A slacker from the beginning!

So it's only week one on this adventure, and I've already been a slacker. I apologize for the 2 people reading this. :) Anyway. It's been a bit of a crazy week, so I think I'll have plenty of reasons to use my new words. I am quickly realizing this blog might contain many entries that are not even remotely cogent to the original goal. I hope that will not bother anyone!

I have really been trying to turn over a new leaf this year. The end of this semester made me realize that there was, sadly, no real dichotomy between my personal and professional life in the sense that I spent a large amount of my free time working on school stuff. So, after years of having nothing but derision for New Year's resolutions, I made some of my own this year and am trying to stick to them. I think I feel so passionately about it this year because I had a discussion with my students about resolutions, and they brought up the great point that if you never resolve to change anything about yourself, you always stay the same. I thought about that and realized they had a great point--I don't want to wake up at the age of 65 and realize that I am exactly the same person I was at 25. One of my major resolutions was to spend more time reading and less time watching television. My limited budget made me wonder how exactly I could afford to read more...then it all hit me...hello...the LIBRARY.

I always forget about the fact that you can go to the library and borrow books for free! Of course they are only truly free if you remember to take them back on time. Here is where my next resolution kicked in. After my first trip to the library, I came home with 3 books. For the first time in my life, I read 2 out of the 3 books within the two-week limit and only had to renew one. Not only that, but as of today, I have been checking books in and out of the library every Saturday for 6 weeks and am yet to have a late fee!!! For some this might seem common, but for me, it's a big deal.

Before my trip today, I was sitting in my room, convalescing from my Saturday morning run, when I decided to up the stakes. My sister gave me this wonderful book for graduation: 1001 Books to Read Before You Die (this book could very well be some form of collusion on the part of the publication industry seeing as how they stand to make quite a bit of money if everyone reads 1001 books). I went through the book to see how many I had read (this was a bit tricky--I had to be honest and not count books I had simply been assigned to read in college--if I had just done my homework, I could have had quite a few more checks). I had read 17 out of the 1001. My roommate and I were chatting about it, and I wondered how many I had left to read (somewhere in all of this I decided to starting reading through the book). After borrowing her calculator, we found I had 984 left. That seemed like a lot to read. I began to feel a bit despondent, but I decided I would never get any closer to the end of the book if I just thought about it.

So today I begin stage two of the reading more books resolution. The first book on my list: Aesop's Fables. Unfortunately, it seems decorous in the library system to only stock this book in the children’s' department. It felt weird to begin my journey into the world of the well read by going into the juvenile nonfiction section. Oh well. Discussing this new endeavor with my roommate made me wonder how many books the average person reads in his/her lifetime. How many books have I read in my lifetime? Oh the questions...So there you have it...a little window into my world this week. I only have 7 out of the ten words in this entry, but I think it's a good first effort.