underwings, and underside of the native hue of resolution

[hummingwolf]

As a general rule, I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions. If you're in need of a major life change, there is no particular reason to pick January 1 as your date to begin it. Start now! Start next week! Do it whenever you need to do it!

Having said that, if you just happen to want to set an arbitrary goal, January 1 is a perfectly acceptable arbitrary starting point. One year I resolved to rate a minimum of 10 songs in each genre that Launchcast had (at the time) before the next December 31 was over, and this utterly frivolous challenge was a really excellent way to keep myself entertained for a year.

This year, I'm not making New Year's resolutions. I'm just making decisions that, well, I happen to be making as so many other people are resolving things. Yeah, it's a complete coincidence, really.

Anyway, a few things I'm planning to do:

Read five books in a few select non-fiction series that I know to be sane before I read other, possibly flakier, books on the same topic (there's a specific one in mind). My brain needs good food right now; I've fed it on far too much fluff recently.

Eat like it matters. My body has also been getting too much non-nutritive food lately. Sure, cheap, easy-to-fix meals are wonderful to have occasionally, but not as many as I've been eating. I used to eat lots & lots of fruits & vegetables, so I do know how to eat well--I've only gotten out of the habit.

Get a haircut. The need for this is more serious than you think.

Clean my room. Ugh. Just ugh.

Listen to BBC radio at least once per week. Because the spoken word gets my brain working in ways that the written word does not, and the BBC has lots of interesting program(me)s available in dial-up-friendly format.

Do more memes. No, seriously.

In 2008, hummingwolf resolves to...

Go to pov-ray every Sunday.
Connect with my inner context.
Overcome my secret fear of linguistics.
Eat more wolves.
Give up broken things.
Be nicer to darth_spacey.

Get your own New Year's Resolutions:

Comments

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Those are good goals. I'm trying to increase my informative-spoken-word intake, too.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Radio 4 has a good variety of things to listen to, some more informative than others. BBC 7 has comedy & drama which may not be informative, but certainly can be good for the psyche. (If you're a fan of Wimsey, they've currently got four episodes of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club you can still listen to.) More on BBC Radio here. One big advantage of the BBC is that they keep so many of their programs up for 7 days, so you can listen at your leisure.

Do you know of any other good spoken word stuff online that's not high-bandwidth?

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

Daawwwwwwwwwwww... shucks.

Actually, that's a pretty good resolution. Please feel free to encourage others to do the same. ;-)

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Hah! I had a feeling you'd like that resolution.

[rhiannasilel.livejournal.com]

If you're looking for a very inexpensive place to get your hair cut that does a great job, I recommend Hair Expressions in Rockville. They're a beauty school on Twinbrook and Parklawn, on the metro, and they only charge $10.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip! Factoring in transportation costs, there are probably cheaper places closer to home. But I'll try to keep that place in mind if I'm in the Rockville area for some other reason!