Twelve Things and Ten Things

What would the celebration of the New Year be without a list? Though it is not binding, these are a few things I would like to see myself accomplish. Some are long term goals, things that I have always wanted to do, will still want for myself at the end of 2010. Others are easily attainable, but this year seems to be the best time to try. Additionally, I am including the ten things of 2009 and that have stood out to me as momentous for the year.

Twelve Things To Do in 2010

1. Read Calvin's Institutes, The Brother's Karamazov, and Wendell Berry's Port William series.
I am always going to be a reader and a lover of story, so adding specific books to the list may not seem like a big deal, but these are some specific books that I know need to be read. Calvin, as a Reformed, Calvinist Presbyterian, seems an obvious choice. But having missed his 500th birthday year, I figured why not shoot for 501? TBK scares me, given my previous track record with Les Miserables (see the note below). But Dostoevsky's classic work is one that demands to be read. And if you have not read any of Berry's chronicles of the fictitious Port William, Kentucky you have missed a glorious encounter with the beauty and suffering of everyday life in a small town.

2. Write a book.
This is a given, I suppose. I am not a terribly disciplined writer, and where some authors can churn out a book a year, I have not "finished" a fictional thread in a decade and have never managed to get my non-fiction past the first sentence. So this year, my goal to write daily, to write purposefully, to write with publication in mind.

3. Lose at least 50 pounds.
Just putting it out there. having turned 27 this year, inching ever closer to 30 (a good age, I believe) I see more and more how I need to take better care of myself. I am going to continue to reign in my eating habits (it's already been 9 days since my last diet coke) and exercising more.

4. Start a savings account for my trip to the 2016 Olympics in Rio!
I have always wanted to attend the Olympic games, and I have always wanted to travel to Brazil (Brasil). My hope is that in six years time, with my friend Rebeca, I will accomplish both goals!

5. Learn Portuguese.
Languages are not easy for my tongue, but give me six years to struggle through and maybe I will have the basics down in time for the Olympics.

6. Travel to new places on the East and West Coast.
I haven't traveled as much as I would like, and having been raised in the Midwest, the coastal areas are somewhat foreign to me (I was seventeen before I saw an ocean, though within a year and I had seen the Atlantic from both sides). San Francisco (fog, a Giant's game and the Golden Gate Bridge), Portland (visiting friends), Seattle (first Starbucks location); Philadelphia (Liberty Bell, Phillies game, and a philly sandwich), Asheville (hippies, friends, mountains), Charleston (moss, houses, accents); I would like to travel and visit and see. Traveling buddies are welcome to apply. All costs will be shared. Fun is sure to ensue.

7. Actually take a vacation.
Again, this is a tandem point - traveling to the East or West coast would count as a vacation. But the larger point is that I never go somewhere for vacation. My parents are not travelers and I have not developed that sensibility, but I would like to start. Even if I just to to Eureka Springs for a day, I'd like to take a vacation this year.

8. Write more letters.
I love mail. It means a great deal to receive something that a loved one touched, and wrote and sent to me, to read words on a page that are communication from far away or very close. To send a card or a note, to share encouragement and ideas.

9. Attend a concert of live music every month.
Living in a college town, this is not a hard objective to meet, and even the cost of some concerts (free) is not prohibitive. So the goal to listen to a live artist, perhaps to one from a genre I may not "like" or someone who is unfamiliar to me. Live music is different from recordings. It moves and bounces and plays in very different ways and if it is good, it is a delight to the ear and to the soul.

10. Learn to paint.
This is a yearly standard. Every year I say I will learn to paint. And every year I fail to do so. Might as well add that I would like to learn to play the guitar and row a boat.

11. Watch the final season of Lost.
Yes. I want to see how this show - bizarre and brilliant at the same time - will end. I want a satisfying and cohesive braiding of all the threads and all the characters and all the twists and turns. We'll see if it happens.

12. Raising some support.
www.ruf.org

Ten Great Things About 2009
1. Surviving the ICE STORM.
I don't ever want to live through a storm like that again. I felt like a refugee, destruction and chaos everywhere. Cold, miserable, in a new town without parents or family, it was a bad week. I am thankful for the friends who took me in, for the return to normalcy that eventually came, and most of all, I will remember to be thankful for heat and electricity.

2. Summer Conference.
I'd been to SC before, but not as staff for RUF, so it was fun to spend sixteen days on the beach with some of my favorite people. It was hard, as much as I love them, to live with so many other girls in one house for two weeks. And the actual work of putting on the conference is not all fun and games. But I was encouraged and blessed by my friends and co-laborers in the gospel, by the students who came to learn and grow in grace, and the work of the Spirit in our lives. I can't wait for SC 2010!

3. Setting up the Utilities for my apartment.
Expensive. Time consuming. Confusing. But in the end, when I pay my water and electric bill each month, I feel slightly satisfied. Go figure.

4. Buying a car.
Expensive. Time Consuming. Confusing. Having rear-ended a Chevy Tahoe on a rainy Friday before Thanksgiving, thereby crumpling the hood of my car, piercing the radiator and cooler, damaging the bumper and the headlights, and totaling the car, I found myself in need of a car. Having done this after the 'Cash for Clunkers' spree in October, I soon realized there were few really good used cars on the market that met my needs and specifications. But finally, I found it... a Kia Rondo. I'm thankful to finally have a car again. Terrified but thankful.

5. Going to see a live show of Prairie Home Companion.
For almost as long as I can remember, Garrison Keilor has been a part of my Saturday evenings. The musical sensibilities, the story telling, the homespun earthiness of his humor and outlook have shaped me. I don't always care for his style or agree with what he has to say, but it was a delight to go with my friend Anna and see a live airing of the show. I laughed a lot.

6. Knitting my first sweater (and a pair of socks).
I made the socks at Christmas, so technically in 2008. But this summer I completed my first 'wearable' sweater. my knitting improves all the time.

7. Midnight Harry Potter with the roommies.
Last roommate adventure together.

8. My first football game... ever.
Troy State at Arkansas. Georgia Lackey. Free tickets. Fourth row on the 20 yard line. 65 degrees in early November. Bobby Petrino. An Arkansas Win. Perfect.

9. Finishing Les Miserables.
It only took me three and a half years. I was interrupted from the last 100 pages by a PBS showing of Ian McKellan in 'King Lear' and that was just about the only thing that could have stopped me from finishing the book. It is a beautiful, if somewhat daunting, story of grace and redemption. Hugo's attention to detail is astonishing. From a forty-page overview of the Battle of Waterloo (the importance of which only becoming apparent in the last paragraphs) to the tour of Paris' nineteenth century sewer system, and characters featuring everyone from the Kings of France and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the aristocrats and revolutionaries and the enforcers of law, the honest paupers and the swindling scoundrels of the streets and the nameless victims of disease, poverty and change, I felt as though there was no stone unexplored, no person unexamined, no injustice gone unnoticed.

10. The Swine Flu.
Okay, it's not a great thing. And I wasn't super excited to have it. But have it I (most likely) did. And on reflection of that week, lying in bed, bored out of my mind, sleeping mid-day to evening, I am thankful to have had it and gotten the immunity. In the same way I am thankful to have had the chicken pox three times, hopefully to never have the virus again in the form of shingles. And it was a reminder, in my otherwise self-centered and self-protective life, what something as simple as an illness can do change, if not take, a life.

We'll see what 2010 brings! Happy New Year!