Call them resolutions or what you will; these are the things I'm going to try to do this year.
1. Learn Esperanto. I am fascinated by languages, for humans and computers. Although wrapping my head around strange programming languages has always come easily for me, I've fallen short in each of my numerous forays into human languages. I think this is more through a lack of self-discipline than any fundamental hang-up however. Learning a language is hard, and without an immediate need of its use, I just eventually lose the motivation. I chose Esperanto since it is easier to learn (since it is highly regular), has a community of people anxious to teach it, and it supposedly improves the speed with which you can pick up other languages. I just signed up for a "personal tutor", so lessons by email should commence shortly.
2. Memorize more poems. I had an instructor who preached about the lost art of memorization. Lacking writing, the poets of ancient times memorized thousands of lines of poetry to pass on their oral traditions to the next generations. When composing new poems, they had their civilization's entire history in their brain to draw upon. Paper and ink have made our memories' lazy; computers, lazier still. I like memorizing poems, but haven't memorized a new one in a few years. I've even found that I can't quite recall all of those that I once knew. I hope to begin by re-memorizing a few of my favorites, then memorizing a new poem every one or two weeks.
3. Waste less time. Ah, this is the most difficult of the three, but essential to finding the time for the other two. I am a natural list-maker (see this post), but for some reason do not use this as a tool to stay on task. I am going to try a few different things to help me stay focused, starting with a list of goals for each day. As an additional help, if you are a fellow resident of KEC 2130 and see me wasting time, do feel free to give me a sharp slap or electric shock--nothing works better than classical conditioning.
A less formal goal is to write to this here blog a bit more, though I don't want to pose too much work for my adoring fan blog. Nobody but me is interested in Jack Zduriencik updates, but since he's been the topic of two of my last three posts I feel I should mention that he is doing an incredible job, and I'm sorry I ever doubted him.
1 comments:
I'm a big fan of resolution #2. I try to do a similar thing with music, memorizing a couple of new tunes (words and chords) every month, while maintaining everything I've learned in the past. Poetry was, for whatever reason, *much* harder for me to memorize (at least, back in highschool, and I don't think I've ever tried since.) :(
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