing away all your possessions and living like a minimalist nomad.

Zen is about trying to achieve a more relaxed, mindful and happy life. It’s about recognising the ups and downs of life and rather than battling against them, trying to allow yourself to flow with them and see them for what they are: a part of life’s journey.

Nothing sums up my view of zen against other people’s frequently misconceived ideas like this quote from D. T. Suzuki, a father of modern zen teaching:

The truth of zen is the truth of life, and life is to live, to move, to act; not merely to reflect.

I don’t stop my life for zen. I don’t stop myself doing things because they are ‘un-zen’. I simply try to live my life with a mind geared towards seeing the best of all things and all people as much as I can.

Like Tor¹, over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be getting used to a new normality. Early rises, pre-dawn runs, strict training diet and abstinence from alcohol on all but the most special of occasions.

Any change in the normality we know and love², it’s going to be tough. But the difficulty of the adaptations and motivations are a huge part of why I want to do this.

I want to challenge myself, I want to push myself, I want to really see what I can do with my new life, my new lungs and my second chance.

I hope this blog will help me out as well, making the whole process open and transparent and putting that bit more pressure on myself to stick with it through what will doubtless be a very trying few months.

I know I’ve got K by my side the whole way, which is a huge boost. The advantages of having family on board for challenges like this cannot be underestimated.

I just need to get my head down, focus and push on. Here goes nothing…

1. who’s doing brilliantly and even Tweeting herself now
2. or loath

Motivation, on the other hand, has often eluded me. Despite the best of intentions, there always seems to be something that holds me back – just that little tiny bit – from pushing on.

Leo Babuta, a guy who regularly blogs on motivation and goal-seeking over at his Zen Habits blog, suggests the smallest step to get you started. While that works for me on many levels (and many projects), I frequently need external motivation to keep me on track.

What is external motivation? For me, it’s simple: fear of public failure.

Although I’ve blogged before about failing and how it’s OK¹, for something like my marathon challenge I knew that only if I committed to it publicly would I hold myself accountable, simply because people would be watching.

Today I went for my second run; tiny steps, maybe, but a big leap forward for me, as getting past that first run/next run hurdle has always proved a sticking point. If I can nail it next week, I should have formed the habit and can only go from strength to strength from there.

This, then, is a blog readers call-to-action. It’s you that will keep me on track, on target and motivated to succeed. I need all the support you can muster, and probably a good deal more as the time gets closer.

Will you join me for the ride? And what do you need help with motivation for? Reciprocal motivation and support is all set to come your way!

1. and how we often learn more from our failures than our successes