So, my birthday week is almost over. Every year, I think of
my birthday (January 15, for those of you who don’t know) as a sort of New Year
for me. I make New Year’s resolutions and, usually, celebrate with my parents
and grandmother. This year, because my housemates were throwing a party, I
couldn’t do my traditional dinner with Mom, Dad, and Grandma, but my best
friend and old college roommate, Rebecca, came down from Milwaulkee to
celebrate with me and Hannah, who is like a cousin and best friend all rolled
into one, came too. It was great getting to celebrate with them. Then,
yesterday, I celebrated with my community by going out for cupcakes.
At any rate, it’s been a long, busy, filled New Year so far.
2012 seems to be just as busy, if not busier, than 2011. Starting the new year
sick from my gallbladder and tired from travel might not have been the smartest
way, but the traveling was fun and the gallbladder will be taken care of
eventually.
So, my resolutions? Well, to explain the first, I want to share
a statistic I read in the December/January issue of Natural Health: “According
to the National Endowment for the Arts, the average American only spends 12
minutes a day reading.” (It goes on to say that studies show that regular
readers are more likely than non readers to engage in positive civic and
individual activities.) This made me think back to the good old days of Mrs.
Meusch’s reading class at St. Pats and the 30 minutes a night we were required
to read (or 30 pages, since she assumed we could all read at least a page a
minute—I mean, it’s not like we were reading Proust). I also thought back to
the number of books I successfully completed reading last semester outside of
class: 1. It was a book Fr. Jeff asked me to read because the freshmen were
reading it and it took me almost the whole semester (as in, I started in August
and finished in December) to read it. I mean, sure, I reread five chapters of
Henry Adams, intermittently read Pride and Prejudice and The Marble Faun (neither of which have I finished), and read a ton
of magazine articles (hence the article mentioned above), but I didn’t actually
read books. Now, some of you might not be shocked to hear this,
but I was shocked to realize it. For those of you who remember the girl who
plowed through fifty to sixty books each semester in Mrs. Meusch’s class, you
can see the problem. And I have felt myself getting less and less grammatically
correct (truly, I feel myself growing less intelligent by the second
sometimes). So, therefore, I need to read books. So my first resolution is to
read 100 books in 2012. To help me in this venture, my dear community mate,
Patrick, gave me a poster for my birthday that I can record books on as soon as
I finish. Currently, 3 weeks into the year, I have one book on it: The
Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (which I read
on accident, by the way. I meant to read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, which is on one of my “greatest
book” lists, but I downloaded it onto my ipod as a audiobook and then listened
to it on the way to Texas, no realizing it was the wrong one. It was a great
book, though!). So, I have a lot of reading to do. I’m supposed to be reading 2
books a week, and I’m already 3 books behind (this week isn’t over yet, and I’m
almost done with The Things They Carried). Oh well, I’ll catch up. I have quite the pile of books to read and
more on lists, but if you have a recommendation, please let me know. Short
books that are easy to read are appreciated until I catch up (again, no
Proust).
My second resolution is to read the Bible through during
2012, and I started with the Gospels (I started at Advent). I made a schedule,
which of course I’m a week behind on. But it’s the thought that counts. And,
I’ll catch up eventually when I have time off, or an extreme desire to read the
Bible.
My third resolution is to learn how to ride a bicycle. My
father bought me one for Christmas (and a bike rack for my car as an early
birthday gift) and now my community is going to teach me how to ride it. So
far, I’ve determined that I have horrible balance and I’ve managed to fall and
bruise myself once (falling off a bike is a little harder on a 23 year old than
a 10 year old, I think. I should have learned as a kid, but I didn’t).
I have other resolutions, mostly projects I want to finish (typing my travel journal from Rome, finishing my t-shirt quilt, making a cookbook from my grandmother's recipes). I also want to finally finish memorizing the speech from Henry V (Once more to the breach, dear friends, once more) which I can get halfway though before I get muddled. Unlike the first two, they probably
will get done before 2012 is over, but I’m going to need help and encouragement
to finish the Bible and read 100 books (by the way, I’m not counting books of
the Bible as books… I will count the Old Testament and the New Testament as
books).
Let’s see how it goes!