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.

Resolutions 2015: Half Time Review

The cold post-winter of January is long behind me; nevertheless I am chained to its pact. Welcome to my half time review!

#1  Mo' Reading, Less Problems

A couple of months back I started reading Voltaire and realised, a bit late some would say, that you can often find two canons in one book. Continental philosophy often blurs genre lines with continental literature and this is both to its credit and detriment: the works tend to have greater cultural impact on account of their drama but sacrifice the veracity of their arguments in the process.

I have chosen to use the word "drama" rather than "readability" because while certain continentals can write fantastic fiction, their prose occasionally falls apart when writing straight laced philosophy.


For instance, in The Myth of Sisyphus Camu, for no discernible reason, behaves like the Oprah Winfrey of punctuation and hands every second word its own sub-clause despite being an otherwise very restrained and readable fiction writer.

Regardless, we are half way through the year of 2015 and I feel considerably more comfortable about my relationship with western literature. The journey is by no means at an end but I think I have good reason to hope that this year will end in satisfaction. If I continue the efforts I have made so far, I shouldn't have to play catch-up much longer.   

#2 Bad news for my cholesterol - I'm a lover not a fighter.

My health has deteriorated, slightly. My running has become infrequent and my diet unpredictable. There are two reasons for this, the first feeds into the second. I have made a number of romantic connections and I have also become more blasé with regards to my health. Consequently, I have spent more time getting drunk in bed with strange people than my doctor would of hypothetically recommended: evening runs and low fat yogurt have been replaced with rum, brie and cable ties.

Perhaps it is my, long awaited, attainment of a functional social life that has turned my attentions away from the rather solipsistic activities of calorie counting and mid-night jogging but I think a more honest appraisal involves holding myself accountable for recent complacencies.  I will try harder.

#3  Itunes - another wage-sucking vampire is now draining my current account.

Last time I wrote one of these posts my reticence and inability to scout out new artists was the one problem I had yet to fix. This time round it is the one I have had the most success with - thank you online shopping. When Steve Jobs returns from his cryo-chamber in the year 3011 he will be a little bit richer thanks to me; I have yet to decide how I feel about this.