Good lord–it is snowing again. Really snowing. And it’s been sticking ever since it started to fall at about 6:00 PM. The street is completely whited over, and my sad, hummocky mess of a lawn almost looks attractive (as snow hides myriad landscaping sins).
This means Seattle will once again be in a state of paralysis and panic until it all melts, of course. Oh, well. I have plenty of coffee, there’s nowhere I have to go, and I can always eat one the cats if it comes to that.
Now, what was I going to post about? Oh, yes–
One of this year’s New Year’s resolutions is to read more books–a book a week, in fact.
Considering that I used to read 2-6 books a week years ago, this isn’t a very ambitious goal. But after quitting grad school back in the spring of ‘05, I was so burned out on reading that I quit altogether. I didn’t intend to, but for almost a year and a half the only things I could bring myself to read were posts to various online communities, countless gigs of crappy fanfiction, and the captions beneath photos in Elle Decor magazine. Occasionally, I would pick up a book and try to read it; I even continued to buy books that looked interesting. But I couldn’t get past the first few pages of any book, and my stack of new purchases to be read kept growing.
When I finally started reading books again, it was hit-or-miss. It took me forever to finish one, and weeks or months would go by before I picked up another. It’s only been in the last six months or so that my old enjoyment of reading has started to return, but I still haven’t got my bibliophilic groove back. So this year, I’m determined to reclaim my love of reading.
And every once in a while, I’ll review books I’ve read. It won’t be every book, and it won’t be every week (if I wanted to do that, I’d go back to grad school). I don’t even guarantee in-depth reviews. But when I really like a book (or even acutely loathe it) I like to tell people about it. So I’m going to spend this snowy evening indoors, with a pot of coffee at my elbow and cats underfoot, hacking out a review of the first book of the year.
Another thing I’m going to do–for at least the next 30 days at any rate–is a little bit of inspired weirdness I call “The Yes Project.” I’ve even made a separate blog for it, and if you want an explanation, here’s the incredibly long intro post and the mercifully brief About The Yes Project page.
It seemed like a silly idea, and I almost pushed it aside. But for something so silly, it was awfully persistent. So I figured, “Why the hell not? What’s the worst thing that could happen if you do it?” Taking a cue from Steve Pavlina, I’m making it into a 30-day trial just to see what happens. If continuing it after the 30-day mark seems like a good idea, I will, but at the very least I’ll give it 30 days.
