A Year to Improve, Day 1

This woman, Karen Cheng, learned to dance in a year. When I watched the time lapse video, she looked okay to me at the beginning, but she really does look like a pro at the end.

When you go to her website, it's not all about dancing. It is about achieving goals. She talks about setting milestones and reaching them. She talks about determination and practice. 

So it got me thinking: what would I like to learn or work to improve in a year? 

Dance? What kind? Aaron and I have talked about going to ballroom dancing classes. I would also love to learn hip hop. 

Musical instrument? I've always wanted to play the cello. But I would have to buy, or somehow get daily access to a cello. 

I'd like to work on creative writing. I used to write stories upon stories when I was younger, but at some point I decided I wasn't a creative writer and it was silly to keep doing it. Maybe I decided that, because making a living as a writer was unlikely, I had to stop all together? I don't know; I don't remember. But I'd like to try again. 

I like the idea of setting a goal to work on something, one thing I want to be better at, for an entire year. While I've always been a person who enjoys schedules, routines, and color-coded planners using different pens for work, fun, and whatever else, I've never been great at doing something every day, no matter what.

So I want to do it. I want to write every day. Every day. Maybe one day will be a paragraph about something I saw or a blog post. Maybe one day will be a great sentence or phrase that came to me, and another day will be an outline for a story. 

I don't have one concrete project in my head that I want to work on (other than my vague, naive dream of writing a YA novel). So for now, I will just write. Fiction, nonfiction, whatever. Just work on my writing skills and my discipline, and commit to working on every single day. I'd like, by the end of year, to have started (or be ready to start) a concrete project, to have a goal for year 2.

And my secondary goal is to read every day, something for pleasure. An article, a chapter in a book, a blog post--but I'm going to make sure I'm reading for fun outside of work a little bit every day. As Stephen King said (and has since been quoted a million times), 

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write."

Ready to start!

When I started this post, I was planning to write, "and I'll start this sometime in August after I've moved to Seattle and gotten settled." But isn't the whole point of this to commit and start immediately? Isn't the point to decide that you can find the time, that it's worth making the time, no matter how busy you are? So scratch my original plan. Today is day 1. July 20, 2013. I am going to write every day. And I'm going to tell people (obviously, this is the internet...) so that I'm held accountable. 

Today is day 1.

My (New) Obsession with Giving Away Books

In preparation for our move to Seattle, Aaron and I quickly realized that the books we own could almost fill the back of my little car. And since our plan is to go with only my car and what we can fit in it, we had to prioritize. As much as we love books and have prided ourselves on our collections, we are really going to need clothes, bedding, and dishes when we first arrive in Seattle. So we began the task of cleaning out our collections.

To my surprise, this process was mostly easy for me. I developed a hard-line policy (Will I ever read this book again?) and stuck to it. And I found myself enjoying the process.

I'm getting new ideas for books from this picture! 
White Cat sounds like awesome YA fiction.

To start, I pulled the books I wanted to give away off of my shelf and stacked them on the floor. I knew I could only take a minimal amount of books with me, so I decided I had to end up with one shelf of books or less. I found myself tossing out favorites like Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and sequels, Gregory Maguire's Wicked and the rest, even some of my Margaret Atwood books. I let go of my copies of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (though I might have kept these if I had all of them, but I only had physical copies of the middle 3; I have e-books of A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Dance of Dragons). I gave away some of the classics, even ones I loved, like Jane Eyre. As much as I loved reading it, it's available for free (or very cheap) from e-book sellers, and my physical copy doesn't hold much meaning by itself.

The really (unexpectedly) fun part came when a few of our friends came over to take books they wanted. As we went through our books with other people, we were able to talk about which ones we loved and why, which ones we never finished, and why certain authors are our favorites. It was invigorating to see our friends inspired to read some of our most treasured stories.

The books I ended up keeping probably say something about my personality; you may tell me what you think it means. This can also serve as your reading list. If you read my blog and don't hate it, you should probably read some of these books.

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (plus I think her novel Cat's Eye is in Aaron's go-to-Seattle collection--bonus!)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer

Into the Wood, The Likeness, Faithful Place, and Broken Harbor by Tana French

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (DVD of the film adaptation also made the cut for the move)

Atonement by Ian McEwan

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel

Shakespeare collection by William Shakespeare

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti

Feminism and Pop Culture by Andi Zeisler

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow (haven't read yet but it's on the list!)

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem


So there you have it! The books that will stick with me across the country. The books that you should read.


You're welcome.