Well, it’s only six days into 2019, and thus begins another winter tradition: I’m coming down with my first cold of the season.
Although I have less annoyance than one might expect for that news. I’d even call myself somewhat relieved.
Looking for a Crutch
I have got to find some easy way to choose things to write about. Right now, my only focus for making 2019 the year of WRITE is to keep the daily discipline of showing up at the page*–just showing up and writing is, I’m guessing, going to be the only goal I have for myself during the rest of January. And maybe for longer.
So if just showing up at the page is my goal, then I would very much prefer to lessen the time spent on the “what the hell shall I write about tonight?” stage of the process.
Seriously, y’all. I have spent nigh unto an hour gaming and wasting time on the iPad whilst this went on in the endless internal loop:
I need to go start writing, but what the heck am I gonna write about tonight? I’m wasting time trying to figure this out, cos I need to go start writing. But what the heck am I gonna write about!?!
Well, maybe those “hecks” were actually “fucks.” But it’s a decently accurate transcription…
Between the Li(n)es
A few days ago, I made a joke about how I was reporting all the diet ads in my Facebook feed on account of their falling into the category of “spam or misleading.”
Only it’s not a joke.
Words about Words
I’m aware that there’s a certain–irony?–to having made this new pledge to do more writing and then to follow up by writing solely about my reading schedule for the year. I know: that isn’t actually ironic at all, unless you mean “ironic” as in the old Alanis song. Let’s just call it “slightly counter-intuitive.”
And I get that. I’ve tried (and failed) to work my way through Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way multiple times, but I still remember her counsel about putting yourself on a “reading fast.”
3 is Better than 1
So yesterday, I posted the categories and my choices for what I’m calling my “primary reading challenge.” I also mentioned that I was actually doing multiple challenges and would do a follow-up post on that today.
I was tempted to use a Who-What-Where-Why-When-How organization for this post, but actually 3 of those questions are self-evident, and the fourth is pretty darn easy to answer as well.
Who? Me. When? 2019. Where? Wherever I happen to be.
What? In addition to my main challenge categories, I’ll be reading books to cover the categories in the 2019 PopSugar and Book Riot Read Harder challenges.
See how easy that was?
Filling the Well of Words
One of the small markers I’ve been watching as a sign of my life getting better over the past few years is the re-establishment of my reading habits. The advent of my Goodreads use overlaps with this improvement curve to tell a pretty dramatic tale: in 2015, I read 7 books; in 2016, I read 23. The floodgates opened in 2017 for a total of 83, and then in 2018, I hit the round number of reading 100 books.
I’m guessing the time I’m going to be allocating each day to generating words might very well cut into this year’s consumption of text. As such, I’ve set myself a relatively non-ambitious goal of reading 75 books in 2019. The slightly more ambitious piece of that is how I’m using the structure of reading challenges to continue diversifying what and who I read.
Just Write
Ah me: another year almost gone to bed, another year about to commence. And with the turn of the calendar pages comes the near-eternal question: to resolve or not? Actually, it’s not much of a question for me, nowadays.
I don’t resolve.
I especially don’t jump onto the losing weight/”getting healthy thinner” bandwagon anymore. Instead, I’ve been coping with every diet ad Facebook throws at me by clicking the “report this” button and labelling the ad as “misleading or a scam.” Continue reading “Just Write”
Seven by Seven
I was at a workshop on Saturday, and something one of the students said got me thinking about a concept that’s come up in past spiritual classes I’ve taken: the idea that your body’s cells completely replace and recycle themselves over the course of 7 years.
(N.B.: This isn’t precisely true, though it’s a potent metaphor, and one that is linked in some ways to scientific reality.*)
And as I thought briefly about this concept of 7-year cycles in human life, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
‘That’s why my year is off to such a start!’
A World Without
Last night, after what has been a draining week both on the national and personal fronts, I received the same “chain letter” from a few different theater friends on Facebook messenger. The message encouraged women to enact a “female blackout” on social media today: to change their profile picture to a solid square of black, as a way of showing solidarity with survivors of domestic abuse and demonstrating the value of women’s contributions by taking them away for a day and making “men wonder where the women are.”
I’m guessing this chain got going coming out of the general sense of exhaustion, despair, and rage so many of us are feeling after the shitshow that was the Brett Kavanaugh hearing this past Thursday. In all honesty, until I went back to re-read things before writing this post,* I was misremembering the stated solidarity message to be more expansive, and to include survivors of sexual violence as well as of domestic violence. The fact that the focus was narrower suggests to me that this chain letter was started/written some time ago, but I can understand why this past week’s events might inspire it to be distributed again.
Why I Hate Weight Watchers
Over the past couple months, I’ve been in the interesting position of being faced with the news that a couple different friends are embarking on paths in pursuit of intentional weight loss. One joined Weight Watchers and one had bariatric surgery.
These different news flashes presented me with a momentary conundrum: considering everything I have read and learned in the last decade about how intentional weight loss doesn’t work, and my own desire to be a size acceptance advocate*, what, I asked myself, should I say in response to these friends making choices I didn’t especially agree with?
Self-Love: It's Just Another Lifestyle Change 