I typically do not believe in New Year’s Resolutions.  If I make one, I do it at my birthday which is MY New Year (better than regular new year) but this year I decided to try one.

As I am what the kids call “self employed” now I have learned the fine art of scheduling down time for myself so as not to drive myself crazy.  I have decided that for my New Year’s Resolution I would pick a new topic to study each week in my down time so that by the end of the year I will have learned 52 new things.

I got the idea originally from my big vacation I just got back from – I was so inspired by Pompeii that I’ve been reading up not only on it’s history, but on volcanoes in general and how they erupt.  I’ve been enjoying it so much I decided to keep looking up other things that I’ve always been curious about, but never took the time to do.  And as the new year was upon us, I figured that this was the perfect opportunity!

I’m sure as I go along, I’ll need suggestions – so please feel free to shout some out.

Some things I’m looking forward to learning:

• The history of the Christmas tree
• the life of Claude Monet
• more about Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Egyptian History (that may take more than one week)
• the background of Yoga
• More about American history (in school it was in one ear and out the other)
• History of Tattoos

There are some other things that I used to know well that I’d love to revisit as well, so this will be 12 months of Learning Stuff.   And I’m sure as I read up on things, I’ll be inspired to add more things to the list – so all in all, the reading will drive on more reading.  I love stuff like that because once you get rolling it kind of feeds itself with little active work on your part.  I just need to pick a place to start.

How about close to home?  This week I’ll read up on the life and times of glorious San Francisco!  That seems as good a place as any, and that is definitely something I’ve meant to do for a long time.

Happy New Year!