Four resolutions

I'm falling into a rut, as I so easily do, so I've decided to give myself a challenge from April 12 until May 12. The challenge consists of four resolutions:

1. No chocolate 

2. Read a book a week.

3. Study a little Russian every day (I'm using duolingo, because I like it and I don't want to spend the energy to find something better) or the equivalent in Georgian.

4. Write a high, low, glitter every day. (this is actually an app, but I am lazy and do not want to download it or make other people download it, hence why it is going on the blog).

Today is day 0. Today I ate half a bag of peanut m&ms and three squares of dark chocolate (and not the whole bar only because I was sharing with my colleagues), and realized for the thousandth time that I have a problem and really should stop using chocolate as busy food and snack food. The problem is less the chocolate and more the snacking. I know I snack all the time, and almost always snack on chocolate, so my reasoning is that if I cut out the chocolate I will stop, in large part, the unnecessary snacking.

High: I finished my SPA grant draft and sent it for review.

Low: Breathing in cigarette smoke and fumes almost the entire walk home.

Glitter: The toddler in his mom and dad's arms playing delightedly with one of those light-up soft spiky balls on a stretchy string, followed closely by Wait for It playing on my shuffle as I walked home after a light swim practice (only 2500 meters, but I did the first 1500 nonstop and in those 20ish minutes decided to make this resolution list). 

Day 1 

Books: I'm a little over halfway through Cities in Flight, and although I enjoy it, I am confused as to why there was this whole section about the Scranton kid who got taken onto New York, then as soon as they say he might become city manager, he disappears completely from the story. Did we jump a few hundred years forwards or backwards and I just missed it? Also, Amalfi the city manager is remarkably cavalier about losing entire expedition and work parties to hostile planets and cities. He literally sent a giant group of men to die on He against Fabr-Suithe as he set this joint planet launch/destruction of the bindlestiff plan in motion, not to mention destroying an entire city in the implementation of the plan. 

High: We had a really productive strategic planning session, so our strategic plan for Helping Hand is almost presentable. One more session, and it will be a guide for the next five years.

Low: THIS is what they had as a reward for strategic planning. The temptation is killing me!

Glitter: I legitimately felt sore after doing a 3300 mixed IM/kick workout today, and I did all of my no-breath 25s at the end no problem. I like feeling like I'm actually working in my workout. 
Extra*: I have a delightful secret, but it will be revealed in about two weeks.

Day 2

Books: I'm supposed to be finishing All About Love by bell hooks for book club. I know I shouldn't get caught up in little things, but in the introduction she talks about a piece of graffiti that, when she was going through a terrible breakup, helped ground her and restore her faith in love. Then one day she walks by to find it whitewashed by the construction company, and felt angered and betrayed by the obliteration of this affirmation of love, and how she imagines that the construction company felt threatened by love or by the indirect reference it made to HIV and gay culture. Right there we got off on the wrong foot. For me, graffiti is meant to be fleeting as much as it is meant to connect to passersby. It chips and gets whitewashed and new paintings come up that speak again to popular culture and comment on society. What I like about graffiti is that it's a bit of a covert act, a defiance of the rules of art and of the rules of the city. It's never meant to last like a museum piece, and I don't like that she assumed this art was for her and that the construction company was doing anything other than following policy on property that was theirs. It's like finding a little gem when you stumble on a piece of graffiti, so enjoy it as such. I'm glad you connected with it, but you don't own it.
Then she goes on to say that "young people these days" are cynics; they don't care about love and have declared it meaningless and irrelevant. I am not a fan of these blanket statements about my generation. Just because I have internet all the time does not mean I am a robot. Then she talks about literature on love, which I honestly can say I know nothing about because I don't like self-help and most social psych books, but I do think that authors in other genres talk about love and its lack in their own roundabout way. I tend to read a lot of fantasy, and teen books and fantasy, written by men and women alike, have a whole lot to say about love cloaked in the minds and actions of their characters. She ends by talking a bit about patriarchy and how the inequalities created by our patriarchal system have contributed to the loss of love in the home, and I did find it interesting her distinction between men and women on the topic of love - that men often speak from a knowledge of having found love, and women often speak from its lack. Then I got annoyed again and went back to reading scifi. I may never get through this book.

High: It's the first #EduHam and Lin and Alex and all the cast of Hamilton were all over it on Twitter. I'm guessing this will also be tomorrow's high as video starts popping up. 

Low: Falling headfirst (again) into a conversation I know I cannot win about homophobia and feeling really really frustrated that I can't win it because I know I'm on the right side of history.

Glitter: The Celestial Seasonings blueberry tea is surprisingly tasty. I also played with the Peace Corps office cat (his name is Felix, as far as I can guess) after peacing out because our internet was out and all anyone did for hours before that was try Mary Kay products.

Day 3

Books: I'm working my way through Cities in Flight. New York has landed.  

High: Listening to Gio wax poetic about his musical passions and how he finds some of the fan things he did when he was younger silly and embarrassing, but I just think it's adorable. I get it.  

Low: Editing every single one of my grant indicators because I did them wrong the first time.

Glitter: Helping Hand and CSDC won a government contract they bid on, but the process made me laugh as they anxiously watched the minute tick down on their computers, then cheered like they had scored a goal after they came out of each round. 

Day 4

Books: I finally made it out of the introduction to All About Love. She defines love as "the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth." I like that this definition does not allow for abuse and neglect in a loving relationship, but does encompass familial and platonic relationships. I'm still at about the one chapter a day pace, but I'm blasting through Cities in Flight and mostly enjoying it. I'm excited to see what mess Amalfi gets himself into with his wanderlust.
High: It's spring. I wore a dress to work and no jacket, and walked to get gelato at 8:00 pm and it was still super warm.
Low: I get very annoyed with people in the pool not following lane etiquette, and today two teenage boys spent 45 minutes of my workout dicking around, blocking the lane and sitting and standing on the lane lines. I can't even chew them out because...Georgian.
Glitter: Coming home to a counter full of tasty food because it's cooking day.

Day 5 

Books: I finished Cities in Flight, looked it up on Goodreads to mark down for my reading challenge, and found out that it is actually four novels in one. Does this mean that I get to count four books this week? On the whole I enjoyed the book as part of the science fiction canon. The things that I wasn't thrilled with were: 1) the technical conversations around tables gets a little dry and complex, especially as the main character only partly understands them since he is not a scientist; 2) the books completely failed at utilizing female characters or understanding women at all; 3) All of the characters were fairly flat (consequence of living for thousands of years) and pretty low on humanity. This didn't detract a lot from the story arc, but sometimes I'd wonder if it was really necessary to wipe out entire crews, cities and civilizations on a hunch of an idea that might work.
High: I made strawberry shortcake and ate three bowls of it in between reading all day.

Low: Even after extensive beating, the cream refused to become whipped cream.
Glitter: I caught my friend online and we discussed, briefly, a chapter in All About Love about honesty. It's a lot about how children see their parents and others lie and that conflicts with the exhortations by parents to tell the truth, and about how men and women lie for different reasons in a relationship, in large part because of patriarchal cultural norms and power disparities. Basically, don't lie in a relationship. Gotcha. I'm trying with this book.

New Books Read: 126
Total Books Read: 170
Recommendations: If you really like scifi, Cities in Flight by James Blish seems like a pretty classic straight scifi, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you seriously enjoy that genre. I've started The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and I suspect that will soon be one I recommend to people.