undercover idealist

22 before 23 

1. try bikram yoga (July!)
2. run a 5K sub-9 (…working on it)
3. double the weights in bodypump (I went up 50% so far)
4. visit Chicago (or NYC)
5. read a book in Spanish
6. read the Emperor of All Maladies (plowing steadily, counting it)
7. publish another literary work (science might take longer)
8. finish a short story/prose piece
9. submit an article somewhere 
10. take another international trip (India? Singapore? England?)
11. visit a new continent (so…Europe, Africa, or Australia)
12. visit a friend in another state east of Nevada (Austin, TX in June!)
13. visit Powell’s in Portland
14. take a ride in a hot air balloon
15. visit Napa and/or Sonoma (Aug?)
16. visit Alcatraz (June?)
17. maybe actually go to Outsidelands this year (looking likely)
18. visit Sutro Baths 
19. take a belly-dancing class
20. try pilates
21. learn how to play a new song on the piano (halfway there)
22. check out the Legion of Honor

I suspect I’m going to be crossing off a lot of these this summer post-qualifying exam.

The (ongoing) book list for 2013 (starting March 23rd)

Fiction

1. The Unbearable Lightness of Being 
2. The Bell Jar
3. The Fault in Our Stars 
4. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 
5. Drown (in progress)
6. This is How You Lose Her
7. The Immortals
8. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
9. The Magic Mountain 
10. Garden of Eden
11. The Painted Drum (started but didn’t finish)
12. NW 
13. The Lost Books of the Odyssey
14. We Were the Mulvaneys
15. The Island of the Day Before
16. The Kite Runner 
17. The Good Earth
18. The God of Small Things
19. The Stranger
20. Norwegian Wood (or something by Murakami)
21. All the Pretty Horses
22. The People of Paper
23. Looking for Alaska
24. Gone Girl
25. The Beautiful and Damned (in progress)
27. The Yellow Birds
28. The Things They Carried
29. Matchless
30. The Passion

Fiction (Short-Stories)

1. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
2. Dear Life
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. In Our Time/Ernest Hemingway
5. The Tiny Book of Tiny Short-Stories (JGL—can you believe it?)

Non-fiction (pretty much all half-read at this point)

1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 
2. The Emperor of All Maladies (in progress)
3. Science is Culture
4. Means to an End 
5. …something by Carl Sagan because he’s awesome
6. Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted
7. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (I’m creeped out by how much I still like her)
8. The Where, the Why, and the How
9. This Will Make You Smarter
10. Tiny Beautiful Things
11. Dreamland

Poetry (aka poets I like but haven’t read enough/all of)

1. Rilke (in progress)
2. Jack Gilbert (Collected Poems)
3. Mary Oliver
4. Adrienne Rich
5. Frank O’Hara
6. Anis Mojgani
7. Rumi
8. Jeffrey McDaniel
9. Charles Bukowski
10. Andrea Gibson
11. Buddy Wakefield
12. Jane Hirshfield

Books I currently recall reading in 2012:

Poetry

Jack Gilbert
Marie Howe (2)
Rose McLarney
Ira Sadoff
Lucille Lang Day (2)
Allen Ginsberg
Derrick Brown
Natalie Diaz
William Carlos Williams (partial)
Sylvia Plath (partial)
Rilke (partial)
Stephen Dunn

Non-fiction

And the Band Played On
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Microbe Hunters
Letters to a Young Poet

Fiction

The History of Love
The Interpreter of Maladies
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Yellow Wallpaper

The (ongoing) list for 2013 (starting March 23rd)

Fiction

1. The Unbearable Lightness of Being 
2. The Bell Jar
3. The Fault in Our Stars 
4. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 
5. Drown
6. This is How You Lose Her
7. The Immortals
8. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
9. The Magic Mountain 
10. Garden of Eden
11. The Painted Drum (started but didn’t finish)
12. NW 
13. The Lost Books of the Odyssey
14. We Were the Mulvaneys
15. The Island of the Day Before
16. The Kite Runner 
17. The Good Earth
18. The God of Small Things
19. The Stranger
20. Norwegian Wood (or something by Murakami)
21. All the Pretty Horses
22. The People of Paper
23. Looking for Alaska
24. Gone Girl
25. The Beautiful and Damned (in progress…on my phone)
27. The Yellow Birds
28. The Things They Carried
29. Matchless

Fiction (Short-Stories)

1. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
2. Dear Life
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. In Our Time/Ernest Hemingway
5. The Tiny Book of Tiny Short-Stories (JGL—can you believe it?)

Non-fiction (pretty much all half-read at this point)

1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 
2. The Emperor of All Maladies
3. Science is Culture
4. Means to an End (will be re-reading for quals)
5. …something by Carl Sagan because he’s awesome
6. Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted
7. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (I’m creeped out by how much I still like her)
8. The Where, the Why, and the How
9. This Will Make You Smarter
10. Tiny Beautiful Things
11. Dreamland

Poetry (aka poets I like but haven’t read enough/all of)

1. Rilke 
2. Jack Gilbert (Collected Poems)
3. Mary Oliver
4. Adrienne Rich
5. Frank O’Hara
6. Anis Mojgani
7. Rumi
8. Jeffrey McDaniel
9. Charles Bukowski
10. Andrea Gibson
11. Buddy Wakefield
12. Jane Hirshfield

Also, in my efforts to stay creative-ish and sane, I’m going to start writing daily haikus (or other short forms).  …Let’s see how long I can keep that one up.

Let’s see what I managed to accomplish this past year:

• tried skiing
• ran a 10K
• started kickboxing
• went skydiving
• went horseback riding
• tried archery
• published a poem in a non-school-affiliated journal
• finished Reading Lolita in Tehran
• took a solo international trip 
• visited a friend on the East Coast

Alright, 22-year-old me, you know the drill. 

1. try bikram yoga
2. run a 5K sub-9
3. double the weights in bodypump
4. read at least 50 books (1 a week ish)
5. read a book in Spanish
6. read the Emperor of All Maladies
7. publish another literary work (science might take longer)
8. finish a short story/prose piece
9. submit an article somewhere 
10. take another international trip (India? Singapore? England?)
11. visit a new continent (…so Europe, Africa, or Australia)
12. visit a friend in another state (East of Nevada)
13. visit Powell’s in Portland
14. take ride in a hot air balloon
15. visit Napa and/or Sonoma
16. visit Alcatraz
17. maybe actually go to Outsidelands this year
18. visit Sutro Baths
19. take a belly-dancing class
20. try pilates
21. learn how to play a new song on the piano
22. check out the Legion of Honor

Who take me SKYDIVING.  WHICH WAS AWESOME.  

In a nutshell  

First 5 seconds:  OMGWTF I’M FALLING ON MY BACK OUT OF A PLANE

Next 20 seconds:  HOLY SHIT I’M FALLING THROUGH THE SKY THIS IS SO COOL IT’S SO PRETTY OMG MY EARS NEED TO POP

Next 30 seconds, parachute has been pulled:  THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL!  I CAN SEE NEVADA AND THE PACIFIC OCEAN ALL AT ONCE

Last 5 seconds:  BOO I DON’T WANT TO LAND

Post-landing:  wtf are all these things sticking to my clothes?  I thought that was grass!

Yeah, basically.

Last year, in my efforts to take control and start being excited about life again, I started making lists of new things I wanted to try or specific goals I wanted to accomplish within the year.  This led me to complete the following:

• take a yoga class
• run a 5k
• go to a shooting range, learn how to shoot a gun, and shoot zombies
• go rock-climbing
• try fencing
• learn how to work with mice (yeah, yeah, yeah, that would have happened anyway)
• vote in CA
• read (most of) And the Band Played On
• start reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Overall, not a terrible year. And I started taking steps towards new goals that have rolled over onto this year’s list:

1. run a 10k
2. run a half-marathon, then maaaaybe a full marathon
3. take a kickboxing class (April 3rd)
4. go skydiving
5. go to Oregon (and take a ride in a hot air balloon)
6. go horseback riding
7. try archery (April 7th)
8. do a pull-up
9. learn to drive a stick shift
10. learn to ski (March 31st)
11. go swing dancing in the park
12. submit a literary composition to a non-school-affiliated journal
13. get a new tattoo
14. finish 1000 paper cranes
15. read Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman
16. finish Reading Lolita in Tehran
17. read El amor en los tiempos de cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera in Spanish)
18. visit a different country
19. visit a friend on the East Coast
20. go rock-climbing and NOT have sadly incapacitated arms for three days afterwards
21. finish a painting

Alright, let’s see how far I got:

1. Read Game of Thrones (I’m crossing this out even though I’m still not quite done.  I WILL be soon.)
2. Finish reading And the Band Played On (ummm…when I get back to SF)
3. Finish The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (…also when I get back to SF.  Fail.)
4. Go running every day (BAHAHAHAHAHA.  FAIL.  I did work out most days though, even if I didn’t actually go running)
5. Write poetry (1 poem.  And I started an essay.  It COUNTS)
6. Christmas shopping
7. Red Rock photo shoot (YAY)
8. Learn how to shoot a gun/go to a shooting range (DOUBLE YAY)
9. Make 300 cranes (ummm…I made 6)

So…5/9.  And some others will be completed soonish/break isn’t technically over.  Not awful.

Other successes:

• renewed passport
• dentist
• acquired a lace dress
• got a tiny clip-on mp3 player for running
• started ab ripper x (must get the rest of p90x)
• I can now do more push-ups with better form.  still shitty, but I’m seeing progress!
• bought a cake pan.  baked cranberry almond cake.  twas yummy
• got my dad to start exercising.  sort of
• decided to go o Puerto Rico this summer for sure

Other things I want to do the next time I’m in town:

• archery
• fencing
• (car) racing
• shoot more zombies eventually
• valley of fire
• death valley (i’m told october to march is ideal)
• mt. charleston/skiing/snowboarding
• more hiking
• rock-climbing
• horseback riding

Also, my friend convinced me to take a pole-dancing class with her the next time I’m in town.  That will be ridiculous but so amusing.  OMG MY FRIEND SHOULD DO THAT FOR HER BACHELORETTE PARTY.  Except she won’t.  Sigh.