Rich Geib's New Year's Resolutions 2020

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"New Year's Day. A fresh start. A new chapter in life waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery. Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change."
Sarah Ban Breathnach

New Year's Resolutions for 2020

"The beginning is always today."
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

YEAR OF 2020

â€œWe must be willing to get rid of the life weâ€™ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.â€
Joseph Campbell

Rich Geib's 2020 New Year's Resolutions!

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

You are doing well in eating better -- lots and lots of vegetables. Copy Tom and his smoothies.

Get a NutriBullet Pro blender, like your brother Tom, and take it to the next level. Smoothies with spinach, cauliflower, and berries!

STATUS: Failure. But still eating a bag of spinach and a bunch of carrots and other vegetables. Cut cauliflower in any form is gross. I tried.

Change “stewardship summers” -- camps, jr. lifeguards, etc. -- into “travel and educational summers.”

Two weeks this summer of Washington DC (seeing everything in depth), baseball game at Camden Yards in Baltimore, and Gettysburg. Girls are old enough now. Use teacher home swap. What is the good of being a teacher if you cannot fully exploit your summers educatoinally with your own children?!?!? You have done educational Washington D.C. trips with students as a teacher. Now do it as a father.

STATUS: Did not happen because of Coronavirus lockdowns. This was beyond my control.

Audible just informed you in their end of the year missive our family has listened to 2,054 hours of audiobooks. Yikes! You are feeling a little fatigued after the orgy of books in the past two years.

Be more intentional and selective in 2020. Don’t burn yourself out. Sometimes quiet and stillness is better. Less can be more. Read/listen less, think/reflect more? Balance. And no more “true crime.” Tired of it. Try grazing in fresh pastures.

STATUS: Because of pandemic "shelter in place" orders, I read more than ever. Very fruitful reading times! Especially in ancient history, I read deeeply and at length. Short books and long ones. Serious and frivolous. I read like never before. This reading was life-giving in a time of disease and death. 2020 was epic reading -- once in a lifetime reading, which I doubt I will ever repeat. 51 books read in 2020 (and I probably forgot to list one or two others)? And many of these were long and ambitious reads. But I had the time for this reading in 2020 in a way I almost never do.
Hydrate more.

I think you are sort of dehydrated most of the time in the Sturm und Drang of daily life. Bring a hydro flask with you most of the time, and drink from it. How hard is that?

STATUS: This goal never got much of my attention. I had way more important things to focus on, but I did drink fluid when thirsty.
Replace carpet as 2020 home project.

You've been waiting for years for this to happen. Do it.

STATUS: Saved the cash. But maybe next year when life returns more to normal.
Julia Merriam Webster App vocabulary word of the day.

Since 6th grade Julia has mostly gone up into her room after school and closed her door. Engage her daily with vocabulary as a way to maintain father-daughter bond. Keep reaching out to the teenager, even when she pushes you away.

STATUS: I looked at it, but Julia and I never gained traction on this one.
Read "Little Women" at bedime with Elizabeth Anne.

Elizabeth now wants to read to herself at night instead of having her father read her stories. She is growing out of "storytime with daddy," like her older sister did. Try and read one last book with Elizabeth before she ages out -- "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott. Read every line of that book with her, milking that story for every bit it has to offer. Then watch the new movie version by Greta Gerwig with her.

STATUS: Success! 2020 was like a literature symposium with my daughters. School might not have been happening much, but we read together more famous old books than you can shake a stick at... I wonder what effect all these books I read with them will have on their long-term developments, if any?

Here is the reading lineup at this time:

"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Edward Gibbon
- DID READ
"Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland," by Patrick Radden Keefe
- DID READ
"The Last of the Wine," by Mary Renault
- DID READ
"Mind Over Mood, Second Edition: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think," by Dennis Greenberger PhD, Christine A. Padesky PhD, Aaron T. Beck
- DID READ
"Ender's Game," by Orson Scott Card
- DID READ
"The Impossible First," by Colin O'Brady
- DID READ
"The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence," by Gavin de Becker
- DID READ
"The Minimalist Way," by Erica Layne
- DID READ
"The Second Amendment Primer: A Citizen's Guidebook to the History, Sources, and Authorities for the Constitutional Guarantee of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms," by Les Adams
- DID READ
"Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives," by Daniel J. Levitin
- DID READ
"Bad Guys: America's Most Wanted in Their Own Words," by Mark Baker
- DID READ
"The Planet of the Apes," by Pierre Boulle
- DID READ
"I Claudius," by Robert Graves
- DID READ
"Claudius, the God"
- DID READ
"Go With Me," by Castle Freeman, Jr.
- DID READ
"Churchill," by Paul Johnson
- DID READ
"Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind," by Suzanne Fisher Staples
- DID READ
"The Poet" by Michael Connelly
- DID READ
"Cold Turkey: How to Quit Drinking by Not Drinking," by Mishka Shubaly
- DID READ
"A Father's Rage," by Don Davis
- DID READ
"Not My Father's Son: A Memoir," by Alan Cumming
- DID READ
"The Messenger," by Shiv Malik
- DID READ
"Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage," by Dan Crenshaw
- DID READ
"The Outsiders," by S.E. Hinton
- DID READ
"Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History," by Peter Houlahan
- DID READ
"The Call of the Wild," by Jack London
- DID READ
"Interview with the Robot," by Lee Bacon
- DID READ
"The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation," by Homer, Robert Fitzgerald - translator
- DID READ
"I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons," by Kevin Hart
- DID READ
"The Decision: Overcoming Today's BS for Tomorrow's Success," by Kevin Hart
- DID READ
"Firearms and Fatals: An Autobiography of 30 Years Front Line Policing Exposed," by Sgt Harry Tangye
- DID READ
"The Yearling," by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
- DID READ
"The Dark Web," by Bernard P. Achampong
- DID READ
"The Notebook," by Nicholas Sparks
- DID READ
"The Fault In Our Stars," by John Green
- DID READ
"Glock: The Rise of America's Gun," by Paul M. Barrett
- DID READ
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," by Betty Smith
- DID READ
"Lush Life: A Novel," by Richard Price
- DID READ
"Radicalized," by Max Kutner
- DID READ
"The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion
- DID READ
"How Not to F*ck Up Your Kids Too Bad," by Stephen Marche
- DID READ
"A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II," by Sonia Purnell
- DID READ
"Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams," by Matthew Walker
- DID READ
"The Red Circle: My Life in the Navy SEAL Sniper Corps and How I Trained America's Deadliest Marksmen," by Brandon Webb and John David Mann
- DID READ
"The Body: A Guide for Occupants," by Bill Bryson
- DID READ
"The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472," by Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter
- DID READ
"Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Daily Life," by Jason M. Satterfield