New Years Resolutions

So, rather than blog about what I did today (which wasn’t particularly exciting—although I did make the acquaintance of a cute guy at the grocery store), here are my New Year’s resolutions, in no particular order:

Resolutions

1. Get more into the gay scene here.

This has been an issue wherever I’ve lived. When it comes to nightlife, I tend to select my destinations first by the kind of music that will be played and/or whether I am meeting friends there. I guess it says something about my motivations: I’m willing to go alone to a (primarily straight) techno club to dance to the music I love, but I’m not willing to go alone to gay clubs or bars, where I don’t like the music, to make gay friends / lovers / whatever. So this year, Luis gets a gay social life.

2. Lose Weight (again)

I was doing pretty good for myself by the end of the summer in Berlin, having lost about 20 pounds on a diet of dancing and eating vegetables, pasta and sausages. Since then, I gained back some of those pounds in September, burnt some of them off when I switched to biking around Paris, and then gained a lot more when my family came to town and we ate like pigs for two weeks. I’ve only regained about half of what I had lost in Berlin, but I’m still determined to get back into the diet and rhythm that I had in Berlin as much as I can, since that was clearly a good thing for me. See? What I need in life is a permanent vacation in Berlin. Can I get a prescription for that?

3. Take care of those things hanging off of my ToDo list with no dates.

I have a bunch of “one of these days…” items on my to-do list, and I need to get at least one or two of them off my list.

4. Get to Berlin more often and buy the plane tickets earlier, when they’re still cheap.

My friends from London joked that their new year’s resolution was to come to Berlin every three weeks. I don’t think I can quite afford that, but I want to go a few more times before the end of my time here in Paris. And to do that, I need to plan further ahead and buy tickets when they’re relatively cheap, rather than at the last moment at a high price.

5. Get some !@#$ing laser eye surgery so I don’t have to worry about contacts anymore (see dec 31st entry).

I doubt that this will happen anytime soon, but I am getting sick of having to deal with my contacts pooping out on me in the middle of a great night out.

6. Make more music.

Self-explanatory. I’m thinking of doing something like what I do here on the blog, producing something short, like a musical étude, and posting it every day or so. We’ll see…

7. Spend one day a week actually going out into Paris during the daytime, rather than only at night.

Because of the rhythm of my work and research, my days tend to be occupied by working, going out to clubs, and recovering (which also involves writing my field notes). At least once a week, I think, I need to dedicate a day to doing nothing but going to a park, museum, shopping, something other than work or nightclubs.

You’ll notice that “finish dissertation” isn’t on here. That isn’t so much a resolution as a “do it or have no career” ultimatum.