Week One Progress Report

I feel a bit silly, putting a massive “To Do List” online, but I like lists. I make several lists a week, I have notebooks and diaries full of lists, bullet points and reminders, (Obviously, I'm compulsive.) but only a few of these things ever get done. My hope is that publishing these goals online will give me the added incentive to actually do them.

A lot of these are fairly prosaic, like: #15 sell my books. But if you realize that these books have been sitting in boxes in my apartment’s entryway for a year, even though I trip on them, they ruin the look of the entryway and mean I can’t open the coat closet properly, you begin to see that it is actually a crisis of procrastination. I've got to do something to motivate myself.

So have I sold the books yet? No. But I’ve done some other stuff!

I have now gone a week without Diet Coke (#14), and I love diet coke. I’m quitting because:

It’s expensive. I figured out that I’d spent roughly $600 on Diet Coke last year. Just think of what I could do with $600 dollars!

I’ve noticed that long term cola drinkers tend to have oddly transparent teeth. This is scary.

It’s environmentally unsound. Once you’ve had your drink, then you have to deal with the can or bottle it came in.

I’ve replaced it with ice tea which is better for me, health-wise, and still provides enough caffeine to get me going. I may save my teeth yet. But I still have 3 weeks and 2 months to go before I finish this goal. I miss my coke! I really do.

I’ve been to the movies (#48) for the first time in a long time, to see Sweeny Todd. Meh. The film isn’t bad, though I didn’t think it was possible to be darker than the original. (It was, and it didn’t help that most of the jokes fell flat.) But, it’s a musical, and while Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter are commendably creepy, they are not musical performers and it shows.

And last, but not least, I tried a new restaurant (#42). Shutters Cafe on San Pablo, near the yoga studio. I've been passing by it for a few months now and decided to go out of my comfort zone, and try a new place. I had a hamburger. My theory is that if a restaurant can make ordinary stuff really good, then their specialties are worth coming back for. A perfectly nice hamburger, but no big deal. I'm going to do more research before the next restaurant.