Resolutions, I’ve Made a Few

I’m look­ing over the res­o­lu­tions I made last year. Hilar­i­ous! Apart from final­ly find­ing a theme I could live with and a cou­ple easy plug-ins for the right rail, I’ve done noth­ing that even resem­bles my goals for the year. In light of this I’m going to take some advice from Paul Rud­d’s char­ac­ter ‘Kunu’ in For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall and try to ‘do less.’

What does that mean exact­ly? It means mak­ing res­o­lu­tions that make sense to some­one who’s start­ed a fam­i­ly. I spend hard­ly any time on the com­put­er at home now. I stay con­nect­ed via my beloved iPhone, but it’s hard­ly an ide­al tool for try­ing out new things on Word­Press. No, I need to set real goals for 2010 that aren’t in any way con­nect­ed to my life online.

For exam­ple, I need to pack my lunch more often. Glam­orous, right? I fig­ure I could save about $50 a week if I just took the deli­cious left­overs in the fridge rather than get­ting yet anoth­er roast pork with sharp at Tony Luke Jr.‘s dur­ing my lunch hour.

A corol­lary to pack­ing my lunch: take cof­fee to the office! I usu­al­ly drink a small French press every morn­ing before I head into the office in the morn­ing, only to find myself in line at the Tir Na Nog branch of Star­bucks with my co-work­ers almost every morn­ing. That has to stop. I’ve cut back to a tall cof­fee there, but it’s still about $10 a week on some­thing I have read­i­ly avail­able at home. I think one of these new Klean Kan­teen trav­el cups should do the trick!

One thing that’s a con­stant in my life is the desire to read and write more. Since Char­lie was born, I’ve spent more hours in front of a TV than ever. It’s the per­fect anti­dote to being shut-in, but it estab­lish­es bad habits that I did­n’t have as a child. I don’t want Char­lie to devel­op those habits either. Keep in mind, it’s very dif­fi­cult to do much read­ing when you’re tend­ing to a baby, but doing some would be bet­ter than what I’ve been doing. The days of read­ing 1200 pages per week dur­ing grad school seem impos­si­ble now. If I could read even just a book a month I’d be happy.

The writ­ing’s impor­tant, too. As my job changes, I find myself less inclined to write about music. The time it takes to do it right, plus the lack of inter­est from the gen­er­al pub­lic in read­ing music con­tent have dis­cour­aged me from writ­ing. I still love read­ing great music writ­ing and I’m inspired by folks who’ve real­ly had to over­come set­backs in their careers as music crit­ics, name­ly my old boss Christo­pher R. Wein­garten and some­one who became a dear col­league and music crit con­fi­dant for me this year, Mau­ra John­ston. Their work con­tin­ues to amaze me, even as we’re told that the audi­ence for such writ­ing approach­es nil.

On a per­son­al note, I need to do a bet­ter job of get­ting my house in order. Lit­er­al­ly. I can’t hang a shelf in this place with­out some­thing going hay­wire, which might explain why there are so few shelves. I’m call­ing on my old high school friend Kevin Der­rick to help us sort out how to make life with a baby in a mod­est Kens­ing­ton rowhome a lit­tle more beautiful.

I’m not sure what awaits me next year. My won­der­ful, sup­port­ive wife and love­ly baby son amaze me every day. I’m excit­ed for the chal­lenges that lie ahead in my pro­fes­sion­al life. I’m excit­ed to focus on the prac­ti­cal rather than the per­fect. I feel the future burst­ing with pos­si­bil­i­ty. Bring it on!