Decisions, Decisions

Bob and I are having one of those years in which it seems we are constantly bombarded with decisions that have to be made. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Some decisions are fun: a meeting we thought we had has been cancelled. Do we go out and see a movie or stay home and play board games? (Probably the latter.) Others just fun to consider: do we throttle that member of the church who's such a know-it-all and who does nothing but judge and whine? (No, it wouldn't be the Christian thing to do. Besides, I've always kind of hoped that if I ever made the headlines, it wouldn't be as a murderous minister and minister's wife.)

All kidding aside, though, we've also been faced with some tough decisions, and all this decision-making has left me feeling a bit decisioned-out. Nonetheless, I'm spending this Memorial Day weekend making some decisions. You see, earlier this year, I made some decisions that I've already begun to regret. And once you begin to regret a decision, it seems it becomes another decision that has to be made. Luckily, I'm not talking about any decisions that can't easily be undone, which is why I'm here today to discuss undoing some of the decisions I've made.

DECISION #1: Changing my blog.
At the beginning of the year, I decided that my blog needed resuscitating. I chose a new design template for it. This was a very wise decision. I still love the "new" look of my blog. It cheers me up every time I visit. I also decided to be more purposeful in my writing, alternating blog posts among my 3 passions: books, music, and food. This was the stupid decision. I'm writing less than ever now, and it seems it's just because I can't be bothered much to write about food and music, while I've become a slave to my plan, thinking "I can't write another post on books. It's been ages and ages since I wrote about food."
RE-DECISION #1: It seems this slave needs to run away (and take all her books with her). I'm leaving the overbearing plan. I'm back to writing mostly about books and whatever else strikes my fancy. We'll see if anymore blog posts about music and food appear.

DECISION #2: Joining 2 reading challenges (The Once Upon a Time Challenge and The Classics Challenge). I love both these challenges. Really, I do. But what was I thinking? I've never been good at completing any reading challenges, and I already belong to three book discussion groups, and now I'm on the One Book, One Community Committee, which means reading tons of books to help us decide which is going to be our community read in 2013. That's enough when it comes to reading assigned books by specific deadlines.
RE-DECISION #2: I will enjoy the two challenges vicariously, when I can, peeking at what others are reading and what they have to say, and I will continue to keep reading the books I planned to read, but I will read them on my own schedule. I may or may not write blog posts about them. You may have noticed I've replaced the beautiful buttons for both these challenges (a sad thing to do, but necessary to convince myself I've really dropped the two challenges) with new gadgets on my blog: "Album I'm Loving" (there. A little bit of music for you) and "Book I'm Loving."

DECISION #3: Making complicated monthly reading plans.
For a number of years I've been in the habit of planning what books I'm going to read each month. It's kind of fun. Around the end of each month, I begin browsing shelves and the pages of my TBR tome and draw up a list, which sometimes has to be changed when I discover that in order to read everything on it, I'll need to read 500 pages a day. This year, though, I decided to make my monthly plan far more complicated than I ever had. I had assigned categories I was trying to fill, like "contemporary fiction," "classic fiction", "children's/y.a.", "poetry". Talk about taking the joy out of reading (there must be some Puritan blood in me somewhere the way I'm able to take things I love and turn them into chores). Why on earth did I set up a plan that was basically the equivalent of revisiting the horror I call "high school English classes"?
RE-DECISION #3: No more complicated monthly plans. In fact, I'm considering just reading at will. I'm not sure it's something I can do. For some reason, I do like having some sort of a plan (probably why I'm so easily convinced to join challenges). A glimmer of hope is shining off in the distance, though: I have not yet drawn up any sort of list for June, and when I was at our annual library book sale last week and came across a pristine copy of Lonely Werewolf Girl, a book I've been wanting to read forever, I bought it, abandoned everything else I was reading (overdue library books be damned), and dove right in. I've gone back to reading other things while reading it (I will never be a one-book-at-a-time sort), but that's something I rarely ever do, buy a book and begin it the day I buy it.

DECISION #4: I'm going to eat one vegetarian, one vegan, and one anything goes meal a day (an idea I got from Mark Bittman when I read his Food Matters). This is a very hard thing to do when you're (for health reasons) also trying to eat more protein and to cut back on sugar, white flour, and gluten in your diet. My vegan meals often include bread or pasta. I've found gluten-free pasta that I love, but I have yet to find a gluten-free bread that I love. In fact, if you're trying to cut down on those three things. it seems the best diet to adopt is the paleo diet, which recommends eating some sort of lean meat at every meal (something I'm smart enough to know not to even pretend I'm going to try to do, especially since the diet also forbids dairy, and I love my raw milk, yogurt, and cheese).
RE-DECISION #4: Again, I will stop being a slave to the plan. I'm still trying to eat meat only occasionally and to eat more vegan meals, but I'm not trying so hard to stick to this one-one-one thing. First of all, it doesn't work too well if you love to eat leftovers (which I do) and find yourself with 3 vegetarian choices and 1 meat-based choice in your fridge but no vegan choices (unless all you're going to do is eat raw carrots and broccoli, which I'm not). And secondly, I'm tired of eating something, and then thinking, "Oh, wait a minute. That was supposed to be a vegan meal!"

DECISION #5: I'm going to go a year without buying any books.
Can we all just laugh at this one? I think I bought my first book within a week of making this decision ("Book discussion/OBOC books I can't get through our library system don't count.")
RE-DECISION #6: Stop pretending I'm not buying any books this year. I will, instead, make more of an effort to get rid of those I've read, will never read again, and that need to find new homes.

What I'm Listening to Now: Wrecking Ball

OMG! It's BRUCE! Bruce as you remember him, a vital member of the "Pit Crew" (or whatever the equivalent cheering section of your high school basketball team was), the guy who was singing "Born to Run" at that party where you got drunk for the very first time, the one who was crooning in the background when you finally made out with that guy (or gal, as the case may be) in the back seat of his newly-acquired, second-hand Honda Accord (or the back seat of your parents' station wagon. Whatever...). He's the same Bruce who followed you to college where you and your roommate decided "I'm on Fire" was one of the sexiest songs ever written and where you laughed at the buffoons who thought "Born in the USA" was a testament to Ronald-Reagan-style "patriotism."

He grew up with you, became politically aligned with you (or maybe it was that you became politically aligned with him). He protested the Iraq War with you, voted for our first Black American president with you, and now, all. of. a. sudden, you and he are back in high school again -- you, desperately wishing you could go to Asbury Park with him, even (shhh! Don't tell anybody!) wishing you were from New Jersey, and he with that familiar deep voice, those familiar guitar strings and piano keys and jingle bell sound. Which is not to say that this latest album of his isn't new and fresh.

One of the things that's always amazed me about Bruce Springsteen is that, no matter how distinct his sound, he is always evolving. He adds new instruments (bagpipes, for instance here), new sounds, goes back to his roots and shoots forward to a time we've yet to encounter (good old rock 'n' roll infused with something that steals itself from the rap music of today). This one, more than any of his other recent efforts, however, takes me back to a time when Springsteen on the turntable meant even wallflowers were pulled up from their seats and onto the dance floor. I want to dance. I want to stomp. I want to romp around the room when I listen to it. It's like being in an Irish Pub with or without the beer. And when you've been romping and stomping and sweating up a storm, here comes the ballad that causes everyone to raise mugs high and to sway.

That's what the music does. What the lyrics do is make me want to shout, "Rock on, Bruce!" Pay attention to them. Here, we have an angry Bruce (who says only young men get to be angry?). He's angry at what this country has become. Angry at corporate America. Angry about the death of "my hometown."Angry about all the things that make me angry and that should make all Americans angry, if only they'd wake up out of this country-wide stupor that has so many under its spell and take notice.

No unbiased review here, or seeking out something to criticize. I just love it. I unapologetically love it. If you're a Springsteen fan and haven't bought it yet, do. You won't regret it. I promise.

The New and Improved Telecommuter Talk

It's been over a month since I posted anything on this blog, and I haven't been reading any blogs, either. Some of this is due to the fact that 2011 -- a year that will be memorable for not being one of the best in the Barton household -- went out with a bang (our car broke down on the way to Maine and what should have been a relaxing vacation, after an exhausting Thanksgiving and Christmas season, instead became an exhausting vacation dealing with what to do with it and, ultimately, buying a new car -- the Prius v, Prius's new station wagon, which is proving to be a fabulous car so far). That happened during the week of December 26th, and we got back to Pennsylvania on January 3, though, so I can't really blame it for my disappearance from the blogosphere for all of January as well. I can say, however, that because I didn't have the relaxing vacation I'd planned, in which I was going to spend the majority of my days reading in front of a fire, I came back with three long books to read for our One Book, One Community committee (I'm serving on that to choose the book our three counties will be reading for 2013). I had to spend every spare minute reading them. Then again, that meeting was a week ago, so I can't really use it as an excuse anymore. Finally, I've decided that I was just a little bit bored with my blog, but I don't want to give up on blogging altogether. After 5 1/2 years, I just needed to tweak it a bit.

First up: a face lift. I've changed the design template (Blogger has much more to offer in this regard than they did when I first came on board with them). I hope you like it. I'm way too much of a Luddite to design my own look, but this one caught my eye.

Secondly, I've decided to be more purposeful in my posting. Those of you who've been with me since the beginning know that I started this blog with the intent of writing about my experiences as a telecommuter. I quickly ran out of content and started writing about any and everything. My blog's title now seems like false advertising; I don't even telecommute anymore; but I like it (I'm a huge fan of alliteration), so I'm going to keep it. How to be more purposeful? I started thinking about my passions, and I came up with three:

1. Books

2. Food

3. Music

I'm not at all original in my passions, huh? I'm passionate about other things: animals (especially frogs), for instance, but I don't particularly like reading and writing about them. I mean, there are only so many fascinating facts about frogs that I would care to share with my readers and only so many pictures I could take of new additions to the frog collection I've had since I was five. Books, food, and music, though, are passions that lend themselves well to blog posts. After all, I've already been blogging about books and music for years. I recently realized that, although I talk about loving food and cooking, I rarely ever post anything about my adventures in the kitchen (kind of like I talk about writing a novel and a collection of ghost stories and never seem to finish them -- but I am. I promise! It's just taking much longer than I'd like). I think it's about time I did.

With these three passions in mind, I've come up with a weekly game plan for the blog, as follows:

One post a week will be focused on books. This won't necessarily be a book review, although I hope to include plenty of those, but it will always be about books or authors or publishing or libraries or some such thing.

One post a week will be focused on music. Again, it may be more than a favorite song (which I've been doing for years on Music Monday), and I do still plan to share favorite songs, but I want to broaden this category and write about groups or composers or types of music, etc. And I hope to stop being so lazy, giving you something a little more substantial than mere links to YouTube videos.

One post a week will be about food. Same thing. I hope to share original recipes with you, but I also want to share other aspects of food that interest me, like nutrition and the celebrity chef phenomenon, etc.

Finally, one post a week will be a free-for-all. This is where all the other stuff I like to ponder will appear.

I'm not going to assign days of the week to these posts, although Music Monday seems like it ought to remain on Mondays (lovely alliteration yet again), so it probably will. My goal is to be more purposeful but not more anal: no need to assign specific days of the week to specific types of posts. I'm going to start using the label function, so if you're not interested, say, in reading about music, you can skip that post and spend your time reading what does interest you.

So, Happy New Year, everyone, and Happy New Telecommuter Talk (I hope)!