In this post, I’m signing up for the New Year’s Resolution Reading Challenge that I announced on Monday. I’ll be joining at the 4-book Passionate level.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield won the informal poll in the comments and on Twitter as a Read Along book for the New Year. I’ll set that up more formally on the 1st of January, but you might want to get your hands on a copy now. This is a re-read for me, so I can tell you that it will be useful to combat resistance to any goal or project (not just the ones that we normally think of as artistic). It’s a very short book that I read too fast the first time. I’m looking forward to taking the whole month to work through it more thoroughly.
So, The War of Art is my Book 1 and I anticipate that it will support all three of my resolutions, below.
Resolved: Live Healthier. I was doing pretty well with this a few years ago when I lost 70 pounds. But complacency crept in during 2014 and it needs attention again. To get me started in the right direction in 2015, I will read A Short Guide to a Long Life by David B. Agus.
I love the castle in the clouds metaphor and the subtitle
Resolved: Improve my Mood. I’m right at the age when my mother had one of her more depressed periods in life. I’ve matched her patterns at other ages and I would very much like to skip this one. Have you ever seen a trap a mile away and still fallen in it? That’s where I’ve been the last few weeks. I hope this book, that I learned about from Ms. Bookish, will give me some new tools to climb out of the hole: A Blueprint for Your Castle in the Clouds: Make the Inside of Your Head Your Favorite Place to Be by Barbara Sophia Tammes.
Resolved: Write the Darn Book! A good NaNoWriMo has me re-energized for writing. Unfortunately, the NaNoWriMo project wasn’t the darn book that I meant to write in 2014. I’m hoping to take the energy and apply it to my more serious book project. This book looks like it might help: Do More Great Work by Michael Bungay Stanier.
What are your New Year’s resolutions, goals, and projects? Would you like to join us for the New Year’s Resolution Reading Challenge or the Read Along of The War of Art? Sign up at the original post or, if you’re already on your way, link book reviews, progress reports, or other posts related to reading in support of New Year’s resolutions below.
