New Year’s Resolutions

  1. Always keep New Year’s resolutions.
  2. Get up early and get right out of bed and meditate for ten minutes before starting day (but only after coffee). Am already doing that this morning.
  3. Lose weight. Get more fit. Before this happens: 
  4. Cut down on wine intake, no matter how stressed I am. Find other ways to handle stress, such as herbal tea.
  5. Do something creative/career-oriented every day, and not just watch old episodes of ’70s TV shows on YouTube.
  6. Be more patient with other humans and also with myself.
  7. Be less gutless.
  8. Be less of a ridiculous person.
  9. Don’t buy any more lipsticks/lip glosses until have used up all the ones I have, which are myriad.
  10. Remember I am lucky to be alive and healthy (touch wood).
  11. Be a better girlfriend to Significant Other, who puts up with me for reasons I will never understand.
  12. Help as many animals as I can.
  13. Try to be as vegan as I can.
  14. Read Finnegans Wake (and don’t put an apostrophe in the title, even though I really want to. Joyce wanted the title that way, and yes, I realize it means something).
  15. Fight my natural introversion and actually go out sometimes to see friends and family instead of merely maintaining relationship with them over social media.
  16. Remember that life is just a bowl of cherries. Don’t take it serious. It’s too mysterious:

It is…not, but try to believe it is! Happy 2016, dear readers.

January 1, 2016

Born on this day in 1449, Lorenzo de Medici, “Il Magnifico.” He wrote — among other things — the following words:

Quant’ e bella giovinezza,

Che si fugge tuttavia!

Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:

di doman non c’e certezza.

If you know any romance languages, you can probably figure that out, but just in case, it says (more or less), “How beautiful is youth (or how beautiful is it to be young)/which nevertheless disappears (runs away)/Be happy all who wish to be/of tomorrow there is no certainty.”

Basically, “enjoy life while you can.”

I am currently reading this book, from which I am learning a good deal. Tim Parks’ non-fiction are always terrific. (Not saying his novels aren’t terrific, I just haven’t read any of them — yet.)

Update: Ok, I just finished the afore-linked Tim Parks book and it includes his translation of the bit of poetry above. His translation is, obviously, better than mine. Here it is: How fine youth is/Though it flee away/Let he who wishes, enjoy/Nothing’s certain tomorrow.