- Read more poetry—Whitman, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Larkin, Eliot, Lowell...I read a lot of poetry in college, but I've spent a lot of the past couple of years reading novels, novels, novels. Which is great, because of course I love novels, but I think it would be a mistake to neglect reading poetry. This weekend I retrieved my copy of Leaves of Grass from its dusty shelf and I've been happily reading my way through "Inscriptions," "Starting from Paumanok," and "Song of Myself." My Kindle will be arriving next week, and I'm already planning all of the poetry volumes I want to put on it.
- Read more nonfiction—history, biography, popular science, social science, memoir...nonfiction books provide immeasurable opportunity for learning. As they say, knowledge is power.
- Draw more—I have a modest collection of art supplies that has been too often neglected over the past couple of years. Vincent van Gogh decided he wanted to be an artist at the age of twenty-six. Why not me too?
- Finish drafting my novel—Of course. I want to finish my second draft, get some feedback from my beta readers, and edit some more before sending it out to betas again. I want to have had at least one round of feedback by this time next year.
- Learn Spanish—just because I've always wanted to.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Birthday resolutions
I like to make birthday resolutions. They make more sense to me than New Year's resolutions because after your birthday you're starting a whole new year of your life. And a new age requires new dreams and goals. Last week I turned twenty-six. Here are a few of the resolutions I made:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Happy birthday! And yay for June birthdays!
ReplyDeleteI've never made any goals around my birthday, but I like the idea. It definitely makes more sense. I was considering doing a sort of mid-year New Years Resolution check-up/additions thing, but my birthday is close enough to mid-year that I might just steal this idea. :P
Good luck with your resolutions!
It looks like Blogger may *finally* let me comment on this post! Yay!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the happy birthday! And happy birthday back!
I've found that birthday resolutions are a good way to recommit to goals and get motivated. And they give me a good reason to try new things like learning languages or trying new hobbies :)
I've never made resolutions around birthdays or new years. I think that relegating myself that way is too rigid for my personality and I'd just fail anyway. Teaching has thankfully taught me to be reflective, so I'm cursed with constantly looking for ways to change, improve, or even sometimes stay the same.
ReplyDeleteRight now I'm trying to engage more in my PLN. Commenting back to the blogs I read, be active in Twitter discussions, a do blog myself. It's going well thus far. Wrote 2 blog posts this weekend.
Good luck with your resolutions and I especially can't wait to read the book!