"You have 365 new blank pages. What will you write on the first blank page?"
Lailah Gifty Akita


HEALTHY START TO NEW YEAR:
Julia poses for camera perched high up on sand dune north of Malibu, CA on January 1, 2016.

New Year's Resolutions for 2016

"New Year's Day is every man's birthday."
Charles Lamb

New Yorkers ring in the New Year on December 31, 2015.

YEAR OF 2016

"No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch.”

Rich Geib's 2016 New Year's Resolutions!

What should I do? Where to go? How to live?

  • Adjust to new life with children out of daycare/preschool and in the public school system.

    After almost eight long years, we have one daughter in kindergarden and another in third grade. The long years of paying for daycare and nannies are over and our daughters are no longer so young and needy. It is well earned. Vacations? Home improvements? Another era in family life arises!

    STATUS: Nice. This is going well....

  • Post regular essays to personal webpage.

    I had some good momentum towards the end of 2015 that I would like to continue. Make it happen!

    STATUS: Well done. Success here...

  • Finish work examples on professional page.

    Yes, it will involve some tedious writing and webwork, but it is important. If you invested years and untold hours to creating the curriculum, why fail to put in just a few dozen hours to chronicle and make sense of it all?

    STATUS: Failure.

  • Teach three weeks of summer school to cover some of the cost of backyard construction project.

    Three weeks is not so much time. Grit your teeth and do it.

    STATUS: Could not quite stomach doing summer school, but did a bunch of work to the house anyways.

  • Cook dinner and clean up after meal two times per week.

    Now that bedtime rituals are abating and that is so much easier, use your newly freed up time to help Maria by cooking dinner and cleaning up twice per week.

    STATUS: Meh.

  • Rotator cuff surgery and full recovery.

    You know the deal with recovering from shoulder injury. Now do it one more time after surgery to have a shoulder that functions correctly.

    STATUS: Surgery turned out to be minor and this was a speed bump instead of a major detour. Full recovery in two months.

  • Cover huge swatches of Robert Caro series on Lyndon Johnson while recovering from rotator cuff surgery.

    You are going to have some free time on your hands, and that has not happened in YEARS. Instead of binge watching some show on Netflix put in the time and attention to do some serious historical reading. Invest in a worthwhile project that will require effort and concentration.

    STATUS: Not the right time now for this. Maybe I could read all that prose in a round trip flight to Mars.

Here is the reading lineup at this time:

    • "Purity: A Novel" by Jonathan Franzen
      • DID READ
    • "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis" by J.D. Vance
      • DID READ
    • "I Hate the Internet" by Jarett Kobek
      • DID READ
    • "The Year of Living Biblically" by A.J. Jacobs
      • DID READ
    • "Joe Rochefort's War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway" by Elliot Carlson
      • DID READ
    • "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York" by Robert Caro
      • DID NOT READ
    • "The Path to Power" by Robert A. Caro
      • DID NOT READ
    • "Means of Ascent" by Robert Caro
      • DID READ
    • "Master of the Senate" by Robert Caro
      • DID NOT READ
    • "Love That Boy" by Ron Fornier
      • DID READ
    • "The Passage of Power" by Robert Caro
      • DID READ
    • "Fates and Furies"
      • DID READ
    • "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi
      • DID READ
    • "Winter Men" by Jesper Bugge Kold
      • DID READ
    • "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
      • DED READ
    • "Decision Points" by George W. Bush
      • DID READ
    • "The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession" by Dana Goldstein
      • DID READ
    • "The Black Widow" by Daniel Silva
      • DID READ
    • "Walk Away: a Memoir" by Michele Leavitt
      • DID READ
    • "Late to the Ball: Age. Learn. Fight. Love. Play Tennis. Win." by Gerald Marzorati
      • DID READ
    • "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
      • DID READ

Make some kind of dent in the Netflix queue --

    • The Edge of Seventeen
      • DID WATCH
    • Brooklyn
      • DID WATCH
    • American Hustle
      • DID WATCH
    • The Revenant
      • DID WATCH
    • Tangerine
      • DID NOT WATCH
    • Star Wars: The Force Awakens
      • DID WATCH
    • Time Out of Mind
      • DID WATCH
    • The End of the Tour
      • DID WATCH
    • Love & Mercy
      • DID WATCH
    • Bridge of Spies
      • DID WATCH
    • To the Wonder
      • DID WATCH
    • The Revenant
      • DID WATCH
    • Arrival
      • DID WATCH

PAST YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS:

Year of 2021

Year of 2020

Year of 2018

Year of 2017

Year of 2016

Year of 2015

Year of 2014

Year of 2013

Year of 2012

Year of 2011

Year of 2010

Year of 2009

Year of 2008

Year of 2007

Year of 2006

Year of 2001

Year of 2000

Year of 1999

Year of 1996

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