A New Year

As a sort of resolution to myself, I've decided that I need someplace to more regularly put down my thoughts, and so I've decided that maybe a blog is the right way (place) to do this? I'm not going to post here at any regular cadence—and I can't imagine that anybody would actually want to read this—but it's more of a thing for myself, just so I have a record of where I'm at. I plan to try this for a year, and if it sticks, it sticks. If not... oh well.

I turned thirty last week which feels like a good point of demarcation. I love that my birthday is right at the end of December, stuck between Christmas and the New Year. I never had school, I usually don't have work (or at least I don't right now), so it feels like a good reset before January and whatever lies ahead. Thirty feels... not old, I guess, but more like a time for me to start fresh and put myself in a good space creatively for the next twelve months. Last night a friend told me, "Thirty is not that bad. Thirty-one is when you really start feeling old." So, I plan to make the best of things.

Maybe this is where I should start listing out my resolutions for 2025:

1. Eat healthier and exercise more regularly.
2. Shoot and release at least one short film this year.
3. Be more proactive about writing new poems.
4. Read more (and use social media less).
5. Look for a new job (if I don't get the raise I'm hoping for).
6. Publish In Passing (or find somebody to do so for me).
7. Start publishing chapbooks and full length collections through & Change.
8. Find somebody to take control of Ghost City.
9. Draw and paint more frequently.
10. Stay in better contact with friends / send more postcards and letters.

I think if I can do these things I'll feel more fulfilled and less... despairing about the world. The social media use is a big part of this for me. I like being connected to friends, but there's so much depressing shit on there that I don't need to be looking at on a regular basis. I should be reading before bed (or writing!) and not scrolling through Twitter for 45 minutes.

I work from home most of the week and find that sitting in front of the computer all day is BAD actually! So I've ordered a new treadmill to use at home which I think will get me back into a regualar exercise routine. I was going to the gym every day last winter but then Braden and I moved into this new house which is much further from the gym, so I cancelled my mebership in the spring. I was doing okay in the summer because we have a lot of walking trails behind our house, but now that it's winter again... I need some other way to exercise. Workout videos are not a good solution for me. I told myself I would use the stationary bike more, but the seat hurts my butt if I'm on there for more than 15 minutes at a time.

I've also been going through a dry spell with writing, which has happened before, but this one has been especially prolonged. I wrote a new poem this morning for the first time since... June? I've done some revision in that time and I reordered the poems in my manuscript which felt produtive. In the second half of 2024, I also had a ton of poems picked up by various journals. Now I just need to start generating new work I can send out. Hopefully if I keep up this blog on a regular basis, it'll help get me in a better writing habit.

Some books I'd like to read in the first half of 2025 include:

• The Wild Boys (1971) by William S. Burroughs
• Home (2008) by Marilynne Robinson
• Nothing But the Night (1948) by John Williams
• Small Rain (2024) by Garth Greenwell
• The Married Man (2000) by Edmund White
• Box Hill (2023) by Adam Mars-Jones
• Our Evenings (2024) by Alan Hollinghurst
• Ghost Image (1981) by Hervé Guibert
• Crazy for Vincent (1989) by Hervé Guibert

I'm sure there will be some poetry and nonfiction in there too, but I tend to pick away at those throughout the year. I did just finish Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (2004) yesterday which took me a while to settle into, but I think I see where the four-novel-arc is headed, and since Scorsese might be adapting Home, I'm excited to dig into that.

As far as movie, I'll be rewatching Nosferatu on Friday after work which I'm very excited about. It was a lot to take in on a first watch, especially with the shadowy cinematography, but I think I'm ready to sit down with that again. And then this weekend I'll be seeing Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada which I've been looking forward to since it premiered at Cannes last summer. I was going back and forth about whether I should read the novel before seeing the movie, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, so the decision has been made for me.

I'm heading to Orlando for work next week which will be nice since we're supposed to get some really cold weather while I'm away. I'm just hoping it's warm enough down there for me to go swimming.

I think I'll write a bit more about what I want to do with & Change and Ghost City in a separate post soon. There's a lot to unpack with that (maybe I'll write out my mini-manifesto).

I'm headed out soon to see John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) on 16mm at Kinonik. For now though, I'll end this with a watercolor painting I did a couple days ago, based on the image I used in the header for this post. I'll try to include more work throughout the year, or just links to other stuff I find exciting. I doubt every post will be this long, especially if I'm posting regularly, but this feels like a good start.