Christmas and New Year's Day passed just like any other day, blending into the continuous fabric of time. And whoosh, we are swept into the "fateful" (? hopefully not) 2012.
The phrase "New Year's Resolution(s)" had not even occurred to me until someone asked what I'm planning to accomplish this year.
I've tried numerous times to "accomplish" things at the beginning of many new years in the past, those lists were ambitious, hopeful and invariably they ended up being cast aside and forgotten by the end of the second or third month. Set feasible targets, achievable goals -- the advice of many.
Sure. But as soon as I lay them out on paper, I might as well have spelt out their inevitable doom. Plans are meant to go awry in my world. So to counter that, I have decided to not make any concrete plans but only set a general direction and improvise as I go, and last year proved more than fruitful. Of course I'm talking about my reading life, what else.
So I was skimming through the books I read and realized the choices were too haphazard. But no matter, the entire year, now in restrospect, served to build up a nice rhythm, a sort of confidence at venturing into uncharted biblio-territory. I remember I used to literally have "heartaches", not in the sentimental sense but an irksome sensation borne our of anxiety and lack of confidence whenever I picked up a book I didn't think I could finish. Somehow, that never happened last year. So I thought that was a good sign and good start.
This year, the rule of thumb is this: more non-fiction choices. A little bit of history, social science, popular science, biography (a category I've always loathed) and religion. There, that sounds again like an ambitious cocktail. And for fictions, well, when my head is about to explode, and I imagine I'll have many of those moments, I will resort to some "light readings" in that particular genre.
