Whither WadsWords: The Year Of Challenges

Right.

You will recall that I’ve been trying to figure out what I can do with this here blog once I roll out the Movie Crash Course into its own home (that should happen within a couple weeks, and I’ll post reviews in both places for the first couple weeks or so to encourage people to follow me over there).  I’d decided to set up some self-challenges to get myself to just plain do more this year; I’ve felt like things are a little off-balance for me.

I have the beginnings of a plan in place.

• I will visit one new neighborhood in this city every month.  This is getting back to the old “Neighborhoods New York” challenge that I set for myself at some point and have been woefully neglecting.
• I will eat out (a lunch on a weekend) at one new-to-me restaurant in my neighborhood each month.  There are scores of gorgeous restaurants in my neighborhood which I’ve never tried out.
• I will try to take at least five photos every weekend with my beautiful and glorious new camera.  Granted, I have to figure out how the blasted thing works first, but…yeah.
• I will do the Penguin Books UK classics reading challenge (one classic book a month), and maybe one other.  This is on top of my existing book club, which should be interesting.
• I will complete about half of all of the unfinished craft projects I have lingering in the house by the end of the year.  I have a lot of lingering knitting and decoupage ideas sitting in dusty corners, and a couple of tired old things that I have been meaning to spruce up…it’s time to finally do it.
• I will hike once a month.  New York City is loaded with hiking trails in its furthest corners, and when I exhaust that, then the Hudson Valley is only a short jaunt.
• I will attend the Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturday event every month.  Brooklyn Museum plans all kinds of wacky special events each Saturday, but for me the appeal is the free admission; if none of the events speak to me, I can just slip off to some of the other galleries and wander a little.
• I am still deciding the speed and rate and frequency, but: I will try more recipes out of this gorgeous cookbook.  I got it a while back and have used it exactly once; it’s a gorgeous deep dive into the various regional cuisines of China, with an eye towards “what is actually achievable for a Western Cook”.  The author doesn’t “Westernize” the recipes, from what I’ve seen, she simply focuses on including mostly recipes with ingredients you can actually get in your average supermarket.  ….Alex has already expressed great interest in helping eat the results.

So there it is.  I have a review in the works for the latest movie, but this is also a point of focus.