New Year, Manic Me

I was experiencing some kind of end-of-the-year temporary depression, these last several days.  Once again, running has pulled me out of it; I managed a 7.2 mile run today.  It's probably the longest I've ever run so it feels good; and my mood has lifted.

Aside from daily exercise, the new diet, and daily blogging, and despite the very great possibility that this will make me sound like a manic, obsessive idiot--here are the other things I want to do just about every day this year:

--touch the piano at least once for around twenty minutes on average, leading to at least one or two afternoons playing a Schubert Piano Trio or the Brahms Horn Trio or similar with a group of old musician-friends.

--have a mid-afternoon tea or hot cocoa break.  Partly because I feel I should drink more tea, partly because it sounds like such a relaxing thing to do.  I don't have enough relaxing moments incorporated into my day.  (And that ten-minute break cannot include checking emails, paying bills or any other particularly useful activity; that would defeat the purpose.)

--check emails less; instead, set aside just a few minutes in the early morning, and ten minutes after dinner, to handle all emails.

--read and speak French and Japanese for at least 30 minutes (not at the same time, ha).  I've lost most of my fluency with both languages these past eight or nine years; time to reclaim it.

--play outdoors with my son every day:  basketball, soccer, tennis, biking, walking, whatever.

--write or draw or complete science projects or carpentry projects or board games with my son (even ten minutes is far better than nothing).

--write a minimum of 30 minutes a day (new stuff, not editing).

--watch or read something funny, keep fully abreast of the news, and learn something significant about history, every day.

--read twenty or more pages of one classic work a day (I have a goal of reading about 100 "great books" in the next few years).

--start playing the electric bass (I have one, given to me a few years ago by a friend, but I've never tried to play it).  Maybe try the guitar too.

--read once a day with my son.  (I'm setting the bar kind of high as a mom this year--but why not?)

--work every day to become a published writer, either by sending works out, developing a web site, finding and reading good magazines, etc. etc.

--spend about ten minutes a day, perhaps right before the afternoon tea, organizing papers (otherwise I'll keep falling behind with that).

--watch fifteen to thirty minutes of my art history or science dvds right before or after dinner (the two "Great Courses" I've meant to complete for about seven years); take an extension course on astronomy.

--make time to cook a special dish, maybe twice a week a completely new dish (I want to improve my cooking, make it more nutritionally balanced and more creative at the same time) or an old dish, prepared in a careful way.

--make time to email and call old friends (not every day, but at least once a week).

--garden at least once a week; start a composting program at home.

--go hiking or walking somewhere special at least once a week.

--meditate at least once a week for twenty minutes.

--advance the video career with at least five hours of effort a week.  More once the stories are out (ten hours a week minimum).

Am hoping, with this slightly over-the-top micro-managing of my own life, to break the habit of letting too many things slide.  I'm applying here the same technique I used in 2015 for diet and exercise, which is simply:  do it, whatever "it" is, every single day.

So, time to get started.