Cut-Throat's 2016 Resolution Round Up

Susan Neiman's 'Why Grow Up' encouraged me to take resolutions seriously. My review of it can be found here and it has, in retrospect, been immensely influential for me. Of course, it is easy to be cynical about resolutions: they are, rather comically, rarely successful. But they also represent a struggle to improve oneself, and are more empowering than the alternative of un-reflective meandering.

What is often forgotten is that growing up and living longer, is fun - it results in competency. When you are young you lack the knowledge and experience needed to make the most of life's opportunities; it is only with a bit of practice that you can actually start to get good at living. Resolutions then, are a small attempt to harness this growth in natural competency.

1. Reading, Writing and Running.

2016 was intended to be a year where these three activities would happen on an 'almost daily' basis. The three programmes, which were lumped under one heading, have been met with varying levels of success.

Reading- I read almost every day, even if I am just browsing articles on the web. However my recent flat move has denied me a comfortable reading spot for a more focused programme of book consumption. In the new year I will have acquired a new reading den to remedy this. This sub-resolution has been a partial success.

Writing - This year I have regularly written with a much wider scope than ever before; in particular, I have started writing more poetry and short-form prose. I have not managed to make this an 'almost daily' routine, as this year has shown that reading, writing and exercising on an 'almost daily' basis is a tall order considering all the other things going on in my life. 

Running - I no longer exercise on a daily basis. This is not due to a lack of motivation but rather a lack of necessity. I have finally gotten back into combat sports this year and am looking to take grappling much more seriously in 2017 - perhaps enter a tournament or look to grade in Judo or BJJ. At the moment, again due to the flat move, I am lifting in the gym rather than training in any particular club. With last year's fitness failure in mind, I am very happy with what I have accomplished in 2016.

2. Get Techie.

This resolution was discontinued three quarters of the way through the year. I certainly know a lot more about digital technology than I did at the start of the year, but it wasn't thanks to any considered effort on my part.

3. Get Foodie

I cook from scratch almost everyday now; which has helped to improve my diet and aided in the tweaking of a number of dishes that I have been working on this year. Jack Monroe's budget cook book 'A Girl Called Jack' has seen a lot of use in my kitchen over the last few months. It has quickly become a classic in contemporary budget cookery and I highly recommend it to budding chefs who want to broaden their horizons; the dishes in Jack's book are varied but, for budget reasons, stripped down to their bare bones. The result is a cook book filled with recipes that require little in the way of food shopping, which is probably the most time consuming part of learning new forms of cuisine.

I now have a fairly wide and adaptable skill-set in the kitchen that I feel ready to build on. Next year I will be looking to work on more presentation pieces and start specialising in a couple of areas of world cuisine: French, Japanese and Middle Eastern cookery are on the cards for 2017. 

The 2016 Half Time Review

With the arrival of June comes this year's edition of Cut-throat and Clueless' Half-Time Review. As you might have noticed, I have half-finished redesigning this blog in celebration of this milestone. For my original list of 2016 resolutions click here, and for my last quarterly review click here. Below is a summary of victories and setbacks that have been achieved and/or suffered over the last three months.

Resolutions.

1. Reading, Writing, Running.

My reading has picked up its pace since I last discussed my resolutions on this blog; my writing has been steady, though mostly fiction orientated, and my exercise regime has finally diversified to include body-weight training - routines that once reduced me to a huffing mess, I now breeze through effortlessly and it feels great! I have also recently booked myself onto a distance learning course with the UK Society for Editors and Proof-Readers - I'm looking forward to it immensely. I also have my first Judo session, in years, coming up at the end of this week.

2. Get Techie.

Hurrah for progress! I have finally started learning Python and it's fascinating. Coding engages a very different part of my brain to that which is engaged when reading and writing philosophy. Frankly I'm excited to learn something tech related but also hoping to gleam some of the mental benefits associated with programming. Granted the few hours I have put in so far were grinded out purely so I'd have something to write here, but the enjoyment I have received from it has been genuine.   

I'll have to find some sort of project to focus on later in the year, at the moment I'm just trying to memorise the basics.

3. Get Foodie.

There has been too much progress made here to list comprehensively. Notable success' include home-made pizza made from scratch; vegetable pakora and a couple of other great finds discovered among my growing collection of cookery and cocktail books. I'm making food better, faster and with less stress than ever before. As a side note, I've discovered that food and drink books are remarkably reflective of their social origins.

Consider that "The Savoy Cocktail Book" written by Harry Craddock back in the 1930's is close to 300 pages long with almost every page containing  4 or 5 recipes, each of them calling for a variety of spirits and liquers. By contrast, "Good Things to Drink" written by Mr Lyan, and published last year, features recipes that tend to focus on one particular spirit and prefers the intelligent use of mixers and garnish to accompany drinks. In terms of "recipes per page", it has one recipe for every couple of pages with the majority of the book being photos of Mr Lyan and his friends drinking in rustic locations while looking infuriatingly hip.

This is the unfortunate consequence of modern advertising, and caused by the same forces that have perfume companies advertising with bizzare montages of models sliding out of Limos. While Craddock may bring content by the bucket-load, Mr Lyan would trounce him in terms of sales if they ever competed - the gloss sells.

Gripes aside, as much as I have enjoyed Mr Lyan's book, he has a bad habit of tacking "top up with champagne" onto the end of his recipes; the fact that he considers adding champagne to be an afterthought indicates that mixology has yet to escape its privileged roots.

First Quarterly Review of 2016

Time to reflect on the succeses and concessions of my fight against sloth and gluttony: welcome to Cut-throat and Clueless' Quarterly Review.

The Resolutions

1. Writing, Running, Reading.

Incorporating this augmented trio into an - almost - daily routine has been surprisingly easy. Writing wise I've produced a couple of radio plays and short stories that I'm very happy with - alongside some amateur ballads and free-verse poems of varying quality. Promisingly, exercise no longer reduces me to a pile of helpless splutters and has occasionally proved itself to be fun. However, on a less triumphant note, my reading has been slow this month due to a burn-out from all the heavy reading I did in January/February.

In the following weeks I'll adopt more body-weight orientated training and maybe start practising Judo or MMA again; in the meantime I'll continue writing and patiently wait for my reading appetite to recover.

2. Get Techie.

Nothing but stagnation on this front; once I clear some mental space I'll get right on to it... I promise.

3. Get Foodie.

Currently consolidating my efforts to hone some of my favourites meals; alcohol wise I have been sipping my way through variants of the Daiquri and found that Cachaça is an excellent full-bodied alternative to rum.

I used to do some great batch cooking - sauces, chutneys etc - and I'd like to return to it in order to perfect the method. There is something wonderfuly satisfying about handing a friend "a thing that you have made " which they can enjoy at their own leisure.

The Hit List

1. Video Games

This resolution has been an abject failure: I'm  playing Minecraft as I type this. Who'd have thought that an abstinence policy would backfire? 

2. Video Editing

A successful resolution in so far as I have not attempted to make any videos, however...

3. Misc

While I haven't picked up any new hobbies, I have continued trying to produce a little amateur humanities audio podcast. Time consuming, perhaps... but I think you'll find it's perfectly in line with this year's ethos: https://soundcloud.com/user-85578048

Resolutions for 2016.

A basic principle of military strategy with plenty of civilian applications: No plan survives contact with the enemy. Incomes, relationships and personal interests all change; accordingly it behoves one to construct their New Year Resolutions with adaptability in mind. It is for this reason that this year's edicts will, like last years, be free of measurable goals and progress plans. Sure, such things are beneficial to achieving short term success but over the course of something as unpredictable as a year they're more likely to turn out to be just frustrating and restrictive.

The second stratagem I will be implementing was first iterated to me by one of my undergraduate philosophy lecturers: Do Less, Achieve More. I possess a habit of developing amateur interests in an ever expanding range of activities. I find this habit to be both practically inconvenient and terribly rewarding. It's a trait that I'm quite proud of: one of the few figures of history who I consider to be a role model is the designer William Morris (a pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement and also an avid dabbler). Despite sharing his appetite for using a wide variety of mediums, I need to give my work some focus. In light of this my New Year's Resolutions will be matched with an inverse of 3 New Year Executions.  Happy 2016!

New Year's Resolutions for 2016.

1.  Reading, Writing and Running.

Last year I successfully expanded the range of written work that I consume and diversified my musical palate. My fitness goals however were not met with similar success and my writing sessions were also largely sporadic - I only really wrote when I needed to meet a deadline that I had set myself. This resolution is a promise to integrate writing, both non and fiction, and running, or exercise in general, into an "almost-daily" routine. The plan is to focus on sustainable long-term regularity rather than intensity or productivity.      

2. Get Techie.

Our world is mediated by computers and understanding them confers not only practical advantages, in terms of cyber security and gadget proficiency, but also in understanding the quintessentially modern philosophical problems of digital space. I want to know how my computer, the internet and my smart phone work and I want to be able to take better advantage of them. I also want to learn some basic coding skills by December; maybe C#.

3.  Get Foodie.

In the last six months I have discovered a pretty intense love of food and drink and have begun developing skills to match this interest. This resolution is simply a proof of intent to continue this trend through 2016. Health and general utility abound!

The 2016 Temporary Hit-list.   

1. Video Games.

 The thought came to me recently that I'm more in love with the idea of video games than I am with games themselves. There are a handful of titles that I love in theory and in execution but most of the games I enjoy, I enjoy primarily for the sake of the concept. Likewise the idea of a digital interactive space as a communicative platform is really exciting but most video games tend to disappoint my expectations of them as far as "art" is concerned. I'll keep playing Minecraft and perhaps dip my toe here or there but for now I'm content to give up trying to finish the classics or look out for cool new titles.

2. Video Editing and Production.
I have a youtube channel where I upload things related to video games. It's mainly an exercise in video editing and presentation and has been a fun side project. Regardless, video editing is time consuming and I have better things to focus on.

3.  The Misc Clause.

No wood-work, painting, electronics, amateur engineering etc: this is a general resolution to not pick  up any new hobbies, at least until my other resolutions succeed. It refers both to hobbies I have outside of the now sanctioned cooking, writing, reading and running quartet and also pre-emptively excludes any new hobbies from my life for the foreseeable future.