Choose My New Year’s Resolutions! (Sort of)

After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to wrap “A Catalog of Curiosity” by the end of 2021 -- it’s been a great adventure, but I want to devote more of my writing and exploring time to other projects. Since starting the blog as an answer to the question, “what do I do with all my free time now that I’m not in grad school?” I’ve joined numerous committees, become the treasurer of a small nonprofit board, written two script adaptations of classic works that have been performed by a local radio drama group, directed a show for that same group, become a trainer for a get-out-the-vote group I’m involved with, and written a book. The answer to what I want to do with my time isn’t this blog anymore. 

To make it possible to wrap up by the end of 2021, I’m going to cut it off at writing about 75 items on the original list of new-to-me things to explore, which is 17 to go. I took a look at everything I have not yet done on the list, and culled the ones that aren’t compatible with social distancing. Of those that remain, seven are items others recommended for the list, so I’m going to do them all. I also selected four that I’m particularly excited about. Picking the last six is where you come in! I’ve divided them into categories to make it easier to vote -- which things do you most want to see me do and write about? I’ll close the poll in a week, and then reveal the final list.

Books

Read Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle. This is the book that sparked a food safety movement, when it was intended to fuel interest in the well-being of low-income workers, particularly immigrants (it reminds me of present-day debates about sick leave for restaurant workers). I hear it's not well written, but it's quite the historical document. Sinclair famously said, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

Read a book that was a bestseller 100 years before I was born. Literature is a great way to access history, but we generally only read older books if they are classics or "high literature." A year's bestsellers usually include some books that stand the test of time, and others that don't but are still a window into that year in some way.

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Classes

Sit in on a college sociology course (with permission). I have been exposed to a lot of the ideas of sociology but not in a formal way. I think it would be fun to sample learning it more formally in an environment where many of the people are encountering sociological thinking for the first time.

Learn some American Sign Language. I am drawn to ASL in part because it's a language native to my country but I only know a few words. I make no pretense that I'll be able to converse with fluent speakers a after a course or two -- it took me years to learn a second language and I don't know if I am committed to a third -- but I'd like to learn a little.

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Writing projects

Do National "Novel" Writing Month again and write the first draft of a nonfiction YA book on doing historical research.

In college, one of my poetry teachers, Olga Broumas, sometimes had us take a poem we had written and cut the number of syllables in half. It was an interesting exercise, and had different results from cutting down the word count or other measures of length. She focuses a lot on the sound and musicality of poetry; the exercise is probably ill-suited to working towards the final draft of a piece of prose, but I'm interested to try it out. So, I will take a piece of prose I’ve written and cut the number of syllables in half.

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Research projects

Do a genealogy project. I know a bit about the methods of genealogy, but I've never really sat down and traced my family's roots. I have family members who have done this, so I might go outside my immediate family, but either way, it would be fun to try this as it's so many people's first and only experience with doing historical research.

Do some work for the History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust project. I have been meaning to try participating in a crowdsourced history project, and this one is new and looks really worthwhile.

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History

Watch "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North." This documentary follows a family of white Americans researching and confronting the history of their ancestors who were the largest slave-trading family in United States history. Some of the people from that project went on to work in slavery education, and I have taken a workshop with them I quite liked.

Interview some people of a different generation about how they learned history. I think this would provide inside insight into what has worked for people and what hasn't.

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Miscellaneous

Work through some of the University of Waterloo Centre for Teaching Excellence's collection of exercises on developing a teaching philosophy. It's designed for classroom teachers, but I think it will be interesting to apply it to museum education and history writing.

Attend a meeting of a local community development board, zoning board, or something similar. I want to know more about how decisions are made in my community.

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