#resolution test drive

[zoestagg]

It’s not a second from every day, it’s a second from some days. It’s not the most amazing video production in the history of video production, but in the service of lowering the bar and that something is better than a perfectionist’s ice sculpture of nothing?

It’s here.

Australia; America; Hong Kong. Fuji; Sea to Summit; Yamathon. Cairns 70.3; Zama sprint; teaching a kid to “snorfle.” Birthdays and regular days. Snow days and melting summer ones.

2018 was full. Here’s 90 seconds to remind me just how cool it was.

[zoestagg]

40 Before 40...

As long as we're making lofty stabs at productivity as a species, why not add a little quantifiable quest to the pile?


I'm turning 40, in this the year of our Lord two-thousand and eighteen. In exactly five months, as a matter of fact. SO as someone who can't be bothered with math but loves when numbers work out all evenly AND checking things off lists, here it is:


MY 40 BEFORE 40 LIST.

Some items are vague, some on purpose and some because the finer details are part of the journey. Some items aren't just one-time, one-check wonders, and some have more than one part. Eh, it's my list. Here goes!


Travel • See the snow festival. (Sapporo, February) • Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. (Australia, June) • Onsen & Ryokan. • Spend the weekend in Tokyo alone. (January) • Hanami at Mt. Yoshino + Deer at Nara. (Kyoto, April) • Go camping for non-professional reasons. (Frankie really wants to.) • Visit Hiroshima. • See a sumo tournament. (Osaka, March)

Adulting • Make a will. • Get U.K. passport. • Get everyone current on appointments. • Find a gymnastics class for Frankie. • Get an hairstyle that matches my level of effort, i.e. none. (This conflicts with a Wild Card item.) • Figure out hydration strategy like a sentient being. • Get a password manager. • Kondo the house.

Creation • Finish and launch website. • Make the podcast happen. • Shoot and edit a videos for every list item that warrants one. (Password manager? No.) • Create something non-digital. • Finish five-part docu-series for work. • Edit my China videos. • Write a blog post a week. • Pitch every piece in my ideas folder.

Consumption • See this "Hamilton." (In some form or another.) • Learn both alphabets and the 300 words/verb forms you need for basic conversation. • Capsule wardrobe. • Watch Casablanca, Jaws, and Die Hard. • Read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Phantom Tollbooth. • Take Frankie to a big show. (Lion King?) • Eat at Sukiyabashi Jiro. (Conceptual, given my no-fish policy.) • Subscribe to the print pubs I've been putting off. (Frankie, for one.)

Wildcard • Volunteer somewhere. • Finish Yamathon. • Do the Yokohama Olympic tri. • Refuse straws, plastic bags, PET bottles, and disposable hashi as often as possible. • Conquer a fear. • Use my voice to make the world better for those not being heard. • Try sunset, mermaid, or otherwise non-standard hair color. • Take a class/get AFAA/Barre/Spin certified.

Huh. I'm also training for a Half-Ironman, but that's happening on June 10, so it doesn't even count on the list. I'm sure this is fine. I mean, it's only one item every 3.75 days.

Now then. Does anyone have a Die Hard VHS?

[zoestagg]

In 2018, We Make...

Resolutions come in a couple of stripes, acknowledged last year with the poison/antidote stylings of Contradictory Resolutions.


You can either choose to charge hard or find zen. Ten-ish years ago, I had some roaring ones. A few years ago, they were kinder and gentler.

Or you can dispense with the resolutionary notion altogether, and you can subscribe to the School of Richard, which is "don't resolve, pick a motto."


See, that way it stays more of an undercurrent — more a who you are and what you're about — than a goal or marker you're supposed to hit.

So this year, I want to extricate from the strangle-hold grind a little. Wriggle up and leave the tussle to take care of itself. To simplify life and space to have more of the second to make more of the third.


More videos — I edited this for my new website, and dang. As glad I am that I've blogged the last ten years, I'm just as glad to have video now, too. A podcast. It's going to happen. I already made a Twitter for it and Richard's on board SO. That's happening. And probably more selfies. I mean, that's when I spend the most time hollering, "Don't judge me, you don't understand MY ART."

So there's a podloft made. There's vlog lights. There's a new website coming.

All that's left is... making it.

[zoestagg]

New Things Are So New...

You know how on every single podcast is all "Squarespace! I built our website in what, like an hour and a half right before the show, isn't that right Barb?" PROMO CODE NO BARB IT ISN'T.

I started moving my website and in general vowing to make my internet fit for company in 2013. That's a lot of hours and a halfs, Attorneys General. But seriously, I'm making progress this time — and in so doing, I have to learn a new blogging platform.

WAIT don't worry eight people who go to my URL directly, it will still be there. Here. Wherever you are, it will exist — but I have to make posts in the new digs. My relationship with the tumblr CMS is longer than any relationship I've ever had with a human. I have been there so long, it was before you could do images and text in the same post. I was there before the app, when you had to email pics to your blog to post from mobile. I was there when the dashboard "tumblr" displayed in kanji for three years after you donated to the Tohoku earthquake relief. And I STILL have more tumblr followers than Twitter ones.

That's a very specific era of internet.

So hang tight while I figure this out — it's going to take this time, I swear.

**Ah, okay. So I did what my new Squarespace help friend told me to do, and I pushed from their CMS to here — which give an external image experience in the tumblr dashboard (boo) and then you can only edit in html on tumblr AND there's no tweet it out option? Not ideal. But I WILL make it bend to my will, I promise.

[zoestagg]

New & Improved...

While my only formal resolution is to try seriously, would it kill you extinct, to put lotion on your dinosaur heels every once in a while, there's serious scrubbing out happening in the last throes of Capricorn.

Work that earth sign like a backhoe. (Print, living.)

It's not just cleaning, though there is a mini-spring shovel out happening with the decorations down, and enough mild air to fling open the windows.

It's introducing freshness into the usual. Reading, listening, watching, doing -- you're going to consume stuff anyway, so it's an easy place to get that "Look! I'm DOING THINGS" zing.

I'm tackling an autobiography and a new novel, albeit in ten minute intervals, because it is well beyond my comfort zone. I am a delicate flower when it comes to, well, most things, but I'm pushing through, on account of making room for new thoughts and feelings. (Is "The Goldfinch" worth my angst? I've creeped your Goodreads pages, and I can't tell.)

I added a raft of new podcasts to my catcher (Downcast, GET IT.) And I actually listened to one yesterday! "Making new friends" of the entertainment variety is a tough sell, but I dug the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour. Fresh Score: 2.

I am very mad that Netflix got rid of the streaming of "My First Place" because NOW WHO WILL GIVE ME A REASON TO YELL AT THE TV? But I'm very strongly considering "Fringe" and "Parenthood." Hold me. Ugh, I am the worst stick-in-the-mud. (Virgo rising, Fresh Score: -1.)

This is open and waiting in line to tackle -- I'm telling you, 2014, turn everything upside down, including the gym.

And The Great Junk Migration is on. Move plants, switch up vases, swap toys -- just seeing stuff in a new place is sometimes enough.

And you? Doing anything new? Got any new stuff for me to add?

[zoestagg]

Pick a Lane...

It's natural when contemplating the cusp of a year that seems so sci-fi advanced it must be the future, even though it's in two days, to reflect a little. Tie your loose ends, situate yourself for the what's to come. Just like it's probably natural to feel your eyes lose focus scrolling through someone else's RESOLUTIONS.

Fair.

I am only RESOLVING the very most important improvements in my character.

The rest are just... cognizants. A lane of cones to keep in the periphery.

Cognizants come in threes, I hear since I invented them, and here are mine for 2014:

Relish the Simple.

Be Present.

Give.

To better appreciate the space that comes with fewer adornments, whether it's possessions or food or activities or noise; to delight in the spare.

To notice the tiny pleasures that will creep into the room you've made.

And to not curse that gaping empathy that seems to have come with parenthood, but instead do everything I can to sate it.

It's not so much about revolution, these points, more a setting of intentions. And hopefully it's a shedload more likely to stick than a resolution.