Morning by morning, new resolutions I make

I’ve sworn off New Years Resolutions.

It’s not because I don’t make resolutions, no, it’s because I make too many resolutions. I’m more into New Monday Resolutions, or New Afternoon Resolutions. Every couple of hours, I decide exactly how I’m going to be different. Most of these resolutions have to do with my attitude towards mornings. (Last night’s was “Wake Up Early Enough to Eat Breakfast”. I’d have kept this one if I hadn’t dropped my Pop-Tart under the seat of my car. Poor little toaster pastry.)

Since I’m still trying to get the basics down, I thought I’d give myself some very general guidelines for this year. I thought about doing 11 for 11, like Heather Cadenhead, but that gives me anxiety.

Read a greater variety of books. “Read more” is always on my list of to-dos, and that’s the point of this blog anyway. But in the last few months, I’ve picked up books from a few different genres, and it’s been refreshing. (Which I’ve said before.) For a while, I would only read tried-and-true classics, but I think I’ve missed out on some great new books, and the conversations to go along with them. (Besides, I work in publishing. Shouldn’t I be know what’s going on outside the Gothic South?) So, this year I’ll read: fiction and non-fiction, genre fiction and highfalutin lit, old and new.

Have more adventures. For the last six months or so, I haven’t done much that isn’t job-related. If I wasn’t applying, I was interviewing; if I wasn’t interviewing, I was working; if I wasn’t working, I was driving; if I wasn’t driving, I was moving. The new goal is: if I’m moving, I’m adventuring. I’m almost-sorta moved in (it’s been a long process…and a long story), so now I’m about out of excuses. It was easy to have adventures when I worked in the city, mostly because every commute was fraught with peril. Now my greatest challenge is leaving my cute little home. Time to limit my Old Lady Crochet and Audiobook Time and get out of my apartment.

And that’s it. Those are my general guidelines for this year. I’ll take the exercise-more and the wake-up-in-the-morning and the don’t-eat-that-pound-of-macadamia-nut-turtles-in-one-sitting resolutions on a day-by-day basis.

So, suggestions? Any Chicago-based adventures you recommend? What book to do I need to read this year?