By some amazing coincidence, my planning is towards age 60 and there are exactly 60 months in between! That presents an opportunity for some freakin’ awesome symmetry and ritual around the number 60. I have a laundry list of to-do items, old bucket list items to reconsider, and even a list from my sister for her 60 items at turning 60. Plus, my original 50×50 list can inspire me.
So let’s kick off the shenanigans for 60 things to do before I turn 60 (60×60).
[Editor’s note: I flipped the order of #1 and 2 in my tracker, so planning my life now comes before planning my death! hehehe]
1. Plan my life. I mentioned in a previous post that my current personal development model no longer works for me. I’m using it as my featured image for this post, but things have shifted around within the different colour energies for me. I should update that. A new framework, if you will. That isn’t just about the framework; it’s about ensuring I have the right mental platform to get the most out of my next 25 years.
2. Plan my death. Wait, what? No, that’s not a typo. If I had to guess, I’d say my life expectancy is around 80 years. So another 25 to go. And as I see others experiencing a decline in their final years, I find certain things unacceptable. Things that I don’t consider worth living through. Mental decline is at the top of the list. So I want to figure out what circumstances would add up to not only a DNR note on my medical file, but also likely something resembling MAID. While my faculties are still with me. It’s still theoretical, but not as theoretical as it once was. So, sometime in the next five years, I’m going to figure that out.
3. Plan my retirement. In a little over 1500 days, I’m going to retire from the public service. I won’t retire from the field, at least not in terms of my writing, as there is a bunch of stuff I still want to write about. But I want to not only have good plans to get me to that date with what I want to accomplish still in my career, but I also want detailed plans for post-retirement. In my previous post (5 more trips around the sun – part 2: An inventory, not a pity party), I mentioned the balance for friendships between casual friends, friends, close friends, besties and family. From some of my early reading about retirement, I know that many people dramatically miss the casual and regular friends that disappear when they leave a proximity-based social network. In short, you lose all the human interaction you had on a daily basis when you depart from work. Just as you might have felt loss from elementary school in the summer, or when graduating high school, college, university, previous jobs, etc. Your daily supply of “Hey, how’s it going? Okay. You? Staying out of trouble. You?” didn’t seem like it would matter, but you noticed its absence. Part of my planning for new activities in the next five years will be ensuring a network exists when the old work-based one disappears.
4. Read 300 books. That one is going to be a bit tough, but 5×60 seems like a good goal. First on the list? Crime and Punishment. Well, maybe second, since I just finished Mike Brown’s book about killing Pluto. Andrea and Jacob got me an updated Kindle for my birthday, although I’m not sure how old my first one is. According to Amazon, I registered it on January 13, 2011, but I’m not sure if that is the date I registered it with Amazon writ large, or just registered with Amazon Canada. It served me well for 12 years, but I really wanted backlighting and touchscreen options. Not enough to buy one and override the existing one, which was still functional, but I guess I talked about it enough that Andrea and Jacob wanted to shut me up. Anyway, the new reading goal is set. Let’s see how I do. There will be a LOT of series in there. I think I’m going to throw a wrinkle in, though — 20% or 60 of them have to be non-fiction. Gulp. I am looking forward to reading NF on a touchscreen, though, as it is WAY easier to take notes with highlighting, etc.
5. Write 5 books. I know, I know. Holy crap. If that doesn’t scare the crap out of me, I’m not sure what will. I know three of the titles, have basic outlines for them, and I have some ideas for about another 8 that will need to be prioritized. And for the wrinkle? One of them has to be fiction. Yep, that should get the juices flowing.
That’s a pretty impressive set of goals. Some were obvious, some not so much. But they resonate with me pretty strongly. So, let’s get this party started. And that’s only the first 5.
Before I get to part 2 of my plans for the future, I want to digress for a moment. I find it fascinating sometimes to see how an individual blog post progresses. Much of the time, before I go to start writing, I have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to say. I’ve thought about it; I know the major points I want to make; I have a rough mental outline.
But as I start to write, something odd happens. My neurons fire in a different way than I expected. I start writing A, B, C, and D, and it becomes more like A, B, C(2), E, H, and L. Or perhaps simply X, Y and Z. I end up somewhere I didn’t intend to go with the post.
Sometimes the reason is simple: I didn’t really know what I wanted to say. I thought I did, but it wasn’t fleshed out in my head enough. But other times, like with the previous post, it just went in a different direction because as I picked at a sub-aspect of the post, I found resonance of a different sort. Almost like I knew what I wanted to say but wasn’t entirely sure WHY I wanted to say it, and as I wrote, my intentions revealed themselves to me. As a result, I went with the flow, changing the direction of what I wanted to talk about.
As a reader, you might suspect it from time to time; other times, you won’t see it at all. For me, it is REAL easy to tell. First and foremost? The title of my post has to change. When I start writing, I put in a topic, but as I near the finish line for the post, I go back and read it in conjunction with the near-final text and realize my title has almost nothing to do with what I wrote. Secondly, it is almost always part 1 of a series of posts, not by intent but by the result…I finished the post and realized it was too long, so I cut it into smaller chunks, but in so doing, it often becomes clear that it is too long simply because something else was on my mind, hidden to my conscious side, and I ended up writing about something entirely different. A prologue that alters the context and direction of the post. Which leaves me calling it part 1 before I start writing about the original topic.
In my previous post, I talked about my mindset over the last 2 months or so. The mental struggle that I’ve been feeding, waiting for my birthday to arrive so I could kick off my new adventure in goal-setting, a symbolic and ritualistic endeavour. That struggle could have been one line, maybe two. Instead, I wrote a whole post about my mood, a previous pity party I threw that got me here, and my dark passenger / shadow self that hides inside and helps me endure, even embrace, isolation when my light-bearing side craves connection. It is and was a prologue to the “inventory” I mention below. The backstory for the hero within my personal story, if a hero can even be said to exist yet. Whether it’s the hero I need or the hero I deserve, that remains to be seen.
I had intended this “series” to be a short opening and then the grand “tadaaaa” reveal of my new goals. Instead, I started talking about dark passengers and now the foundational elements for composing the ritual and choosing my new goals. As I said in the previous post, much of what I base it on overlaps with self-help books, addiction groups, and even yoga mantras. I am not unique or original in that regard, alas. Join me as I review some of my key precepts.
A. Know the limits of my span of control
As much as I want to exert my will on the universe, and bring my resources to bear on the things that I CAN control, shit will still happen. We’ll end up with a housefire that leaves a thin layer of powder all over the first floor and part of the second floor that will linger for months, no matter what we do. Other people’s behaviour at work will interfere with my carefully laid plans and vision. I can’t control any of that. I can only control myself, and sometimes, not even that, as much as I try. I know that standing still is rarely a good option for me; I need to keep pushing myself forward or my dark passenger will make plans with the squirrels in my head, and I will backslide. It’s like a constant current pushing me out to sea; I need to keep swimming or drift.
Sometimes my dark passenger takes up more resident space in my brain and heart than I would like. I don’t usually give it a public license to roam, but I know it is still there. Sometimes it is even helpful. Like with the house fire. I didn’t have any hesitation. As soon as I saw it, I knew to get Andrea and Jacob out of the house and to have them call 911, while I assessed whether it was small enough to get completely out with the fire extinguisher while waiting for the fire department to arrive. My dark passenger removes fear or uncertainty and allows me to act when I need to, decisively even. Active energy to love and hate at the same time.
Sometimes it is beneficial to move forward assuming no limits, that I can control all things, and nothing will stop me (aka f*** the universe); other times, I need to recognize that there are limits and I will not be perfect, far from it. I hesitate to call it AA’s “day by day” approach or a reflection of the sports metaphor of playing “one game at a time”, but it’s a little like that. Plans help, but the universe doesn’t really care what I am planning. Heck, sometimes it feels like it is actively trying to block me. As long as I know man plans while the universe laughs, I know the end is not linear.
B. Everything starts with an inventory, not a pity party
Various programs often start with doing a “moral inventory” of your life. It is more like turning my analytical talents inward with an almost viciousness or ruthlessness to ensure no falsehoods remain, only truth. To burn off any lies that I might tell myself to protect my Id or Ego. That would have to include looking at the events of the last two months, some of which were chosen by me and some by the universe. It is akin to doing an x-ray of my raw psyche. Who I am and what I choose to do. No illusions. I’m checking the state of all the different energies and how to rebalance them.
But I am really struggling with this post. I have written the next section 3 times from scratch, with 3 attempts in between to just rewrite and edit it more towards what I want to say. Each time, it has looked like I was saying “I have no friends, wah wah wah” or “all my friends suck”, neither of which is true nor what I’m trying to say. The nuances are important, and I haven’t been able to find them.
Let’s back up a minute. I know that I am a cool blue analytical introvert by nature, meaning that I live inside my head more than on the cutting edge of spontaneity. I am not social by nature, and if I’m in a large group, I feel like I’m surrounded by yellow-energy vampires, sucking me dry with each passing moment. Yet what has been triggering me of late is a lack of social connectedness to others, and I’ve been trying to piece together a way to explain how it is “different” from previous points in my life.
I’ll invent a metaphor for the post, although I’m not totally sure it holds together. I’ll start by classifying social “interlocutors” as falling into one of five categories:
Casual friends — regular interaction, no real closeness;
Friends — often location-based (work, school), these are the people you hang out with regularly in those locations aka your peeps;
Close friends — those that have transcended a boundary like work or school to be people you hang out or bond with after the proximity transactions;
Best friends — relatively obvious, the ones that you can open your soul to and discuss whatever is going on; and,
Family/love.
Lots of people blend those categories or collapse them into one level. Everyone in the world is their best friend! Yeah, not me.
When I was in elementary school, I had probably a 20 / 30 / 10 / 10 / 30% split. Family dominated, one best friend, two close friends, not much in the others except at school, but I was far from the life of the party.
When I went into high school, that mix probably shifted to a 10 / 30 / 20 / 20 / 20% mix. Few simple interactions, some key friends at school, 1 friend outside school, a best friend in and out, and my family down a bit.
When I went to Trent, the ratio was probably 5 / 20 / 20 / 0 / 75%. I had a serious girlfriend who was initially my best friend and then was just family/love. Most of my time went to the long-distance relationship.
At UVic, something shifted. I knew going in that I was likely to be fairly homesick as I’m not good at making friends, and I didn’t know anyone there. Out of desperation, I corralled a small posse of misfit toys who like me tended not to have a huge entourage. Two were really close, but I’d hesitate to quite call them besties. Meanwhile, my family’s stuff waned with the distance. The ratio doesn’t fit as well, but I’d say 10 / 40 / 40 / 0 / 10% would be close. High on friends, low on anything else. Yet when I left UVic, they faded away, as they had from elementary school, high school and Trent. They were primarily location-based friendships.
In my late 20s and early 30s, something odd happened. I got 3 best friends. One male, two females. With the one male, we went out for dinner regularly, and went to hockey games, a true buddy. We talked about life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the price of tickets for 67s games. One of the women was a work-friend initially, but there was a resonance of spirit that we both felt, and we would have really long conversations, including one overnight sitting in her car after coffee shops and restaurants had closed. One of the best conversations I’ve ever had in my life, and I doubt I remember any of the topics, just the experience. It wasn’t romantic, it was just pure utter friendship. A third was with another woman, and over time, it changed. We had long conversations too, and at one point, there was romantic interest on my part, with none on hers. Only one of those friendships really continues today, and while we will always be close, that bestie status would likely never repeat.
Yet even within that period, I had another 5-6 close friends that transcended the location-based friendships. The mix was probably 10 / 10 / 30 / 40 / 10. A very different look and feel to my life.
Fast-forward to now? It’s probably a somewhat diminished 10 / 20 / 10 / 0 / 60 ratio. An imbalance that is as much about choice, and spending time with Andrea and Jacob, as it is about a limit of social energy to devote beyond the basics.
I have close friends, some from long ago, some from now, and I could pick up the phone and call one, ask them to join me for a drink or something if I needed someone to talk to, and they would come. But it would be, umm, out of the ordinary to do that. We don’t really have that kind of relationship. We get together every now and then, someone’s in the area, there’s an event, something. But no regular interaction. Some close friends have dropped a bit to regular friends perhaps, and I have no real “bestie” contender. No one to just talk about my life with in passing, at least not outside of proximity situations. Some of that is the nature of adult friendships and life intervening, some of that is just the type of blue introvert that I am.
While Andrea and Jacob will always be my bestest of friends by a factor of 10, that’s not really what I’m talking about. If I sat on my butt, did absolutely nothing, tried to arrange nothing, just drifted along on Facebook etc., maybe the occasional blog, generally be passive / responsive only, my level of interaction would be pretty minimal. I’m not at the top of anyone’s speed dial to do something, particularly as I prefer 1:1 stuff rather than large groups.
This isn’t exactly new, though. Outside of my late 20s, when I had the windfall of close friendships, I’ve always been the instigator. During previous “inventories”, one thing I recognized was that I didn’t really have much in the way of guy friends. So I made a concerted effort on and off for about 5-8 years (depending on how you count them) to organize more outings with guys. I tried to organize what I called MMMMMM. Mid-Month Movie Madness for Men who like Meat. I tried to get a bunch of guy friends to go out for wings and a movie. Or drinks and a movie. Or dinner and a movie. Rarely could I get more than a couple to even nibble, and often no one would show. I tried various forms of that outing, maybe a bit more variety, a monthly dinner or something, no movie. Added women to see if couples would come. I could never get any sort of traction or critical mass. Eventually, I listened to my dark passenger’s advice and took the hint. I stopped trying. Every once in a while, I get this idea of doing a wing night at the house to try different Epicure sauces, get a bunch of guys together to hang out on the deck, nosh and natter, joke around. Maybe it’s a longing for the carefree days of my youth, where a bunch of friends and I would joke around at the house. Or hanging out at UVic. Maybe it’s just nostalgia. My dark passenger likes to point out it’s hard to be nostalgic for something you never really had, but I can delude myself occasionally. I wonder without resolution if I truly want that group of male friends or if I want to be the type of guy who has that group.
I feel compelled to say again that this is not a pity party. This is not “woe is me”; it’s just the reality of the connections I do or do not have. It’s not a slap at my friends; I’m not singing “Call Me, Maybe”. While the phrase “it is what it is” may be annoying, it’s also relatively accurate.
Where I go from there is part of the long-term planning. I could reach out to those close friends I have now, try to convert them into a bestie, find more time for them and ask for more time, try to expand one of them into the type of relationship I mean, but that’s not really quite right either.
I hate to rely on the outdated wisdom of Dale Carnegie or the simplistic psycho-babble of the Nike approach to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) of “Just Do It”, but the common wisdom out there is relatively linear and mathematical.
More interactions with people = more potential to find people with common interests.
More people with common interests = more potential to find friends
More friends = more potential to find close friends
More close friends = more chances to find a bestie
More chances at besties = more chance to make the connection I crave.
It’s a popular if simplistic model. Not quite “if you build it, he will come”, but a similar philosophy. And I tried it somewhat with astronomy. I joined RASC Ottawa. Attended meetings in person, volunteered to be the Star Party Coordinator, attended executive meetings, joined national committee, remain as the auditor for the financials, etc. In short, I got involved. And I got to level 3 of the math equation. I made some friends. Not any real close friends, but some good ones. I am not sure that I really have the personality that attracts people beyond that, I never have. It’s one of the limits of the model. If you go back to the Dale Carnegie method that looks like a used car salesman, I can find opportunities, but I can’t convert them into full sales. Astronomy might not have been the best choice, though — you tend to do a lot of it alone in the dark, it’s not truly a “group” event, although some others have made lifelong friends through the hobby. Others, not me.
Yet maybe I don’t need to. Maybe if I shift the current model from 10 / 20 / 10 / 0 / 60 to simply 15 / 25 / 20 / 0 / 40, that’s a better balance than I have now. I don’t really need to convert them to a bestie; maybe I just need more diversity in my interactions than I have now…more interactions, a few more regular location-based friends, a bit more time with close friends, and more freedom for Andrea and Jacob from their energy vampire. I can’t control if I make more close friends, but I can control making a better targeted effort.
One thing that I can watch out for though is that the activities that generate those interactions with others should probably be “ends” in and of themselves. In other words, going back to astronomy, I will do it because I like astronomy, and that’s enough. If I get more friendships out of it, that’s a bonus. I probably won’t end up with people regularly going for wings and beer to hang out, but that’s okay.
I just have to make sure I see the glass as half-full, not half-empty.
For the blue energy (analytical, introvert), I have more than my share of hobbies to focus on.
For green energy (intuitive, introvert), I think I need to siphon a bit of yellow-green energy over to the green a bit.
For red energy (analytical, extrovert), I’m going to siphon off a bit of yellow-red energy to get myself going, but it might take longer.
For the yellow energy (intuitive, extrovert), the current model really doesn’t work for me. I have to push more of the “creativity side”, I think.
I’m not sure this is the post I originally intended, but it is the one I ended up with when all was said and done. I am not sure yet why, though. It just is.
This week was my birthday. 55 trips around the sun. I’d like to say that I’m full of joy and mirth, but that would likely be more apt to be full of something else. I haven’t been rocking the hopeful vibe the last few months, but that’s life. I do, however, like ritual, symmetry, and symbolism, all of which can generate ideas that resonate with me. I’ve been blah for a while now as I waited for my birthday to symbolize the start of another attempt at changing my life trajectory into a slightly more elongated or off-axis orbit than it’s current flat spin.
The last few weeks, maybe even months
If you read my post earlier this week (Pushing through or squirming out from under), it may have seemed like a bit of a pity party. Don’t worry, it wasn’t. I know what that looks like, as I threw one about a month ago when I was struggling with my ongoing leg issues. The bathroom reno was done and I was attempting to enjoy a good tub soak.
For a picture none of you really want or need in your head, let’s start with the fact that I’m a big guy. In a normal-sized/normal-depth tub, like we had, it’s not exactly the best of experiences to take a bath. It’s more like wallowing than fully submerging, like in TV shows and movies. We had tried to find a good option with a deeper tub that was also a shelf/alcove style, not a stand-alone, and we did the best we could with what we had and what Andrea wanted it to look like too. So I gave the new tub a go, and well, to be honest, it kicked the crap out of my self-esteem, confidence, self-image, etc. I was not mentally prepared for it, I guess. I basically thought of it as, “well, we’ll see what’s it like, no big deal, just see if I like it”. I didn’t think of it in advance as something that might not “go well”.
At the time, my leg was giving me trouble with my shins. With past problems and my ongoing diabetes, I have wound care issues every time I get a scratch on my leg, which is easy to do. Compression socks help but don’t solve the problem; they can aggravate the issue…I might get away with a simple bandaid or something, but the compression socks can shift or rub during the day, and I can’t have it scratching at the surrounding tissue. It’ll just rub the skin clean off over time. So, I need some sort of barrier in between. The potential for having to do this will generally be with me for life, yay me. Anyway, it was looking like there was a potential for infection earlier in the week, I had gauze on it, but it and the bandages were “stuck” to the wound. I thought I would let the soak help loosen it, it didn’t work completely, but I managed to get it off, even if it took some new skin with it. I am still dealing with it several weeks later and likely will be until the fall; I’ll be doing wound care again with bandages, gauze, tape, etc., every few days.
Unfortunately, because of the location on my leg, I tend to need Andrea’s help to adjust/cover it effectively and efficiently. I confess that I hate that I need help with it, or rather, that I need Andrea’s help. She’s 46; she shouldn’t be reduced to wound-care nurse for an aging husband. She has her own stuff going on. For better or for worse, I know; but when you’re the cause of the worse, not that great a feeling.
Soooo, I needed her to help me that night with the wet-but-mostly-removed bandages, except I was in the bath. Not the most flattering of appearances or experiences, honestly. The only thing that I would have found more mortifying would likely have been if I’d soiled myself or something. Yeah, yeah, I know, it all happens. That doesn’t mean I want my wife to see me being an invalid. Then after that shame and she’d left, I tried to get out of the tub, and with my back bothering me, plus my weight plus a lack of handholds, it was…umm…challenging. Yeah, let’s go with that term. I felt like a giant pig wallowing in the mud who couldn’t get out. Pretty raw for the emotions. I got dried off, climbed into bed and asked Andrea to go elsewhere in the house for a while so I could basically lie there crying into my pillow for an hour. That was my pity party. It was a mental and emotional release, and maybe I needed that, but it has also been a mental yoke to haul around for the last few weeks. Letting my brain adjust to the new normal, at least my normal for now.
Best practices in managing my squirreldom
I feel like things have been piling up, as my squirrels have run around focusing on many negative things. I know what I’m experiencing, as I have been here before. And to tweak the old joke included on the West Wing at one point, I may be in a hole, but I’ve been here before, and I know the way out.
My exit door moves from time to time, and often the only way to find it is to shine a light into deep dark corners of my brain and soul to see what’s bothering me. Even if I can’t see the door, I know where it is hiding. It’s always, in a sense, near a recurring landmark. It’s right behind wherever my so-called dark passenger is standing.
If you’ve read the Dexter series of books about him being a vigilante serial killer of serial killers or watched the TV series, he basically uses the term dark passenger to refer to his dark inner demon. Don’t worry, I am not a serial killer. I just like the term dark passenger better than Carl Jung’s “Shadow”. But it is a combination of the parts of me that I choose to reject or repress. (How very Skin of Evil of me, for the STTNG crowd).
Over the last 2 months, my dark passenger has been eating away at my sense of self. My size. The experience with the bathtub. My leg and back problems. Feelings of isolation building off the inertia and domestic entropy of the last four years. Lack of close friends. Not comfortable doing stuff alone as much. It makes me irritable, quieter, and sometimes passive. It tells me to sit on the couch and binge-watch shows like Dexter. Castle. Blue Bloods. White Collar. And about another 15 to 20 that I nibble away at, even some that I’ve binged before. My dark passenger wants me alone and on my own, as it knows that the more isolated I become, the more I have to rely on it to get me through the day. A dark energy that can keep my feet moving forward, even if the light doesn’t enter as much.
At different times in my life, I’ve considered fully embracing that dark passenger. Sometimes because I didn’t feel like I had another option, other times because that dark passenger feels less deeply than my normal psyche does. Without diving too deep into the Jungian side of things, lots of people do it. You can see it in some of their comments or slogans — “I speak the truth, and some people can’t handle it”; “Well, this is the real me, and if you don’t like it, too bad.” There are a dozen other common ones where people basically say, “I’m going to let my dark passenger be an asshole to others before they can be an asshole to me!”. It offers strength, which is why many choose to lean on it like a crutch. But, if you know yourself, you can ultimately see that it’s a choice, not a default.
It’s not a choice I like, which is why I try actively to avoid it. Yet the last four years, combined with my own internal issues, produced a fairly isolated existence outside of my immediate family. For the last couple of months, I’ve let my dark passenger tire himself out, binging TV shows while my inner squirrels run around unchecked until they need a nap.
Like everyone else on the planet, though, I want more. And if I want it, I need to go find it. I always have to shove my dark passenger to the side and stop obsessing about stupid things at work, home, or wherever. Setbacks that really don’t matter. If my only way out is through, the door handle tends to be made up of my goals in life. Something tangible that I can grab onto and pull myself through and back into the light.
Yet as I reach for them, trying to find handholds and pick up some common themes, the foundation I stand on is generally made up of common principles from self-help books, control issues, various alcoholics anonymous-like programs, etc. I don’t go for the “give yourself over to God” approach, which is not really my style. But there are elements that resonate with me. Ritual, symmetry and symbolism are all ways to reinforce the new mindset, hence why I target big dates like birthdays or New Year’s Day to trigger new beginnings.
I’ll talk about some of them tomorrow, before getting on to my actual goals for the next five years.
I like the list of books I came up with for my reading challenge. However, that list was my tentative planning list before I worked on the other genre challenges that I belong to on FaceBook. For those, I’m doing a bit of planning below.
Set in a different time period –> The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes by Leonard Goldberg
Cozy companion that isn’t a dog or cat –> Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell
Has a beverage recipe –> Death of a Kitchen Diva by Lee Hollis
Paranormal or Magical Cozy –> Death Overdue by Allison Brook
Set somewhere you’d like to vacation –> The Cracked Spine by Paige Shelton
Sun, Moon, or Stars on the cover –> Deadly Summer Nights by Vicky Delaney
A Cozy that matches the season –> WINTER: Chocolate Hearts and Murder by Patt Larsen; SPRING: Eggsecutive Orders by Julie Hyzy; SUMMER: Jealousy Filled Donuts by Ginger Bolton; FALL: The Cider Shop Rules by Julie Ann Winters;
A Cozy opposite the season –> WINTER: Murder in the PaperBack Parlour by Ellery Adams;
Male Author –> Death by Coffee by Alex Erickson
Main character is different than you –> Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien
An author who uses initials –> Whose Body by Dorothy L Sayers
A past Book Chat selection you haven’t read –> Elementary, She Read by Vicky Delany
A library book –> Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
A reread –> Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
Serves food you’d like to eat –> Catering to Nobody by Dianne Mott Davidson
Includes a celebration –> Murder’s No Votive Confidence by Christin Brecher
Includes a home project –> Dead Cat Bounce by Sarah Graves
Judge a book by its cover –> Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanna Fluke
Has a setting different from yours –> Real Murders by Charlaine Harris
Read (part of) the rainbow: predominant purple –> Murder in G Major by Alexia Gordon
Bonus Prompt #1 — Three cozies, same author –> I Scream, You Scream // Scoop to Kill // A Parfait Murder by Wendy Lyn Watson
Bonus Prompt #2 — Cozy without murder –> The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman
Bonus Prompt #3 — Read the rainbow –> RED: Under Lock & Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian // ORANGE: The Librarian Always Rings Twice by Marty Wingate // YELLOW: Decaffeinated Corpse by Cleo Coyle // GREEN: A Baffling Murder at the Midsummer Ball by T.E. Kinsey // BLUE: Caught Dead Handed by Carol J. Perry // INDIGO: Fame and Fortune and Murder by Patti Larsen // VIOLET: Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen
The Tea and Ink Society Challenge
This site has the requirement that the books have to all be published before 1970. Hey, I was born before then, I guess I’m classic now too!
January: A classic detective novel
February: A book with a character’s name in the title
March: A classic fairy tale collection
April: A classic Japanese novel
May: A book with a movie/TV adaptation you’ve already seen
June: A classic set at sea
July: A narrative poem or collection of poetry
August: A classic by a Latin American author
September: A Dickens novel
October: A nonfiction classic
November: A classic fantasy novel
December: A classic set in a place you want to visit
The Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge (#CloakDaggerChal).
A number of years ago, I started a reading challenge for myself. A little creative, a little classic, a little gamification to up my reading quotient and broaden my reading selections. Then it morphed into a group and about 20+ people joined. Because of some personal issues, I left that group last year and let others run with it. I have no idea if it’s still active, but I went in search of “other sites” that I could haunt to get my reading-discussion/virtual-book-club fix. It didn’t really work for me. It turns out that when I’m not part of a group of friends and family, I don’t care much what OTHER people are reading except in a generic sense. If someone raves about a book, I’ll consider it. But it doesn’t make me want to read it at the same time or in close temporal proximity if I don’t know the person.
Which means…dun dun dun…my 2023 Reading Challenge is ONLY ABOUT ME. 🙂
For inputs, I have a lot of possible books to choose from. I have dozens of lists from my early Reading Challenges, including classic lists from Time, BBC, Guardian, etc. Plus of course all the award winners. And then there are new books, genre books, friends’ suggestions, etc. Plus I like the gamification options, sort of like a bingo card where you track what you’re reading against some arbitrary tracking category.
Soooooo, my reading challenge comes down to three parts for 2023.
A. How many books?
Well, that’s a funny thing. I set myself a goal of how many BOOK REVIEWS I would write in 2023 at 52. But some of those are books I have in my “to be reviewed” pile. They will not all be reviews of “newly read” books. So if BRs are at 52, should my list be less than 52? Or do I accept that not all of my newly-read books will get reviewed at the same time as I finish them? I’ve been trying to stay on top of things, but there are other things that intervene. I think that I will aim for 52, aka the one-a-week option, even though it might not directly overlap with my list of BRs. Weird, I know. I’ll be the only one who likely notices.
B. How will I track them?
I’m going to go with the classic “double alphabet” list i.e., I will aim for the 52 books to have at least 26 that have the first substantive word in the title starting with A, B, C, etc. I’ll make some allowance for books like Erle Stanley Gardner titles where the titles all start with “The Case of the…” and go with whatever comes after that intro for the title. The second list of 26 is to do the same but with the name of the author. I’ll primarily go by last name, but I might have to be creative for certain low-usage letters in names (like last names starting with X!). So that’s easy enough to do. And in a perfect world, with double-counting, you COULD do it in just 26 books, but it’ll go past that, I’m sure.
But I’m going to be a little bit more creative than that…I’ll add in indications if the books meet other criteria too (like classic or award-winning, or mystery or sci-fi!).
C. What books am I considering?
I don’t want to ignore serendipity, so I’m only going to pre-plan the first 26 books and let the last 26 come from other sources for now.
The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr…I’m already working on this one (with tags for mystery, historical, award winner, and diversity);
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky…I have been reading this for some time and am about 2/3 of the way through-out. I want to finish, but it is quite slow going (classic genre);
Book 1 by Jacob Horton et al…it’s terrible, but I never finished the first book that he wrote as part of a group. And I’ve even forgotten the name of it now. Sheesh, I’m a terrible father (local author);
All’s Fair in Love and the Nuclear Apocalypse by Jacob Horton et al…I’ll read this one too, likely in March (local author)
Make: Getting Started with 3D Printing (2nd Edition) by Liza Wallach Kloski and Nick Kloski…I have the 3D printer, but I don’t understand enough of the theory to help me understand the practical instructions of my printer (non-fiction);
Something by Agatha Christie, time to dust off the classics and start the ride (good for mystery);
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child…we’re going to the play in March, I’m trying to decide if I should read it before or after (fantasy, plays);
A book by Lawrence Sanders…for classic mystery or thriller);
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters…from a classic list;
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green…from a classic list;
Something Wicked by Carolyn G. Hart…from Agatha awards;
Lost Little Girl by Gregory Stout…from Shamus awards;
Beat Not The Bones by Charlotte Jay…from Edgar awards;
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley…from Edgar awards of sorts, this is book #1 of a two-book series;
A Case of Loyalties by Marilyn Wallace…this might be hard to find though, from the Macavity list of winners;
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton…from a classic list;
Rabbit, Run by John Updike…from a classic list, but frequently referred to by Lawrence Block;
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James W. Cain…from a classic list;
Neuromancer by William Gibson…from a classic list, a rare sci-fi style story;
Still Life by Louise Penny…the first of the series;
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid…from the popular seller’s list;
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir…latest top seller for sci-fi;
Winterhouse #2 by Ben Guterson…part of a YA series I’ve been reading slowly;
The first book in the P.C. Cast series about young vampires;
Next book in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch that I started over a year ago; and,
A Stephanie Plum book by Janet Evanovich…it’s been a while since I caught up.
And I guess I need a tracker!
So that’s my starting point. Feel free to follow along.
