resolution

Five Word Weekly Challenge — Happy New Year

Fandango8 Comments

“I can’t believe that it’s already going to be 2023 next week. The seasons and the years are flying by,” Elliot said.

“Tell me about it,” Carol said. “I’m looking at 2023 as a new beginning and I’m making a New Year’s resolution to make the most of it.”

“Let’s drink to that, babe,” Elliot said, holding up his cocktail glass. Carol held up her glass and clinked it against Elliot’s a little too hard, causing both glasses to break and to spill their drinks all over both of them.

“A fit ending to a shitty year,” Carol said. “I am so happy that we’ll be turning the page on the calendar and to a brand new year next week.”

Written for Greg’s Five Word Weekly Challenge, where the five words are: cocktail | beginning | resolution | calendar | season.

Fandango’s Friday Flashback — January 3

Fandango29 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of you earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember?

Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 3rd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on January 3, 2013 on my old blog.

Reading is Fundamental

6D858B2A-593D-49FF-A0C9-FBE09D6B6E32Here’s something few people know about me. I once was a voracious reader. Yeah, I know. Looking at how I spend my discretionary time these days, that’s hard to believe. I bet my own kids have never seen me pick up a book and read it unless it had something to do with my job.

Seriously, though, back in the day, when I was an avid reader, I immersed myself in suspense and conspiracy as I devoured books by authors such as Robert Ludlam and Ken Follett. James Clavell transported me to the intrigues of feudal Japan and the early days of Hong Kong, while James Michner guided me on exotic adventures across the globe spanning eons.

Robin Cook thrilled me with medical mysteries and John Gresham and Scott Turow got me all tangled up in legal shenanigans and courtroom chicanery. Stephen King and Dean Koontz sent chills of horror up and down my spine.

Philip Roth, JD Salinger, and John Irving helped me put into perspective the angst of growing up and the struggles and challenges of being a flawed human being. Issac Asimov, Ray Bradury, and Frank Herbert launched me through the time and space continuum to worlds beyond my imagination. And JRR Tolkein introduced me to Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and the Middle Earth.

During my reading days I would leverage the 30 to 60 minutes on the commuter trains each way between home and work to travel to far away places. On flights for business I would spend my time not only getting to my reality destination, but also being carried away to other times, other worlds, and even other identities. And rather than automatically turning on the TV each night, I would pick up a book and read myself to sleep. I typically got through maybe two to three novels a week back then.

Who Has Time to Read Fiction These Days?

But that was before myriad cable channels beckoned and DVRs turned us all into time-shifters. That was before the proliferation of laptops, netbooks, and tablets that you carry with you instead of leaving behind at the office or at home. That was before BlackBerrys, iPhones, and Android devices transformed us into always-connected workaholics or gossip-mongers needing to know what every one of our hundreds of “friends” is doing in real-time via our addictions to Facebook and Twitter.

Oh no! I forgot to “check in” at the place we ate dinner last night.

Now, as a telecommuter, I work from home, so I no longer have time to kill (and read) on commuter trains. When my job requires me to spend hours on an airplane, most of it is spent on my laptop, preparing for the meeting I’m about to attend, or documenting my notes from the one I just attended. Rather than picking up a book in my “down time” at home, I catch up on all of those TV shows we recorded on our DVR.

Reading for pleasure seems like a distant memory to me. And yet, in the far reaches of my mind, I have this vague recollection of delightful escapism when I sat down with a novel that transported me to times, places, and events far and wide; that introduced me to all kinds of wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful, but certainly colorful) characters.

New Year’s Readolutions

As it’s that time of the year to make resolutions, I have decided to resolve to read no less than 24 books this year. A wide variety of books, but mostly novels of all kinds — historical, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thrillers, humorous, whatever.

To that end, I downloaded the free Kindle app on my iPad and, being the cheap son-of-a-bitch that I am, immediately went to the “free books” section.

I “bought” two books, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and a murder mystery by an author I’d never previously heard of, L.L. Bartlett, called Murder on the Mind.

I admit that I could barely make it through the first few pages of Hugo’s sweeping novel that served as the inspiration for my favorite stage musical. I decided to shift gears and try something a little less formidable for my initial reentry into reading for fun, and the Bartlett novel was perfect…a quick, engaging read.

So let’s see if I can manage to read at least two books a month this new year. I’m feeling pretty confident. And maybe I’ll even be able to get through Les Mis before the year is over.

Be It Resolved

Fandango14 Comments

13D14C4A-A715-458A-ACCB-FB40BCA04DB7I originally wrote this post at the end of last year for one of Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompts. I thought, because of the subject matter and timing, it would be worth reposting it.

Many people use the approaching new year to take stock of their lives. They look behind at the past year and reflect on their achievements and failures. Often, they focus on the mistakes they made, their broken promises, and unfulfilled dreams. They resolve to improve themselves, to get a fresh start as the brand new year commences.

New Year’s resolutions are an effort to reinvent oneself; they are a form of self-motivation. People make them with the hope of changing their lives for the better. Unfortunately, most such resolutions are not kept for very long. So why bother?

Resolutions are all about hopefulness and people have been making these annual resolutions for centuries. The act of creating such resolutions has reportedly been around since Babylonian times, when the Babylonians were said to have made promises to the gods in the hope that they’d earn good favor in the coming year.

Some sources say that the tradition of New Year’s resolutions dates back to around 150 BC. January is named after the mythical early Roman god Janus, who had two faces, which allowed him to look both back on the past (the old year) and forward toward the future (the new year).

This became a symbolic time for Romans to make resolutions for the new year and to forgive enemies for troubles in the past. Janus would forgive the Romans for their wrongdoings in the previous year, and, based upon gifts and promises, would bless them in the year ahead.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. It’s not that I’m perfect and there’s no room for improvement. That’s far from the case. But I don’t like that feeling of failure when my resolutions to get more exercise, to eat healthier, to watch less TV, or to be a better human being inevitably fall short. So if I don’t make any New Year’s resolutions, I won’t beat myself up for not being able to keep them.

Having said that, the one resolution I do plan to keep is to continue blogging, so long as it’s still fun, fulfilling, and doesn’t become a burden.

Happy New Year, fellow bloggers. And for those of you who do make New Year’s resolutions, best of luck. Because the odds of success are against you.

SoCS — Be It Resolved

Fandango7 Comments

096DAA0E-6257-4002-9B90-6251F972E3E8Linda G. Hill chose the word “resolution” for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, which is an apt word to choose, given that today is the last Saturday of 2017 and it’s a time when many of us are making our New Year’s resolutions.

Many people use the approaching new year to take stock of their lives. They look behind at the past year and reflect on their achievements and failures. Often, they focus on the mistakes they made, their broken promises, and unfulfilled dreams. They resolve to improve themselves, to get a fresh start as the brand new year commences.

New Year’s resolutions are an effort to reinvent oneself; they are a form of self-motivation. People make them with the hope of changing their lives for the better. Unfortunately, most such resolutions are not kept for very long. So why bother?

New Year’s resolutions are all about hopefulness and people have been making these annual resolutions for centuries. The act of creating such resolutions has reportedly been around since Babylonian times, when the Babylonians were said to have made promises to the gods in the hope that they’d earn good favor in the coming year.

Some sources say that the tradition of New Year’s resolutions dates back to around 150 BC. January is named after the mythical early Roman god Janus, who had two faces, which allowed him to look both back on the past (the old year) and forward toward the future (the new year).

This became a symbolic time for Romans to make resolutions for the new year and forgive enemies for troubles in the past. Janus would forgive the Romans for their wrongdoings in the previous year, and, based upon gifts and promises, would bless them in the year ahead.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. It’s not that I’m perfect and there’s no room for improvement. That’s far from the case. But I don’t like that feeling of failure when my resolutions to get more exercise or to eat healthier or to watch less TV inevitably fall short. So if I don’t make any New Year’s resolutions, I won’t beat myself up for not being able to keep them.

Having said that, the one resolution I do plan to keep is to continue blogging, so long as it’s still fun, fulfilling, and doesn’t become a burden.

Happy New Year, fellow bloggers. And for those of you who do make New Year’s resolutions, best of luck. The odds of success are against you.