Summer is almost over. Can I get an AMEN? What a clunker. There were bright spots, to be sure, with more to come before Labor Day, but I am more than ready to put this season to bed. Bring on autumn, with its sweater weather and pretty colors and delicious smells and harvests.
Yeah, OK, the school kids will be back and wreaking havoc on my block every weekday afternoon. Fine. It’s a trade-off.
Though it has been six years since I last set foot in a classroom, I still think of September as a beginning, a fresh clean slate. New notebooks with all those blank pages waiting to be filled! Things to learn that I didn’t even know I didn’t know! NEW PENS! And, of course, a set of resolutions promising that this year will be better than the last. I am all about the quarterly resolutions. It’s helpful for taking stock — what did I promise myself three months ago? Did I follow through? If not, why not? Should I renew this promise, or create a different one?
Also I like making lists. You know this.
There are two general promises I make to myself each time — not always because I haven’t followed through on them but because they are important enough to explicitly renew:
1. Write something every day. You don’t always see this writing. Sometimes this writing is mindless brain dump, sometimes it’s ranting, sometimes it’s put toward various stories I’m toying with. Sometimes they’re blog posts. Sometimes they’re Tumblr posts, though I want to stop counting those as writing for the day. Tumblr is for the distractions, for the stuff I see on the Internet that I feel compelled to share but about which I don’t really have much to say, or occasionally for those brief random thoughts that I also feel compelled to share but are either too complex or too long for Twitter.
I have been trying to post something here every day. I will continue to do so. It’s good exercise. (To that end, the Doctor Who posts will start up again soon. Just in case you were wondering.)
2. Make something (non-written) every day. Maybe I’ll make something new for dinner — or maybe I’ll experiment with a trusted recipe. Maybe I’ll sort through all the photos I’ve taken of my neighborhood and create new banners for this blog (note to self: you should get on that, actually). Even if I can only manage to knit one or two rows of whatever project I’m working on, at least I will have created a small thing that wasn’t there before.
And I have one new idea I’ve been knocking around for about a week, and I think I’ve figured out a way to make it work:
3. I’m going to reactivate my Audible account. I signed up for one back when they were running a “free book for new users” promotion, and then I deactivated it before my credit card got charged. Since then I’ve gotten to a place where I am reading multiple books a day (thanks, graduate school, for training me well in this regard) and require for my well-being an additional “just for me” book — I see it as a reward for reading “work” books. But I do not want the additional tangible book, which leaves me with three options:
– The library, which is unfortunately not as convenient for me as it probably should be, since a) I don’t like waiting for books and b) I am absolutely HORRIBLE at returning them on time, and I’m not talking about keeping them for just a week or so over the due date. Yes, I can change this about myself, but I probably won’t.
– Some sort of portable reading device, which I’m not sure I would actually use right now (despite the fact that I wish I had one every night when I pick up The Historian to read before bed). I have the Kindle software for my laptop and my phone, and have purchased books to read thereon, but I don’t. Thought I would, but I haven’t. Things might be different if I had a lengthy commute, but right now I can’t justify the Kindle expense. This may change. But for now, this leaves me with
– Audiobooks, which I could listen to while knitting, eating, puttering around the apartment and — most importantly — while walking. I can’t walk and read at the same time (not without risk, anyway), but I can easily walk and listen to a book at the same time. Reactivating my Audible account will help me save money on new books, save space that would otherwise be taken up by new books, and provide an additional incentive to going for walks, as I am rededicating myself to getting the hell out of my apartment at least once every day.
My first book: Hunger Games. Had to see what all the fuss was about. I just walked around my neighborhood while listening to the first chapter and the end of that chapter gave me chills. I may have to listen to it on our flight to Minnesota tomorrow.
(Yes, a bit of housekeeping: I’m off to the Midwest tomorrow, where I shall consume deep-fried foods on sticks in abundance and teach my nephew some scandalous new words. Nah, I’m kidding. He knows most of those words already. But what this means is that next week’s TV recaps will be late. Just in case you were wondering.)
Gratuitous squirrel!
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