resolutions shmezolutions.

I generally don’t make resolutions because I know myself well enough that, although I may have good intentions at the start, I often tend to not finish well/at all with what I set out to do.  I tried two years in a row to take a photo a day.  During the first year it was great for developing skills but I knew it was going to pot when I…well, stopped taking pictures.  It started with a gradual waning of motivation, and then a complete stop.  The second year’s attempt had me starting from where I left off the year before, so I sort of cheated by not starting at the beginning of the year.  But it didn’t matter in the end because I didn’t complete that year either.  I technically didn’t have a full year to take pictures, so you’d think I could have done this.  But I didn’t.  Lame me.

Hence, I generally don’t consider New Year’s resolutions because I assume I won’t keep them.  But Matt made a suggestion for 2012 which at first, I balked at because it seemed so unimaginable for me.  However, I kind of got excited about the challenge.  I decided to bite the bullet and do it, just to see if I have it in me.

If you know me well, you know that I am not a reader.  Oh, I appreciate books, I love libraries for the knowledge they contain, I even own books, but reading them…it’s a chore for me.  I much prefer watching a movie based on a book even though we all know that the book is usually better than the movie.  Even more so, I’d rather curl up on a couch in pajama pants and a blanket…to watch TV, rather than read a good book, like I hear so many people saying they apparently love to do.  I am a hardcore TV junkie, and if it wasn’t for internet streaming, our cable-less apartment would seem so much more inadequate to me.

So, my 2012 resolution is..ta da…to read a book…a month (gulp!).  For some of you, this may not seem as daunting a feat as I think it is.  Like I said, I’m not a reader and if I did read, I’m picky about what I read (i.e. I won’t read any book more than an inch thick; it doesn't have to have pictures but it makes is so much more enjoyable for me) and just like other endeavours in my life (every paper I ever wrote in all my higher education years, where I picked the paper topic in the first week of school but was scrambling to write the actual paper the night before and after its due date), I may start well, but I drag my feet when it comes to finishing.  What may take a “normal” reading person 2-3 weeks to read, usually takes me 1-2 years, if not more.  No joke.  And because I’m very easily distracted and soooo slow at reading I often forget what the book is about and I get to the point where I’m just trying to finish it so I don’t feel like too much of a failure.

Maybe I’ll even get to the seminary books I didn’t finish/didn’t read sometime during this year.  Or maybe not.  Well, probably not.  But I’ve always had a list of books in my head that I would like to read in my lifetime and now here’s my chance.  No more excuses, right?…well, until I start getting sleepy after reading two pages, which is my regular pattern.  So you can imagine this is a big deal resolution for me, a self-professed non-reader.  Hopefully the result will see a more informed, enlightened, entertained, educated, and disciplined me by the end of the year.

I’ll let you know what I’m reading each month.  And feel free to ask me how it’s going.  Accountability and encouragement would be helpful.  You can tell me I’ll gain cool points if I keep up with the reading.  That always motivates me.  You can even make book suggestions.  But let’s start out with books that aren’t more than an inch thick.