2024 new years resolutions, including post new material to this blog

 

Like many I'm working on my new years resolutions list today

Below is a partial list I'll add to over the day. There will be a surprise item I'll add via live video on facebook at 8 pm

In no particular order

Run my first 10k which seems the logical next step after running 5 mile race at personal best average of 16:22

Possibly try a half marathon in the last half of the year

Run a 5k at an average pace under 15 minutes

Walk or run with Chris Jimmerson, Erin Walter and Laura Smith

Have lunch or coffee with erin..

For at least 10 years I read 100 books a year. I haven't finished a book since I started walking in October. So I just set up a goodreads challenge to do 25 books in 2024. More on this in the next few days

Catch up with Joyce Homan , my first and a fellow book lover.

Win my first ever backgammon tournament

Read walking and books while, appropriately, walking and running on treadmill during Austin's super hot weather

Be patient and creative as i find ways to exercise outdoors (which i much prefer to inside) during those hot months.

On treadmill during one of the songs that make me move the fastest, usually industrial bands like ministry and punk bands like minor threat and bad religion I found I can get up to 6.1 mph for 3 minutes. In 2024 I want to extend that to 5 miles by summer and to 10 minutes by January

Run a mile under 12 minutes

Run with Byron Miller ... or at least try to keep up

Walk with BFF Vinni Miller if and when she is ready

There's a guy called Galloway who encourages runners to run run run take short walk then run run run. I created what I call the butki method, walk a mile, run a quarter mile, walk a mile. Keep in mind my first month I walked 99 percent of the time and now it's more 70 percent. In 2024 adjust my method to walk a mile run a mile walk a mile.

Consider doing a half marathon by end of year.

Start in February resuming Co-leading with Nicole am antiracism program called unlearning racism

Run with Travis Roberts

Walk , when he's ready, with Rob Sartin .

Add three new conversation prompts which I'll begin on Monday

In 2024 words of the day will sometimes be names of people who I want folks to know of or with a name ill post this afternoon. Just as how with crosswords clues involving names sometimes that name means nothing to others. I'll try to help with that. So before a post referencing a name I'll do a post introducing a person. In this case the person is George Pimpton

Continue, when she's ready and able, a favorite morning ritual of walking at 7 am with BFF DeAnna Medart

Continue working on my church sponsored project to use local little free libraries, especially ones in parks, to put social justice books in front of folks not normally exposed to them. I limit the social justice part of the library to 25 to 30 with the rest including non fiction and fiction of all ages.

I've expanded my definition of social justice to include mental health, discrimination by sex, age, orientation, etc Now that there's a bin at church people are donating books there and inside books, with help by Richard Halpin and Beki Halpin, is also donating books. In 2024 I'll keep pushing to get books by the austin library which would have to come in between after they are given to recycling reads and before they are pulped.

More activism work, more protest. I'll never forget that what pulled me out of my depression coma was a social justice action to protest an anti Trans group using children's storytelling hours in public libraries to teach hate.

Start 2 ongoing lists, one on ways you can help someone with depression and anxiety, and one on myths and things you should say. I do this not so you better understand why I am often battling negative, guilty thoughts as much as so you can better understand and possibly help those friends and family battling mental health. If there's interest I can start a monthly advice column on these topics.

Try to better understand and remember important things I forgot. I regularly forget that a few years ago I was diagnosed with tardive diskensia, a brain disease often caused by meds. Meaning one of the mental health meds I was prescribed caused me to start having facial ticks. Early on it was considered possibly Parkinson. This shifted my perspective ( there's that word again) on doctors. I grew up thinking all doctors are amazing and while that remains true for most I've had the same two doctors for more than 11 years and one of them gave me this thing.

I was diagnosed as disabled for life.

I had to take months of physical therapy to practice walking up and down stairs.

The irony is I regularly forget the name of the disease that caused sone memory lost.

The mind blowing part is when I'm asked why I started exercising at 55 I say it probably stemmed from watching Dad as I grew up.

I feel sometimes like my mind is Swiss cheese or a puzzle with missing pieces, which freaks me out.

Point being one of those oft forgotten pieces is that I had to essentially relearn how to walk at around 52ish, which both better illustrates the severity things and prompts a question... was the decision to start walking at 55 partly due to having to learn to walk again and being told the more you walk the less worried you'd be

I've gone from being unsure, just a few years ago, that I can walk safely up to my 3rd floor apartment to walking 220 miles this month.

I can't process that I forgot for years that life changing diagnosis. It terrifies me for I'm unsure if there are other huge life changing moments I forgot.

Put simply, was that the impetus to all this? To clarify I'm not sure I was ever unable to walk so much as I shuffled and was suddenly unsteady and nervous on my feet l.

From that unsure, shy walker to one who organized and led a 100 mile exercise campaign on reddit with participants from around the world.

By popular demand I'm setting up today on reddit 3 new international challenges: to exercise 50, 100 or 150 miles in January. If interested in participating but not wanting to join reddit message me and I'll set up a personalized challenge

Writing prompts at least monthly, some writing prompts, some picture or video prompts.

Resume writing more short fiction for fb and maybe longer fiction for a blog I barely used in 2023.

Lastly, for now, I will continue to collect and save and post inspiration or motivation quotes both to inspire others and remind those with depression that they are loved. Depression involves forgetting that and the t.d. makes that even harder to remember.

Thinking About Blues Music And Writing About Music

 
This is something I wrote last weekend as part of a writing exercise where the topic was the blues and the exercise rules are that you can only write for ten minutes, no editing. I thought some of you might be interested in it. i share one of my weak spots as a writer.

 

The Blues
When I first think of the blues, I think of depression but I think I have written
enough about that lately.  

The second thing I think of is blues music. Which reminds me of Hagerstown,
Maryland, where I lived and worked for about ten years before moving to Austin.  

I confess I did not know much about blues music before I started attending an
annual blues festival in Hagerstown. It was a three-day event which meant that
with a staff of about ten news reporters all of us would write at least one story
about the festival's events each year.  

Now I have never been good about writing about music. I am not sure why exactly -
I can write movie, tv and book reviews easily and, often, enjoy it. My first
ever assignment, this was back on my first day on the college newspaper, was to
interview the then-rising star band of Timbuk 3. Yeah, the guys that did that song
"The Future's So Bright I Have To Wear Shades." I was to interview them and then,
in a separate piece, write a review of the concert.  

This was way before I figured out the importance of writing out a long list of questions before interviews. Which is why I proceeded to ask the obvious questions they had been asked a billion times: What does the band name mean? Why do you have a boombox instead of a drummer? Etc. They rolled their eyes and ended the interview early. And the review? Well, there's a saying that is something like "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." I used lots of descriptive words but I could not really articulate what I was thinking and feeling.  

As soon as possible I shifted from the music assignment to campus news where I thrived,
eventually becoming the editor-in-chief for two years. And vowed never to have to
review music albums or concerts again. And I was able to do so for at least a decade or
two. In the 2000s I did attend one or two concerts and wrote that up for an online publication
as well as album reviews. I did this partly to see if I could do better and the short and fast
answer was that, no, I still could not. Maybe this is why I have always been a fan of music criticism, as if reading other writers would teach me the way  

I'm drifting.  

Oh, right, the blues festival. Fortunately, I learned with great relief that I would not have to  review any shows. Instead, my job was to talk to fans. Now that had some challenges namely
there were several stages so there was no real break between the music, played at a volume that made it hard to have a verbal conversation. For someone like me who hates raising his voice, this was a challenge but I do what the job requires and, this time, in addition to the usual questions -  Why are you here? What artist or band do you most want to see? How many years have you come? - I had a few new ones in my backpocket. These were questions like "What do you think is most misunderstood about the blues? How does listening to the blues make you feel? I think there is a  perception that listening to the blues will make you sad - had that been you experience?  

I enjoyed the music I heard at the festival and bought a few albums based on shows I saw.  

Then I left journalism and switched to special education work. But this is also when I decided to return to an old love of photography. My favorite photo subjects were patterns but I was starting to enjoy photographing live people, especially performing. So I would return to the festival each year and take photos of the bands and artists and I loved it.  

I miss that festival but still take my camera with me when I go see a free show. 

 

 

School Memories

 I was thinking of this memory today and decided to share it.  

At my first job where I was working with students needing special education there was a boy
I am going to call Sam (not his real name). Sam was a good kid but he could be quite impulsive. He had a bad habit of flipping over tables, often near the end of the day.  

By then I'd noticed two things: 1) A lot of kids would work for candy. It wasn't the best way to get them to do what you want but I'd do it when needed but I'd try to keep the amount of candy small. 2) At the end of the school day the principal would announce "All the buses are here" and Sam would, in his classroom, say it with him.  

I began carrying with me each day a small container of tic-tacs. Sam usually made a face before he picked up a table. Once I saw that face I'd say "Sam " and point to my pocket and he'd say "tic tac?" and I'd say yes and he'd put the table down and be good for the rest of the day. The teachers were impressed and astonished and this went on for months and months during which I refined it and would get Sam's attention before he stood up, he 'd ask if i had tic tac and be good for the rest day.
Oh he only got the tic tac at day's end not right at the moment he might have been flipping tables.  

Now that he was no longer flipping tables his behavior record became clean and he'd have whole days with no behavior at all.
I approached the principal to see if we could give a reward to Sam. From then on every Friday
I'd escort Sam to the the principals office and HE would be the one, at the appropriate time, to announce "all buses are in!" which he would be so happy and excited about.  

A few years later I returned to the school as a substitute teacher. I wondered if I would see Sam and if he would remember our prior arrangements. Sure enough, Sam saw me and slapped his pants pocket and said, "Tic-tac?"