3 Things I want to do more of this year

I read a line somewhere that seems to fit as this year’s motto: “What you do every day is more important than what you do once in a while.”  The three items below are what I hope to chip away at this coming year.

Reading

I read a ton of stuff this year, but despite that this is my stack of books that I bought but haven’t yet read:

And that’s just the graphic novels and TPBs!  Time was, new comics wouldn’t last a day in my house.  I’d tear through anything I hadn’t already read.  Now I’ve got this monster pile, with books I bought years ago and still haven’t gotten to.  Part of me likes always having something new waiting, but that also keeps me from rereading old stuff, and rereading is where I get the most value out of books.  This wonderful pile of potential is also an anchor.

I have another shelf that’s just novels waiting to be read, and one more full of non-fiction books.  A line that I used in many conversations this year is that I wish we had some of that Matrix technology so I could just put a plug in the back of my head and download a book into my brain instead of actually having to read it.  This statement ignores the idea that the effort involved in reading acts as the gatekeeper to knowledge.  You have to be willing to work to get at the ideas.  If you can’t be bothered to slog through a book to get to the kernel within, then you didn’t want it badly enough.  That’s how we keep the riff raff out.  I used to know that.

Writing

The only place I get to write these days is this blog, so I was more than a little surprised to log on here today and find that my last update was in September.  I felt bad enough before when I thought it was sometime in November. 

When I go long periods without writing, I find I have a harder time organizing my thoughts in other, non writing-related contexts.  My brain turns to cheese.  Even articulating to myself why I liked a movie can be a problem because I can’t summon the language.  Composing simple pieces of writing - like emails - becomes more difficult too, as I dwell on little word choices to the point of immobility.  When you write regularly, a large part of the task becomes intuitive. 

I don’t expect to be posting daily, I’m hoping to make a few updates a week.

Drawing

I’ve been pretty good about drawing daily, but I want to be better.  To that end I’ve set up a sketchblog here: http://davinderssketchblog.blogspot.com/

If all goes well, it should be updated daily.