the rest of it

From October, I've had a long list of things to do to celebrate my remarkable birthday, so it feels a bit redundant to make new year's resolutions. However, some of the bigger things on that list require some planning. So, in order to get those done, I'm resolving to: Put a sewing/making day on the calendar each month (currently down for the first Saturday of the month). Make a plan for my Pessoa reading project: there are about 1,500 pages to read, and I'm thinking of going between the Book of Disquiet  and the biography. At 20 pages a day, that's about 2.5 months. I won't start till I'm back from the US at least, but a bit of me is wondering if I should put it off till Easter break, as the teaching term harms reading time. Must adjust my expectations re number of books to read this year (or find some really short books to bulk up the numbers!) In addition, I want to exercise extra awareness about: Refusing extra packaging. Always having plants in my meals....

Books Better than last year (despite hardly reading at all during the teaching term): 16 books read:  3 fiction: the best of that bunch was Matt Greene's The Definitions , a dystopian novel on a small, personal scale, which plays with and asks questions about language. 5 language non-fiction: by far the best of the completed bunch (but I'm halfway through another great one ) is Michael Erard's Bye Bye I Love You , which I reviewed for the TLS . It's about first and last words, and I am a little bit obsessed about the last-words element. So much to think about in terms of how we treat the dying (and will be treated). Special mention to Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu, a history of attempts to adapt Chinese characters to technologies. 8 'other' non-fiction: death was a big obsession in this group as well. My favo(u)rites were: From Ashes to Admin  by Evie King. The stories of a council funeral officer in the south of England: the people she's had to arrange ...

My resolutions from last year were pretty useless and boring, so I'm not even going to review them here (though things related to them might come up under the following categories). It was a year of important birthdays for everyone in the house. I threw Phil a party in a pub, organised a couple of nice days for G's, and for mine, I have a series of new experiences to have before my next birthday. I've had 11 so far... Eating and exercising : Not having bread in the house is continuing to work for us. I have not lost weight, but I've kept it at the slightly lower place that it got to after starting Zoe.  Like last year, I'm doing  two online classes on Saturday mornings (which has miraculously lasted, even though there is almost never more than two of us in each of the classes). Phil and I are still going to a trainer once a week and we're getting some use out of the dumbbells we got last year for Christmas. My 'get on the floor' every day resolution fro...

So, I've been keeping notes all year on possible 2025 resolutions. Some of them involved managing money and some of them involved spending money. Everything about money scares me right now, since we don't know who's going to be made redundant at work. I don't want to make resolutions that are going to floor me with regret later. Ugh. So here we go.  The big thematic one Last year's big one was to prepare for death—and though I'm not 100% finished with it , I hope to be in the next two weeks. So this year's was always going to be: prepare for old age . Here's what I think I need to do: Work on fitness : particularly strength-training, eating well and stamina. This means reinvigorating some old habits (narrowing my eating window, walking up more hills—faster), and adding more (below).  Get some financial help to review what I've got and what I should be doing now. But do that later in the year, when things are clearer. Ideally, I'd like profession...

Books The reading year started out well, then I started learning Mandarin. At least that's my excuse. I read 12 books, mostly in the first half of the year and many of them very, very light—plus much of the Oxford Handbook of Typology , as part of a reading group.  The best (and meatiest) of the book bunch was John Higgs' Stranger than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century . Each chapter takes a BIG IDEA, like relativity or identity, and spells out how thought on that matter developed. So lucid, with a great sense of humo(u)r. Much recommended. Films Only 17 films this year! Tiny compared to normal, but the next section holds the explanation. If I have to choose one film of the year, it's Wim Wenders' Perfect Days. So quiet, so perfect. Of course, I don't have to pick just one, so I'm also going to choose The Holdovers   and Devo   as my top films.   Honorary mentions to:  Poor Things (though I have reservations) and  Kinds of Kindness...

It's time to navel-gaze! My favo(u)rite time!  2024 Resolution Round-up My resolutions for this year , and how they went: Health : spend some time on the floor each day . Success.  It was a minimalist goal, but put a reminder in Omnifocus and it generally happened. I'm going to keep the reminder in, and try to stretch more while down there. Interpersonal :  ask more interesting questions when I'm chatting with people I don't know much . Minor success?  I kind of forgot about this one, but I think I inadvertently did it. I'm getting better at chatting with some people at least. I have found that in some contexts it is very hard to get anything but the smallest of small talk going—there are lots of people for whom that is the comfort zone. We are in the midst of 'small talk' season now...I am coping. One and done : prepare for death In progress.  I really left this for the last minute, and I have done some of it and have other things on my to-do list for the r...

Having reviewed last year's resolutions , it's time to make new ones. In my traditional categories: A habit A health habit I'm going to start very basic with a health resolution this year. If it's going well, I might step it up partway through the year. But I'm starting with: spend some time on the floor each day. I hate lying on the floor. This is kind of dumb, but it grosses me out a bit and my avoidance of it keeps me from doing many kinds of exercise. So, I'm just going to say that I have to spend some time on the floor each day.  Maybe while I'm down there (here: I'm doing it as I write), I'll try sitting in positions that stretch me a bit. Maybe I'll lie down and do an exercise or two. But at the very least, I should get better at getting down and getting up.  Today I learned the phrase mobility snacks from item 61 in  this Guardian piece (which I liked very much), and I want to keep that phrase in mind as I go through the days. An interpe...

Mixed success for last year's resolutions: "Add weekly yoga or Pilates to my online fitness class regime." Failure. I just found it way too boring to spend a whole 45 minutes on such classes and found some of them too advanced for me, so it just didn't go far.  "have my hearing tested." Minor success . I did an online test that said I probably didn't need a full test. "make a spreadsheet of all my regular outgoings, including charity donations, subscriptions, direct debit bills": Success . I saved hundreds of pounds in cancelling subscriptions I no longer used and getting rid of duplicates. try to use the adjective  grand  more often. Minor success . I made it my Wordle starting word, until it paid out and I got Wordle in 1. I then switched to GRIND. ____________________________________________________ Other stuff Doing the Zoe programme has been super interesting. My weight has gone down a tad, but I can't say I've been trying to los...

[updated 30 Dec] Books Not a great reading year. During the autumn term from Hell, I gave up entirely. So, I ended on 13 finished books, two of which were graphic novels and six of which were linguistics. (It was better than last year, though! ) The only fiction was for work: Station Eleven , which I enjoyed but had some quibbles with.  Sticking with me months later: Pyongyang by Guy Delisle (2004) Most inspiring : Ten Lectures on Diachronic Construction Grammar by Martin Hilpert (2021) Honorable mentions Born Standing Up by Steve Martin (2007) Why Is This a Question? by Paul Anthony Jones (excellent lay linguistics book; 2022) Written  by Bec Evans and Chris Smith (2023) and The Reader's Brain  by Yellowlees Douglas (2015) (both useful books for writers) Films 38 films this year (down on last year), many excellent ones. If I have to pick a Best Picture, I'm going to go with Past Lives (Celine Song), mostly because I find Greta Lee absolutely mesmerising, wherever she ap...

Time for the resolutions, in my traditional categories: A habit Last year, my plan was a plank a day, but I only made it part way through the year. I'm going to stick with the theme of weight-bearing exercise and go with this: Add yoga or Pilates to my online fitness class regime. I've signed up for the first one, so I'm on my way! I already pay for the Frame online membership, so this costs me nothing but time. (And if it replaces a dance class, then it's not even costing me time.) A side-resolution: If I manage to attend fewer than three live classes in a week (or if I fail to sign up for a live yoga/Pilates), then I have to do an on-demand class. A 'one and done' project I have two things I want to do under this heading. The first, and simplest, is: have my hearing tested I doubt it's bad enough to do anything about, but it won't hurt to have it checked. The more involved one is: make a spreadsheet of all my regular outgoings, including charity donat...