I've seen some of these before but the majority are new to me. Here is the rest of them.

"Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed." –Cavett Robert

I was listening to someone speak the other day and they mentioned they frequently orient their years around themes or broad goals. I've actually been doing this for years without knowing or having structure to it. Several years ago, I quit Facebook and other new feed type social applications. The information quality was too low and I wasn't getting novel interesting things to read or see. I setup my first RSS reader (Stringer) and promptly followed a bunch of blogs that I had seen posts from recently. Since then, I've added some and removed some but the overall quality of information has been consistently pretty high.

I thought a bunch about the theme of focusing on what you read for almost two years. I started reading more long form journalism and started reading novels again. Overall, I would rate this as having been one of the highest impact changes to my life. Many thing I never would have seen without following content sources directly. One posit, some of the most interesting content is by authors whose popular posts get on aggregators/social media. However the content from them is the content that doesn't blow up or go viral. Content that is widely shared and spread is often diluted or byte sized because people just don't have the time investment to put into reading it and thus the most interesting content is not shared.

So to circle around again to broad themes or goals for 2019, my primary one is a goal of execution. When I look at 2018, I did a bunch of prep work for a variety of things throughout my life. I took a break from committing to as much work and relaxed for the year. It was a lovely break but I'm ready to get on the move again. So my theme for 2019 is execution. I have so many projects that are half finished or are incubated that need to get finished and shared. I do this because it makes me personally happy. My internal mood is pretty strongly linked to what I've gotten done recently. However I also do it because I ultimately hope that other people like the work I've been doing and find it either pleasing or valuable.

One minor theme that I'll note is that I would like to start writing more essays on this blog. This is the first but won't be the last by any means. Have a an excellent 2019.

I just finished A Book of Luminous Things and it ends of on this delightful poem that I'll share below. I recommend this anthology, it really shows a wide range of poetry.

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

BY CONSTANTINE CAVAFY
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY

Some days all you want to do is sit back and relax while watching the world go by. Luckly Seán Doran has remixed imagery from NASA to make just such a perfect video for that kind of day. It's the exact length of the time it takes to orbit the earth around the ISS at 92 minutes and 39 seconds.