Rich Geib's New Year's Resolutions 2018

"Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over."
Guy Finley

New Year's Resolutions for 2018

"The beginning is always today."
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

YEAR OF 2018

“So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don't sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late."
Lee Iacocca

Rich Geib's 2018 New Year's Resolutions!

What should I do? Where to go? How to live?

Switch from HMO to PPO health insurance.

As you get older your health needs increase, and it is high time to spend a little more money -- and to get much higher quality care and more immediate service. It is time. You should have done this five years ago.

STATUS: It took fully a year, but it is done. Time now for better health care delivery in 2019.

Julia:

Help her to make the successful transition from elementary to middle school. Help her to manage to have a cell phone and use it in a healthy, not unhealty, manner. Continue to memorize poems with her. Continue to encourage her to read more adult literature and to move to "next level" tennis and soccer. The base for athletic achievement has been solidly placed beneathe her; now is the time to build higher towards real accomplishment. Time to go to the "next level."

STATUS: Success, although this is a continual task. It always continues.

Elizabeth Anne

Volunteer to captain/coach her 10U junior tennis team to help her get her feet wet in playing actual matches. Continue to give Elizabeth gobs and gobs of literature in the bedtime daddy reading hour. Continue to have homework by Elizabeth done by 3:30 every afternoon.

STATUS: A success, even when it came to me to captain the team: this was not without sacrifice. On the seventh Harry Potter book. Keep the literature coming, just as you did with Julia.

Tennis

One sesaon of USTA captaining per year. Continue to try and find the sweet spot of too much playing and too little playing. Play mostly without pain, for a change.

STATUS: Success in captaining in 2018. Better on the playing with pain, but always have to monitor the body when one competes hard at my age...

Do lots and lots of yoga.

Yoga might not come easy to you and can be a bit boring (which is why you never pracitced it before), but be patient and listen to how much your body needs this. You are great at stressing the muscles so they will grow; learn the equally important skill of relaxing the muscles and allowing for flexibility and full range of motion. And remembering how to breathe. If you want to maximize your potential and improve muscle recovery, you need this. Remember how bad you were at the beginning as a sign of how much you need this! Remember swimming: how this does not come as easily as other activities to you, but with time, practice, discipline, and patience you will get better.

STATUS: A modicum of success. Great core work and some stretching, but you are still more than a bit bored by most of yoga. Take more time to let this happen next year?

Get off social media.

Don't delete your accounts, but take the apps of phone and ipad -- and almost never check in to Twitter or Facebook. Ten minutes out of the hour are worth it, ten minutes it is arguable, and then the other forty minutes on the hour is just time wasted. Stop spending time on social media and, instead, read another book every week in its place. Your limited time is precious; don't squander it. You have only twenty or thirty years left, Richard! Don't piss your time away on social media.

STATUS: A success, mostly. Look at all the book you read this year in the place of looking at social media. Keep this up...

Get rid of DVD deliveries from Netflix.

The DVD disks they mail you sit there at home for half a year, and still you don't watch them. Just rent the occasional movie extemporaneously from iTunes instead.

STATUS: Total success. Maria has complained some, but even she agreed that our famliy was happy with much less viewing of videos. Instead of free videos virtually on demand, we rented movies occasionally from iTunes. Key idea: our family should passively consume less media made by others, and instead we should actively create more media ourselves.

Here is the reading lineup at this time:

"Unstoppable: My Life So Far" by Maria Sharapova
- DID READ
"Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia" by Pomerantsev, Peter
- DID READ
The Elephant Man" by Christine Sparks
- DID READ
"All the Light We Cannot See." by Anthony Doerr
- DID READ
"The Death of Expertise" by Tom Nichols
- DID READ
The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones" by Sandra Tsing Loh
- DID READ
"Evil Has a Name: The Untold Story of the Golden State Killer Investigation," by Paul Holes, Jim Clemente, and Peter McDonnell
- DID READ
"Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning" by Claire Dederer
- DID READ
"Educated: A Memoir" by Tara Westover"
- DID READ
"The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains," by Nicholas Carr
- DID READ
"How to Shoot Like a Navy SEAL: Combat Marksmanship Fundamentals" by Chris Sajnog
- DID READ
"Rod Laver: An Autobiography," by Rod Laver
- DID READ
"The Angel and the Dragon: A Father's Search for Answers to His Son's Mental Illness and Suicide," by Jonathan Aurthur
- DID READ
"Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigations of a Lifetime," by Ron Stallworth
- DID READ
"No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden," by Mark Owen
- DID READ
"So You've Been Publicly Shamed," by Jon Ronson
- DID READ
"The Butterfly Effect," by Jon Ronson
- DID READ
"Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde," by by John Boessenecker
- DID READ
"In My Father's House A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family," by Fox Butterfield
- DID READ
"All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence," by Fox Butterfield
- DID READ
"The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations," by John McCain
- DID READ
"Black's Law: A Criminal Lawyer Reveals his Defense Strategies in Four Cliffhanger Cases," by Roy Black
- DID READ
"The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels," by Jon Meacham
- DID READ
"Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer," by Barbara Ehrenreich
- DID READ
"The Gift of Fear," by Gavin de Becker
- DID READ
"The Glass Castle: A Memoir," by Jeannette Walls
- DID READ
"Strokes of Genius," by Jon Wertheim
- DID READ
"Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions." by Russell Brand
- DID READ
"Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds," by David Goggins
- DID READ
"Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery," by Robert Kolker
- DID READ
"Leaders: Myth and Reality," by Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, and Jay Mangone
- DID READ
"The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place," by Andy Crouch
- DID READ
"Flowers for Algernon," by Daniel Keys
- DID READ
"Them: Why We Hate Each Other - and How to Heal," by Ben Sasse
- DID READ
"Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis" by Robert Putnam
- DID READ
"Dangerous Attraction: The Deadly Secret Life Of An All-american Girl," by Robert Scott
- DID READ
"No Second Place Winner," by William Henry Jordan
- DID READ
"Blue Highways: A Journey into America A Journey into America," by William Least Heat-Moon