I have neglected this blog for 6 months. Six months is also how long I have been in pain from a slipped disc. I’d like to blame that for everything that fell to the waysides in the second half of 2012, but instead of wasting time on blame, I’m trying to make up for it now.
Simply put, I plan to “do the work.” All those little projects I’ll get around to “someday,” well, that might as well be today. I also have to do a hundred little things to keep myself busy in the winter months to stave off seasonal depression. So there’s that, too. Hoping I don’t burn out. Trying to schedule relaxing, fun things onto my to-do lists as well as things that I just really need to get done. The year of completing projects, yeah right. Oh self, that is a challenge and you know it.
Haha. Crazypants talk.
During my extended winter break (w00t, working in academia), I wanted to get away, but the Lunar Module is getting old and cranky, so that wasn’t happening. And I realized this apartment has gotten super messy since I’ve been in this icky crippling pain. So I cleaned a bunch, and while resting from overdoing that, read a bunch. I finished two novels that had been in progress while I was in my penultimate semester of grad school. And then I launched into Scalzi’s Old Man’s War since I saw Sword & Laser was going to be reading it for January 2013. It was incredibly fun and fast to read. After that, I dove right into Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, which had been on my list for awhile.
While I was reading that, I reorganized all my books. I now have things in a much more logical order. There’s an entire shelf of thesis research, a shelf of short stories, related non-fiction living together in harmony, and a shelf of books on my to-read list. I now have a physical and virtual to-read shelf (*nods to goodreads*). I also made a goal of reading 52 books this year, which either I count Infinite Jest as 3-4 books or save the rest of it for next year. Or I can shorten my goal and read a few other epic books.
Continued with Snow Crash, anticipating getting the new Warren Ellis book on Jan 2nd, but it arrived a day early, so I scurried through the remaining 25% of Snow Crash and into Gun Machine, which has been twisted in all the right ways so far. Typical Ellis phrasing that I enjoy quite a bit.
So not really a fan of resolutions, I am more about teaching myself to get shit done. So whatever shit I didn’t learn last year, I’ll learn more this year, and the year after that. I am plenty happy being a lifelong learner, and happier than I have been.