2011 New Year's Resolutions

[Bernard]

No need to bang on about how resolutions are dumb or don't work or whatever, just list them.

1. Work transverse abdominals. Need to do this to prevent back pain from lifting baby.
2. Read 50 pages or 20 min/night, whichever comes first. Barely read at all last year.
3. Less procrastinating, more methodical work. Have to stop pulling all-nighters when not strictly necessary.
4. Play more music for the baby. She loves it, and I've let the lack of proper stereo equipment/access to my music (all CDs & lps in storage) upend my former habits of choosing the right music for waking, having breakfast, cooking, reading, drawing, etc. throughout the day.
5. Knit, sew, or work on whatever current hobby is 2x/week. This is also about being methodical rather than always working in bursts, also it's about not having a pile of stuff that needs to be hemmed.
6. Shoot film daily. Have to keep developing my eye.
7. Write daily. Have to keep developing my ear.
8. Some form of exercise daily, even if it's just walking down the block to the supermarket. Have to keep developing my lungs.
9. Cook weekly once school starts (I cook regularly when school's out, need to keep up with it when the workload gets heavier). Have to keep developing my tongue.
10. Do all exercises in 'Learning to Draw on the Right Side of the Brain." Have to keep developing my spirit.

[nonotyet]

//

self-deprecation is also a thing on which i wish to work

[mixed cats]

CONSUMPTION!
-read 25 books and watch 25 new movies.
-make all the food.

MAKING THINGS!
-keep giving away stash items that I will never use.
-use what I have before buying something new when possible (this is never possible re: black sewing thread)
-Finish one thing every week even if it is terribly small; work on larger projects regularly
-DRAW.

SELF!
-make a more concerted effort to do that city/museum thing (it's actually been happening regularly since October, but the train fare hikes suck)
-have been going to culturalappropriationwhitepeopleyoga 2-5x/week since August. Keep doing that. It makes me feel awesome.
-Possibly shimmy-shimmy-cocoa puffs into size 10 jeans (am 12/14 now, low goals here folks)

[hannah]

Consumption:
- Ideally, have it average out to about one movie/day. More likely, aim for 300 movies. Finally watch some of those canonical films I've been avoiding all these years.
- For every academic tome consumed, read a novel. For every academic article, read a poem.
- Watch a lot of basketball.

Creation:
- Finish the animated short I'm working on.
- Do something involving this and this.
- Screen print some t-shirts.

Self:
- Be good about studying Russian (do daily grammar drills, listen to Russian radio, get drunk and practice speaking, continue/get more serious about translation projects).
- Play basketball. Take up swimming?
- Remain a vegetarian.
- If I don't get into a Russian summer program, get some sort of nannying gig.
- Save money.
edit: and bike more.

[El_Josharino]

Less of this:



More of this:

[alexandra]

for me,

I want to eat healthier, which i did in 2010 and dropped 20 pounds, so gotta just keep it up!
I want to have more fun.
Live sans room mate.
Really step up at work.
Shoot each week with a different camera. (very excited about this)

[jebreject]

1. Start going to the gym again
2. Find time to write every day, no matter what.
3. Spend less time watching Netflix Instant and more time reading. B's 20 mins/50 pages per day goal sounds like a good one.
4. Cook more meals.
5. Save up money to go on a trip, preferably outside the U.S. but nowhere terribly expensive. Thinking maybe Toronto?
5a. Travel more, in general. See out of town friends.
6. Procrastinate less. Finish what I start. Stop allowing myself to set projects aside half-finished or less.
7. EAT LESS/BETTER.
8. Get better about corresponding with out of town friends.
9. See my family more.

[davy]

I like the idea, but 50 pages per day is pretty monstrous! That's almost 20,000 pages a year!

[jebreject]

Yeah, I think the "whichever comes first" part of that goal is pretty important

[davy]

Good point. I'll have to read for 20 minutes tonight and see how many pages that is for me. I can tell you right now it ain't 50.

[Augo]

Man, I read slow.  I stop and think too much, or I realize that I wasn't paying attention to a couple of sentences so I go back and reread the entire page or something.  I bet on average I read, I don't know, 6 to 8 pages in 20 minutes.  Maybe less.  It's pretty frustrating.

I just decided my resolution is to try to read faster.

[Bernard]

It really depends on what you're reading. You can for sure bang out 50p/20m of some dinky little novel. Something more dense, no way. That's why I did the double limit -- the info I get in 20m is about all I can digest at a go when it comes to Josipovici or whatever.

[peacocks]

1. retake GRE
2. apply to grad schools 4 realsies
3. figure out whether to stay in this town or leave by april/august
4. read college books I never fully read.
5. grow some basic vegetables and herbs
6. compost
7. continue using bike/feet more than car but this time with gusto.  Bike across town a few times.  Unless the weather is dangerous never drive anywhere less than 3 miles away.  I may need to get a different bike for this?
8. meditate twice a day- morning and evening
9. do the running thing again!  5k in 30! 25? 20? 30.
10. get better at reading and taking care of mail.  Get better at communicating in general.

Shouldn't even be a resolution: BE NICER KINDER GENTLER TO MYSELF THEREBY BEING NICER KINDER GENTLER TO OTHERS JEEEEES.

[elpollodiablo]

-5mi on bike at least 3 times/week
-Cook more. Like, all the time. We got a Crockpot and a baking stone for Xmas, and I plan to use em.
-Read, read, read. Won't have a choice about this. I'd also like to learn to read faster, but that's not super likely. It takes me at least an hour to knock out 50 pages, pretty much regardless of the material.
-Learn more about coffee & beer.
-Get better at making both coffee & beer.
-German, 20 mins/day.

[Dick]

5a. Travel more, in general. See out of town friends.

Come visit me, Jeb.

[coldforge]

1. Be more diligent about diet. Weight's not an issue, but there's enough foods that make me feel lousy when I eat them anyway.
2. Buy less stuff.
3. Get a legitimate amount of Ladino under my belt.
4. Write between .5 and 1.5 novels.

[Dick]

Ladino, fun!  I'm getting the learn a new dead language bug again.  Syriac was great fun, but a little too close to home for me to get a full charge out of it.  Anyone with training in Semitic languages can learn Syriac syntax pretty thoroughly in one good sit-down, the alphabets in a week or so of spare-moment diligence, a couple weeks for grammar and the vocabulary is mostly re-contextualizing pre-existing word-root knowledge.  You go to the literature and it is all boring and churchy, and then you're done.  Next time I need to go further afield.

[YojimboMonkey]

I guess I'm going to try to do more exercise?  Swimming would be key I think, probably some running.  I don't know, I'm pretty great already so I don't really want to change too much.

[Greg Nog]

I should really try to learn Greek, make it a once-per-day every-day thing like exercise is.  Maybe I'll try to do like 20 minutes of studying before exercising each morning.

[Slime]

1. Don't loose my job.
2. Drink more beer
3. Be more metal

I have strategized these resolutions so that my efforts toward one will co-mingle towards them all.

[jm]

Syriac was great fun, but a little too close to home for me to get a full charge out of it.  Anyone with training in Semitic languages can learn Syriac syntax pretty thoroughly in one good sit-down, the alphabets in a week or so of spare-moment diligence, a couple weeks for grammar and the vocabulary is mostly re-contextualizing pre-existing word-root knowledge.  You go to the literature and it is all boring and churchy, and then you're done.

Neat!  I'd love to learn Syriac!  But I don't have any training in Semitic languages.

[jm]

1. The diet thing that cf mentioned - I should just make a point to eat way less of the stuff that I know messes with me.  Seems pretty obvious, right?
2. Read more books OR Be more disciplined about reading books - each sort of entails the other.  Most of the time I've spent reading in this city has been on the subway (where I also go through phases of doing other subway-ride things instead - listening to music, doing crossword puzzles, etc.), but I often have a number of other options when not Held Captive, and so I need to either set aside non-subway reading time or make sure that my subway trips consist only of reading.
3. Get the Netflix instant queue management down to where I'm not adding five to ten new titles for every title I watch, goddammit.
4. Be more metal, or whatever.

[elpollodiablo]

Maybe we should take it to another thread so as not to derail the resolvin', but could anyone speak to some good methods and practices for self-directed language learning? Right now I envision the Pimsleur supplemented by Rosetta Stone at lunch every day, just to brush back up. How about grammar?

[YojimboMonkey]

1. The diet thing that cf mentioned - I should just make a point to eat way less of the s
3. Get the Netflix instant queue management down to where I'm not adding five to ten new titles for every title I watch, goddammit.

haha yeah OK that is something I do, plus I almost never remove a movie from the queue once I've watched it either.  Also there are a bunch of kids shows in the queue so that Mindy can distract Ian for a half hour every now and then. So basically I'm in triple digits on my instant queue.

[elpollodiablo]

What the hell are you guys watching? I often strike out with Netflix Instant because there's so much garbage.