Tag: new years resolutions

Another Resolution

The Frugal Film Project.

One roll of film per month using a cheap camera and cheap film.

I’ll use my new cheap Soviet medium format camera. I think you’re supposed to use the same film each month but I’ll bend that rule because I don’t want to use black and white all year and the roll in the camera right now is black and white and also I want to feel like a rebel.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Also the link is to an out of date website. It was replaced by a facebook group and I don’t like linking to facebook. You understand, I’m sure.

New Years Resolutions

I don’t have any set ideas for New Years Resolutions. Just the usual stuff. Do I want to do something different this year and actually define a single resolution for the year and then stick to it (as if)? I don’t know.

Here are some possibilities…

  • Make more music both with and without the band. We’re talking about starting the band-ball rolling again in January. Please please please let it stick this time. I really miss playing in a band and I really, really don’t want to have to find a new one.
  • Listen to more music. I need to pay more attention to the musical world around me and just listen to more stuff. Old stuff, new stuff, borrowed or blue stuff. It doesn’t matter. Just listen to more stuff.
  • Experience live music again. I went to two concerts in 2024 (I think). One of them involved my daughter. The other involved Iron Maiden. I need to see more bands playing live. I missed a handful of shows that in my much younger days I would not have missed. Getting old makes this difficult but I should at least try to do better.
  • Take more photos. Digital or film, it doesn’t matter. Take more photos. Learn more about taking photos. Learn new techniques, try new things. I have a medium format camera now and I have taken exactly one photo with it. Get off your ass and take more photos.
  • Be more social. Either with family or friends. Covid is over. Deal with it. Stop living like a fucking hermit, you fucking hermit.
  • Drive to Vermont to annoy the kids more often. Heh heh heh, yeah.
  • Adopt another cat. We’ve been a two cat household for almost two years. Is it time to resolve to adopt a third? Yes. Maybe. Probably not, but yes.

That’ll do for now. I’ll think about other ideas to add over the next few days. 2025 is four days away.

Thread

I feel gross using the facebook/instagram owned twitter alternative app, Threads. Really gross. 

That isn’t quite enough to stop me right now though. I am such a social media hypocrite/whore.

Anyway, someone asked, “what are your guitar goals for 2024” or something along those lines. I responded with a few. I figured I would port the response over to this post and maybe add a thing or two because I ran out of characters on the app. First, does the embed code work? I tried just sharing a link the other day to see if that pulled anything in, but it didn’t. I found that each post includes some embedding HTML code. Betcha a dollar it doesn’t work…

Post by @reallytallredhead
View on Threads

https://www.threads.net/embed.js

Based on the preview function in the editor, it didn’t work. Oh well. Here’s the text I wrote:

I want my cover band to finally get back together after a covid-hiatus and an exiting singer.

I want to write a shit ton of songs, record listenable demoes of all of them, and maybe have one or two that don’t objectively suck.

I want to play a bar gig for the first time since Feb 1, 2020.

After getting my 1978 Les Paul refretted a couple of months ago, I want to do the same with my 1979 ES-335 along with maybe getting a new wiring harness so that all four of my guitars will be in gig shape.

Me: https://www.threads.net/@reallytallredhead/post/C1ch8b9LyTx

Yes, kids… I just quoted myself. I dun did that.

Anyway, there are a couple of things to add.

I want to replace all of my guitar straps with heavy, leather straps like the one I have on my 50th birthday present Les Paul Standard. I have amazon shipping one for my Les Paul Custom and it should arrive tomorrow.

I want to buy either a Gibson Les Paul Junior, a Gibson Firebird, a Gibson Les Paul Standard with P-90 pickups instead of humbuckers, or a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. The order I wrote them is from most wanted to least most wanted. The chances of me buying any of these is about 0.0000001%… so there’s a chance.

With all of these goals in mind, mostly I would just settle for playing more. That’s what I really want to do.

Resolutions

Anyone out there making New Years Resolutions this year? 2020-2022 will be remembered as a non stop avalanche of suck. Is that enough to make you not look toward the imminent new year as something to be endured rather than something to strive for?

I’m not making any New Years Resolutions. Mainly because the obligatory go to is to lose weight and if I lose as much in 2023 as I did in 2022 I’d end up weighing something like 40 pounds and that, dear readers, would not look very good on me.

I could resolve to get the band back together or to write more songs or to practice guitar more. None of those things really meet the spirit of the thing though, you know?

So yeah, no 2023 resolutions for this guy here. I think it’s more appropriate to just duck and cover and ride out the coming shit storm.

Happy New Year. Two hours and 24 minutes to go.

New Years Day

The New Year has arrived. Happy January 1, 2022 (2020 too, and yes I expect to write it that way forever).

2020 was the most difficult year of my life, thanks to Covid-19, and when it ended I was elated and hopeful for the future. There was a vaccine and soon enough we’d all have it and Covid-19 would be over.

2021 turned out worse. All of that elation was for nothing. We are in a worse situation than ever, Covid-ily speaking, and my parents had such a terrible time health wise that I spent most of the year cycling through feelings of heartbreak, anxiety, frustration, anger (at myself), and crushingly crippling guilt. I managed to make life worse for pretty much everyone I care about.

So if you’re wondering why I am so happy to put 2021 behind us… there you go.

2022 (2020 too) is a welcome change, even though it is literally meaningless, but I don’t feel the optimism I felt last year. Right now I feel a sense of impending doom. How much worse can things get? What will the next nightmare turn out to be? Will Covid-19 mutate into something worse, like a zombie virus? Will Aliens invade and turn us into gourmet meals? Will Bill Gates activate the microchips and melt what’s left of our brains?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I have a few resolution-type things. More like goals than resolutions.

  • Weight. In a couple of weeks I will go to Lowell General Hospital to drop off some paperwork. Next month I will have a Zoom appointment to start the weight loss surgery process. I am utterly terrified of this. I tried to do it once before and cancelled the first appointment out of fear. I couldn’t deal with it. The difference this time is I am more terrified of not doing it. It’s time. I can’t keep living like this. The goal then is to get to the end and have the surgery and then follow the proper post-surgical requirements. We postponed Harry’s graduation present/trip to Disney World that was supposed to happen during the summer of 2020. It is now planned for January 2023. I want all of this to be behind me by then. If it’s not then I’ll deal, but that’s my hope.
  • Get my parents’ house ready to sell. I had planned on chipping away at this over the last few months but my back has been in such bad shape I haven’t had it in me (see the previous entry on the list). Also, Covid. Shit. I don’t want to let anyone down again. I want to do this right.
  • Play with the band again. It’s not a want. It’s a need. It’s a mental health thing. I need this. We were talking about the possibility of a get together a month or so ago, but then omicron ass fucked everything. Now? I don’t know.
  • See the Harry Potter reunion special. This one is totally attainable. In fact, I am going to hit post and go watch it now.

Happy New Year, everyone!

New Year’s Resolution

What’s your New Year’s Resolution? Is it to lose weight? To eat healthier? To exercise more? To practice the guitar more? To be nicer to the people I care about? To work harder? To be a better person?

Sure, all of that. Also, none of that, really.

My New Year’s Resolution for 2021: Get two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine and make sure my family gets them too.

Simple.

Self Improvement

Today we’re discussing self improvement.  Things to do to better oneself.

Did that sound like I was coming back from a commercial break during a morning talk show?  Hehe… still got it.

Anyway.  It’s technically too late to start thinking about new years resolutions, but I have a bunch of things I want to accomplish in 2015.  Some I’ve already mentioned here.

I want to discover new music.  I want to find some new bands to fuss over.  I’ve been using a combination of Google and (I am so sorry about this next one) Spotify.  <sigh>  I use Google to find things like album reviews and if I find something that sounds interesting I check Spotify to see if the album is available there.  If not I try Bandcamp.  So far I have found everyone that I’ve looked for in one of those (and sometimes both) places.  If I like what I hear I bookmark the band.  If a record appeals to me strongly enough I’ll buy it somewhere.  Check out Krill (from Boston, thank you), The Hold Steady, and (best name ever) …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead.

The second project, or series of projects, is more or less the same as last year.  I want to write music and record demos,  Nothing new there, just probably not as year ’round as last year.  I want to do RPM Challenge and FAWM in February, 50/90 from July through September, and NaSoAlMo in November.  I want to keep writing and recording for the rest of the year as well, just maybe not so often or as structured as last year.  If I’m in the mood or something comes to me, I’ll work it out.  I would like to get the band to play at least a couple of new songs, and while I don’t have the means to pull it off right now I would kind of like to get them to record a song or two as well.  I am trying to figure out the logistics of that.  It will require some equipment upgrades.  While we’re on the subject of the band, I also want to gig.  I want to go to a bar and play for 3-4 hours without dying of exhaustion (I’m a lot older than I was the last time I played a bar) or being crippled by cramps in my hands (I’m a lot older than I was the last time I played a bar).  It’s all definitely doable.

Third.  We have a bookcase in the living room.  One shelf is dedicated to text books and user manuals for all sorts of technology.  At one end of the shelf sits two related books.  One on programming in Ruby.  The other on programming in Rails.  Ever since the new year started I’ve been looking at those books and feeling a little depressed.  My job title might have the word programmer in it, but I am by no means a programmer anymore.  I’m not sure I’ve really been a programmer at any time since I graduated from UMass Lowell.  I even have doubts about then.  I want to be a programmer.  Maybe not a proficient programmer, but when someone asks me if I know how to make something happen on the web I want to honestly be able to say yes.  Ruby on Rails was my first thought, but now I am thinking that it’s pretty pathetic how little I know about Javascript.  I did a little work there when I was in college, but almost all of it is gone from my head.  If I want to play with Javascript again I should really brush up on HTML and CSS.  I know squat about CSS.  Again, we touched on it in GUI I class during my second to last semester in Lowell, but I retained exactly none of it.  So this year I want to learn, or re-learn, how to make things happen in a browser.  Getting a little bit of Javascript skill is the first goal.  If I can nail that down maybe I’ll go back to thinking about Ruby.  We’ll see.

Fourth.  I want to read.  What the hell happened to me?  10 years ago I didn’t watch any television.  Well, I watched sports and I watched movies on TV, but I didn’t watch any television series.  While normal people were watching the tube I was reading.  Now?  While normal people are watching the tube I’m watching TV shows on my iPad.  I want to read more, the way I used to.  I have a stack of books, two are literally inches away from my left had as I sit and type this, but I just never get around to reading anything anymore.  I listen to books on tape in the car during my ridiculously long commutes, and that’s fine and all, but I want to actually read more.  Granted, while music challenges are under way the time I would have spent reading is spent noodling out bass and drum grooves on GarageBand.  I’ll have to work out some sort of schedule or something.

There are other things as well, but they are not necessarily goal orientated.  I want to travel.  Hell, I live in New England which is arguably the most beautiful region of these United States (please don’t argue with the Masshole).  I want to see more of it.  I want to pack the family into the car and go see stuff.  Not just New England, but everywhere.  San Diego is always calling to me, but so are a hundred other places just in the US alone.  Don’t even get me started about Europe!  I want to be a better photographer.  I want to learn more about not only how the camera works, but why it works and I want to learn about post-processing.  All of that is fascinating to me, not to mention oodles of fun.  I can use all of the traveling I want to do as an excuse to practice photography!  How about that!

In summary, it’s a new year.  I want 2015 to be a landmark for me.  I want to accomplish a whole slew of new things.  I want to be a better person.  I want to be a better husband.  I want to be a better step father.  I want to be thinner!  You didn’t think I was going to forget about that one, did you?  33 pounds down and about 180 more to go!

As always, I’ll keep everyone informed.