In Which I go Very Public with My New Year's Resolutions

A new year is upon us!  And what better way to start the new year then by laying bare my deepest ambitions for the entire world to see!

I did  a decent job with my 2018 New Year's Resolution, keeping 2 out of 4.  I maintained a presence at the gym -- even if it at times that was by having a past version of myself haunting the One Life Fitness in Newport News.  Did you feel that chill go down your spine as you walked towards the rowing machine?  That was the ghost of my better intentioned, more motivated self circa May, before I got deep into Summer, baseball games, and Nachos.

I also managed to complete the reading of 23 books this year!  That was an increase on last year's 20.  It does not include the many books I started, got anywhere from 10% - 60% through, and gave up on.

So not bad!  I did not write as much as I would have liked too -- far from it.  And I also did not progress as much with my German as I would have liked either.

So here, with 5 hours left to go before the end of the year, are next year's resolutions:

1.  No war movies in 2019 (with some caveats)  

I have watched too many war movies, and I am not sure why I do it - they are on the whole depressing.  It was the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I so I watched, this year, some excellent movies commemorating the war (2017 Journey's End is one I would highly recommend).  But I've decided, at last, I can take no more.  They don't do me a lot of good.

So, no war movies in 2019.

You must understand, this cuts a rather wide swath  through today's cinema.  Yes, the classic war movie is one in which a young man or woman finds themselves in an army or a flying corps and has their innocence dashed by the brutality of conflict and must grope their way through the experience of warfare - the most complex human experience on earth, I'd reckon - as their friends die around them, over which they must lay the matrix of the many reasons that have brought them to the war in the first place, be they good, bad, or senseless.  And/or the veteran comes home from the war and tries to readjust to civilian live, maybe the second most complex human experience on earth.  The classics are ones like Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Jarhead (the first one), Glory, The Patriot, Bridge on the River Kwai, Dunkirk, the list goes on and on and on.

But you have to add Superhero movies to the list as well.  Or at least most of them.  Batman fights crime, sure.  But Transformers?  Those are war movies.  Wonder Woman, admirable though it may have been, was definetly a war movie.  Star Wars (GASP!!!) are -- well, as the name suggests, war movies.  Even those damn Alice in Wonderland movies that Johnny Depp plays the mad hatter in are war movies.  Forrest Gump?  War movie.

So there will be a lot of stuff I can't see.  There are two caveats:

Caveat a:  If a war movie comes that is hailed as truly being transcendental, something that is just going to be amazing and needs to be seen in theater, I'm willing to relent and go to it.  Dunkirk was such a film.  Something on that level.

Caveat b:  If a decent movie on Napoleon, or the Napoleonic Wars, comes out, or if the BBC/HBO can put together a half decent mini-series of the subject, I will see that too.

2.  Keep up at the gym

I did  stick with the gym this year, though you might have gathered I did not go as often as I probably should have.  Often enough to make it monetarily worthwhile - the price of membership was not wasted - but not often enough to really look or feel much different.

So a little more gym going in 2019. 

3.  Read (complete) 25 books in 2019

Pretty self explanatory.  This two more books than I managed to complete in 2018, so it may be difficult.

4.  Improve on my German

This is an odd one, it may seem.  I have no German ancestry and have little need to know German for my profession.  Yet my inability to speak a foreign language has always gnawed at me.  German is my best shot, because I took it in high school, took some more lessons through a friend at St Mark, and have kept at it through various means.  It is probably better than it has ever been, but there is so much more room to improve!  Plus, the SAWE Conference in 2020 is in Hamburg, and I am going even if I have to swim for it.

I did improve in 2018, but would like to continue doing so in 2019.

5.  Write more in 2019

Probably the most important.  I had the goal last year of writing 50 poems and 3 other things.  I did not even come close...I wrote maybe 20 poems an a few blog posts.  I really, really, want to do more in the new year.

6.  Present an Open Hand Rather than a Closed Fist

I don't really think of myself as a closed fist, but we could all be more open, more understanding, and kinder, and sometimes I can certainly be hard-hearted.  So it is my hope that I can cultivate some more compassionate virtues the new year.

That is it.  A pretty long list but with a few tweaks I think I can get there.  Number 6, actually, may be the hardest.

Well, 2018, you were a hell of a year.  Trump was Trump, the planet is dying, and many of my friends have had a rough time of it, and the Hokies nearly blew up their bowl streak.  Sometimes it is hard enough to gin up the energy to push the boulder up the hill everyday, much less do it joyfully.

Here's hoping for a better 2019!