ROUGH

This day has become unexpectedly difficult. Lots of unease and nervousness about my mother's health. I'm not especially religious, but I said some prayers for my dear Mama tonight. When the danger is over, her and I will need to talk about ways to reduce the stress in her life, and how I can help to that end. The beauty is my optimism sort of feeds my feeling that things will get better. Changes are afoot hopefully for her, and definitely for me.

In which I decide to renew my blog..

I have decided that I want to write more, and to that end, I've decided to start blogging regularly. I'll be talking feminism, healthy living, sports, politics, books, balancing being happily single while dating, making friends in a new city, and various other random topics that interest me. Real original, huh? Ah,well...onward!

Even though resolutions are passe, I fucking love them. Historically, I've had pretty good luck with resolutions in that I actually stick to some of them long-term. So, I'm going to document my four planned resolutions for 2011 over the next few days. First up:

Take time to Read!

I love to read, I really do. However, I spend far too much time in front of my computer and end up wasting what could have been primo reading time playing Bejeweled Blitz, and cyber stalking Don Cheadle. I'm taking a cue from Terri (a very exact cue because I'm coping most of her challenges), and embarking on four reading challenges during 2011.

I'm especially excited about Terri's challenge -The Quirky Brown Reading Challenge. I haven't decided which books I'm going to tackle, but I'm pledging to the Level IV commitment of five or more books.

I'm guilty of not being very familiar with South Asian writers. I need to fix that posthaste. I plan to read:

-"Interpreter of Maladies" - Jhumpa Lahiri

-"The Pleasure Seekers" - Tishani Doshi
-"Shalimar the Clown" - Salman Rushdie

Check out this challenge here.

Ah, a challenge after my own heart! No guidelines, just a promise to read at least one book about GLBT topics and/or by GLBT authors. Most likely, the first book for this challenge will be, "The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality in the Black Communities."

Finally, the Take A Chance Challenge seems like good random fun. There a ten ways to "take a chance" on books, but I'm aiming to complete just five books using these methods.

So, there it is. I'll do my best to give updates on what I've read throughout the year. I'm even giving some thought to actually reviewing a (very) few of these books, but I absolutely make no promises.