inconsequential / 2019 goals?
I suppose there is a question mark after goals because I have no sense of what 2019 brings. I changed my website up for the new year—I’ve had the previous theme for about 3 years now, and decided it was time I refined some of my photo collections and strengthened some aspects of my website (this is still a WIP). I’ve added a “writing” section because writing more is a major goal for 2019. I started by submitting a piece to 35mmc, a film photography blog that I’ve been following for a while now. I think that will be the last definitive “non fiction” type of writing I’ll do for a while—I’m interested in blurring the lines between fiction and reality and experimenting with how hazy those lines can get. I also integrated the Medium post I wrote a few months ago into my website here. I like Medium because it’s accessible for people who would otherwise never go on my website, but it feels much less personal. I changed up some photos from that piece and added a few more.
Back to the topic of goals—reading, as always, is part of my goal list. I attempted to read 40 books in 2018 but only completed 38. This year, I’m aiming for 60. Since New Year’s Day, I’ve read My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki, The Once and Future World by J.B. MacKinnon, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, and Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. I was trying to do a book a day but that seemed like a path straight to burnout. Here is my tentative list for the year. Leave a comment if there’s anything you think I’d like!
Werner Herzog - A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living by Krista Tippett
Call Them By Their Names: American Crises and Other Essays by Rebecca Solnit
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
City of Segregation by Andrea Gibbons
Draft No 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee
Educated by Tara Westover
Feel Free by Zadie Smith
Florida by Lauren Groff
Hold Still by Sally Mann
How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
My Own Devices: Essays from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love by Dessa
On Writing by Stephen King
On Writing Well by William Zinsser
Once and Forever by Kenji Miyazawa
Ongoingness: The End of a Diary Sarah Manguso
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger by Soraya Chemaly
So Far So Good by Ursula K Le Guin
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Tell Me How it Ends by Valeria Luiselli
Telling True Stories by Misc
The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New by Annie Dillard
The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change by Gleb Raygorodetsky
The Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Andurraqib
The Devotion fo Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
The Mirage Factory by Gary Krist
The Most Wanted Man in China by Fang Lizhi
The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
The Once and Future World by JB MacKinnon
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Stephen Brusatte
The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
There Are Little Kingdoms by Kevin Barry
Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver
Watchmen by Alan Moore
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
Why Dinosaurs Matter by Kenneth Lacovera
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie
“Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world.
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