January is almost over. Finally. It’s been a long month. The weather was warmer this weekend but it seems there’s more snow on the horizon…
In any case…For many people, the year starts with a lot of vim and vigor and then around now reality starts to set in. Various surveys find that a lot of people have abandoned their goals and resolutions by now (if not earlier).
There are reasons for this. Sometimes goals just aren’t that appealing. Sometimes they’re vague. Sometimes they’re not compatible with life as it is. It may work to exercise for an hour a day on a normal workday when nothing goes wrong, but not on a snow day when several family members have the flu…which is just as much life as any other day (and is probably more likely to happen in January than other times).
I have learned not to set unrealistic goals like that for precisely this reason. But, with the first month of 2025 over, I can report that my (more realistic) goals seem to be going fairly well.
I have listened to the first 33 days of the Complete Beethoven calendar (with a bonus listen to his 8th and 9th symphonies in Boston). I am not sure if I set this as an “official” goal, but I’m also reading through Anna Karenina, one chapter at a time. I have read 33 chapters. I continue to write 2 lines a day in my sonnets. I wrote one called “For the birds” with a nod at the Eagles that I might share later this week.
My “healthy living” goal was to eat produce for breakfast every morning. I can report that I have done this 33 days in a row. A lot of times this has been apple slices, so I’ve needed to make sure we have apples in the house at all times. Some mornings I’ve just grabbed a few carrot sticks to munch while I’m making my eggs. At my hotel in Boston I had a lot of cantaloupe from the buffet. One morning I had avocados, and another morning I had a full mushroom omelette… but it tends to be apples.
I set a goal to go to three professional sports events: A Sixers game, an Eagles Game, and a Phillies game. I thought this would take me to fall to complete, but thanks to the Eagles’ post-season run, I have now been to three events (one Sixers, two Eagles, but not the Phillies yet of course). So this goal is mostly done and I’m sure I’ll be able to get to a baseball game this summer.
As another fun goal, I planned to buy some more dollhouse furniture for my miniature scenes in my office. I ordered some from a place in Australia before Christmas, but this has yet to arrive, so I’m fearing that may have gone missing in the vagaries of international shipping. But I got a tip about a place called Flip This Dollhouse in New Bedford, MA, so I might need to make a road trip there (and maybe tack on some Moby Dick tourism too with the area?)
On the professional front, my major goal is to finish Big Time (my next book). My deadline is April 1 and I can see the finish line. I’ve basically collected everything I need to collect for the book itself, so now it’s a matter of piecing things together. I found the fascinating tale of a Soviet scientist who tracked his time for 56 years so…that’s going to get a mention. I also added up my hours spent on various things in 2024. It was eye opening, even for me. I’ll write more on that later, but one major insight is that I don’t think I’m working enough, and I worry I’m not going to find stories like that Soviet scientist precisely because my days are fragmented but…we shall see. The good news is, unlike with my first book, I’m now regularly emailing 50,000 people and many of them have ideas, and have come across things of interest, so there is some leverage. Wish me luck on finishing…
Finally, I set a goal to do one extra strength training session each week beyond the one I do with my trainer. I’ve been doing this by combining it with my treadmill workouts (how I tend to run when there’s snow outside).
Anyway, I’m sure life will intervene in various ways, so we’ll see how this all goes. But at least the resolutions are good through January. I’m enjoying all these resolutions enough that it doesn’t feel too onerous to stick with them.
How are your resolutions, one month in?
I decided to join you guys and listen to Beethoven’s works this year as well. I tend to fall behind on the weekends, but then I catch up during weekdays as I can work while listening to the weekend pieces. It’s been amazing to see how talented he was at such a young age.
I’m focusing on 25 and 25 this year and have been making some progress on that list. Today I took the boys to Dogman in the theater. I had a goal to take them to two movies. There were so many previews so now I have some ideas for what to take them to next Most likely we’ll go to the Paddington movie.
@Lisa – I think my kids would like Dogman – I’ll have to look into that. And so glad you’re joining us for Beethoven! It’s easy enough to follow along with the existing calendar (so much easier than creating my own Bach one last year…) so this has felt pretty doable…
As I have written in the comments of one of the blog posts, if I ever have resolutions for a whole year, they will be about day-to-day and week-to-week routines, not the year’s goals. In January, I followed this year’s day-to-day and week-to-week routines about two-thirds of the time.
I think it is great that you’re now regularly emailing 50,000 people, Ms. Laura Vanderkam. On the other hand, you said “Wish me luck”, but, I’m not sure if you have systems to manage emailing 50,000 people which is different from what you have in the past. Basically, 50,000 people a year come down to about 140 people a day. That’s all I know.
I assume the tale you found is about Dr. Aleksandr Lyubishchev.
I later found that “Wish me luck on finishing…” is about finishing the book Big Time by April 1, Ms. Laura Vanderkam. I’m not sure how much more you’ll need to work on, Ms. Laura Vanderkam, and I think that you know how to ensure the completion of the book by April 1 even better than I do.
So far I’ve been keeping up with my year-long read of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and am enjoying it enough that I don’t think I’ll abandon the plan. I’ve also decided to do a reread of Anna Karenina for February; I’m doing the 2025 Reading Challenge at Tea and Ink Society and February’s is to read a Russian novel. I’m already starting to think about what I want to do for the rest of the year’s challenges.
@Beth – that sounds like a fun challenge. I had thought of doing Agatha Christie but decided there was so much and I wasn’t that into mysteries…I probably will do some of the ‘greatest hits’ at some point.
I think I’m also more likely to read Christie’s “Greatest Hits” than to try getting through all of them!
I might want to read all 6 of her books written as Mary Westmacott. These aren’t mysteries at all, but psychological portraits of flawed characters and the effects they have on those around them. I read Absent in the Spring a couple years ago, and it was really interesting, not at all what I was expecting.