Happy New Year!

[osprey_archer]

Happy 2022! May it prove a happy year for us all.

I’ve been contemplating New Year’s Resolutions, but I haven’t come up with anything that strikes my fancy. In the past I’ve made writing-related resolutions, but mentioning a book in my NYR post seems to doom the poor thing, and anyway it seems a bit silly to make a Resolution to continue doing something I’ve already been doing for years.

My most successful New Year’s Resolution was my resolution in 2018 to watch a movie by a female director each month, which ended in watching over a hundred movies by female directors that year and also diving into nonfiction books about the history of women directors in film and attending my local film festival for the first time… It’s wonderful when a project takes off at that level of intensity.

Does anyone have any New Year’s Resolutions this year? Or memories of New Year’s Resolutions past that worked out extraordinarily well?

Comments

[luzula]

My favorite way of doing New Year's Resolutions is to make a 5x5 bingo card of goals! I skipped this year, but this is how it looked last time I did it. Maybe I'll do it for 2022.

[osprey_archer]

I'm not sure I have 25 goals! Will have to think about this more...

[luzula]

The thing about 25 goals is that I don't expect myself to do all of them, and I can include small things as well as big things. But fair enough, it might not be for everyone!

[osprey_archer]

I've started making a list of goals just to see how many I come up with. Even if it's not 25 it's still nice to have a list, right?

[luzula]

Yes! Also you could do a 4x4 bingo if you wanted, instead. : )

[osprey_archer]

I have noticed that I could group some of my goals together into a research trip to Michigan that I want to do anyway for a book I'm writing... which may not end up happening (the trip, I mean; the book is definitely happening) but at least I can enjoy planning it.

[asakiyume]

I have done resolutions in the past, not regularly but occasionally. This year, no.

What worked best for me was setting myself a doable task. ("Define doable!"--Okay, something where I prescribe the steps I'll take. So, rather than, for example, "Learn Spanish," it's better to say, "Do two blocks of Duolingo Spanish everyday.")

[osprey_archer]

Ha, yes, it's better to have a goal that is measurable. How much Spanish do you need to learn before you have learned Spanish? Are you aiming to be able to stumble through a newspaper article, or carry on a conversation with a native speaker about the nature of the Soul?

(I really ought to come up with a Spanish-related goal to keep my Spanish from atrophying further. Maybe I could tuck a postcard written in Spanish in with your letters, or something.)

I think the underlying problem re: Resolutions is that I don't really have a new goal this year. In some ways that's rather sad, but on the other hand the last two years have been A Lot and it's hard to have goals on top of everything else.

[asakiyume]

I 100 percent endorse resting when that's what's needed. Continuous performance, continuous striving on top of striving is a version of hell. (Pretty much literally... Like I feel like CS Lewis's hells look something like that.)

That being said, ¡escríbeme en español, por favor! (Pero no solo en español...)

I didn't used to think that two nonnative speakers struggling to communicate in the target language was useful--I thought it would just solidify bad habits. But even if it does, I think it's worth it for getting you to force yourself to produce in the language. My Tetun classmate and I communicate only in Tetun, and it's exhausting, but definitely useful.

[osprey_archer]

Ai, por supuesto no solo en espanol! Hay muchos cosas en nuestras cartas que yo no tengo las palabras para discutir en espanol...

And yes, my Russian professor was always telling us that the most important thing for language learning was to practice as much as possible, never mind about mistakes. Talk talk talk, and listen to music even if you can't understand the words, and read and write and just keep engaging with it...

[calandrahunter]

I had a 'Do a walk of at least X distance every month in a different area' for 2020, which I mostly met, although the lockdown made travelling difficult. Upside, walking in areas I normally never would've visited!

[osprey_archer]

Oooh, I like that! I do have some state parks that I want to visit this year - a bit further afield than the state parks that I visited last year, which will make for a pretty long day trip but heck, it's not like there are many other safe recreational activities right now...