Resolutions 02-01-2012
I do not believe that I have ever taken New Year's resolutions seriously. Part of this is that I have never put much thought into the value of the resolutions. But now I see that, if applied judiciously and carried out diligently, resolutions can be a wonderful way to motivate one's self toward one's innermost goals and ambitions. Self-improvement, the benefit of loved ones, monetary gain, anything: there is a one-year countdown for progressing toward any of these objectives, and three hundred and sixty five six days provide ample time if you care enough to really pursue something.
So, with newfound motivation and an in-progress plan, I have decided upon three specific, concrete New Year's resolutions, each of which feed into larger, ongoing, more abstract aims in my life:
Travel
In my life, I have never been:
- North of New York City
- West of West Virginia
- Off of the eastern seaboard of the United States
- On an airplane
One of my qualities that I am fond of is that I am open-minded when it comes to embracing people of all varieties, be it ethnicity, race, religion, gender, orientation, or anything else. To discriminate against one's fellow man according to such trivialities is preposterous. However, I have thus far been relatively insulated: though I grew up the diverse Washington DC Metro area and attended the remarkably diverse George Mason University, I have never been elsewhere. There is a big difference between living in a neighborhood with many people from nation X and going to nation X. There is a big difference between living in an area whose culture and society is heavily influenced by that of nation Y and seeing nation Y itself.
So, by the end of the year, I will travel to somewhere outside of my confined east coast comfort zone.
Photography
In the past month or so, I have begun to take up photography as a hobby. Thus far, I have tagged along on a few incredibly fun shoots, I have tinkered around with a DSLR camera or two and I have snapped a few pics here and there with my phone. But I desperately want to pursue it more seriously and vigorously. Why?
Because I think that photography will provide me with an outlet to see the beauty and wonder in the world around me with greater clarity and more penetrating insight. At times, my cynicism and skepticism form a cloud of sorts, blocking the radiance that is to be found everywhere. Though endlessly optimistic in many regards, my perspectives can sometimes border on the morose.
Taking a photograph is an action which essentially freezes a moment in space time, capturing the world as it was in one particular instant to be remembered forever. It forces the photographer to contemplate his subject and find something worthy of capture. By photographing the world around me, I have to peer deeper into it all to find something that makes even the cynic within me decide that some little instance should be recorded. And so far, though my experiences are sparse, I think that it is working as I had envisioned.
So, throughout the year, I will continue to explore photography further and to pursue it with increasing energy and earnestness.
Learning
About one month ago, I posted my learning list, a list of topics that I want to learn more about, formulated in a stream of consciousness fashion. It includes topics ranging from the technical to the philosophical to the artistic and beyond, representing a pretty accurate cross-section of my interests (as far as I am concerned). Progressing through this list, learning more and more about the concepts that intrigue me, will not only represent significant self-improvement in the form of increased knowledge and insight, but will also help to achieve my ongoing life goal of continuing education in the absence of a formalized educational structure, namely college. One of my concerns following graduation was that the loss of the rigor and structure imposed by coursework and research at my university would cause my pursuit of knowledge to stagnate due to a drop in motivation. But the learning list, combined with a resolution to eat through as much of it as possible, incentivizes my continued education (as a supplement to my own innate curiosity).
So, throughout the year, I will continue to learn and discover more about the items on the learning list, with the goal of being able to say that I learned a significant (subjectively determined) level of knowledge about twenty of the thirty topics on the list by the end of the year.
Though the most vague and hand-wavey of the resolutions, I think that it is perhaps the most important. To cease to learn is to cease to live.