following resolutions
So, we're two weeks into the new year (plus a few days) and I've actually stuck to my
new year's goals/resolutions/whatevers so far. The most important ones to me were: going to the gym several times a week (which I do, with my trusty and beloved iPod) and not eating after 6pm. So far, so good.
But surprisingly, my favorite change (so far) has been the whole turn-off-the-computer/stop-caring-so-much-about-work deal. This is not to say that I don't care about my job. I just stopped practicing ultra-caring because really, after years of trying to practice "the way things should be done" in order to achieve maximum efficiency, plan for all things, etc etc, we simply don't have the types of clients that allow us to do all that. There are a lot of people who do their jobs in ways that I can't possibly imagine being acceptable, and not only are their ways-of-working acceptable, they get paid a lot more money than those of us in my company do. This has bothered me for a very, very long time. It still bothers me (a lot) but I'm trying to stop caring so much, because it's never going to chage. One of the ways I'm doing that is by only working my eight hours, and by reading more books, and by going to school—anything that gets me out of that world, so I'm not staring at all the things about it that I hate, all the time. Yeah, vague, but whatever. I chose to do this, way back when, and have so much debt that I can't
stop doing it, so it's just a big cycle of crap. I'm just trying not to let it be so.
So, books. I made it through that crappy Graham Greene novel, as well as
To the Lighthouse. I'm not a big Virginia Woolf fan, never have been. Like the
Book-a-Minute site says (thanks,
Amy) about Woolf's work: "Life is beautiful and tragic. Let's put flowers in a vase." That's how I felt.
I also read Edna O'Brien's
House of Splendid Isolation and am now working on V.S. Naipaul's
The Mimic Men. I am so pleased these books are short; I'm almost through my pre-reading for the semester. Reading the books during the semester will be a hell of a lot less stressful now. I'm also glad the stack is getting shorter because I've got "fun" books to read:
Reading Lolita in Tehran and
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. They have to be back to the library by Feb 3rd, and there's no renewing since there are tons of holds on them, so I have hard deadlines for these "fun" books. I hear they're both really, really good and they're on lots of reading lists that I've seen, so obviously I can't wait to get to them!
So anyway, resolutions. Drink more water. Always a good one.
