Getting a little meta with the title image.

New year, same me.

Turning hobbies into habits.

Just do it.

From my exhaustive research [of typing Just Do It origin into google], Wikipedia gave a fun fact about Nike’s signature slogan,

The slogan was coined in 1988 at an advertising agency meeting. The founder of Wieden+Kennedy agency, Dan Wieden credits the inspiration for his “Just Do It” Nike slogan to Gary Gilmore’s last words: “Let’s do it.” [Just before being executed by firing squad.]

Good enough for me.

Pretty decent slogan.

I’m a sucker for new year’s resolutions.

I appreciate the opportunity of throwing away an old calendar and hanging a blank one filled with white space and freedom.

But 2018 feels different. I made a conscious change towards the end of 2017 to stop thinking about doing things and instead, just doing them.

Surprisingly, there isn’t a lot of advice that says to keep waiting around for something magical to happen to you.

Since I have already started a few new hobbies this fall, my new year’s resolution is going to be turning those hobbies into habits.

1. Weekly blog posts.

Being consistent is a funny thing. Each week I write a post in a vacuum and then one day [today] you look back and you have ten weeks worth of posts.

The first post in the streak was an important one.

I had to be honest with myself about why I wasn’t following through. Once I got over those self-inflicted hurdles and wrote down my goal of consistency, it was a lot easier to prioritize the time to write each week.

The reasons I don’t write.

2. Reading.

I’ve never been a huge reader. I had a hard time sticking with books all the way through. The last few years, I have been a bit better and I think I have identified a few reasons why.

• Don’t finish books you don’t enjoy. Not worth it. Your time is precious. If you aren’t into something after 100 pages or so, just let it go. Sometimes it doesn’t even take that long. As soon as you know you aren’t into it, abandon ship.
• Embrace the library card. This pairs well with the point above. The library is an amazing resource that I forgot about for my entire life. But it allows you to throw in the towel on books you don’t enjoy and gives you access to thousands of books. All for free.
• Bite sized consistency. Much like weekly blog posts, exercising and really, any other good habit, consistency is the key. I have never been one to curl up and read for hours. My mind always wanders and my attention span is limited. So I shoot for 25–30 pages per day. It doesn’t take much time and before you know it, you’re done with the book.

3. Neighborhood garage band.

I have been threatening to do this for a while but actually haven’t started. Our neighbor and one of our best buds, Johnny, is an amazing musician who plays almost every instrument.

A glimpse into my future.

We have been talking about starting a garage band for years. This summer they moved from five minutes away to literally on our street.

We are officially out of excuses.

This week, I finally sent the text to pick a few songs to learn and rip the band-aid off this thing.

First on the list is Silverchair’s breakout hit from 1996, ‘Tomorrow’.

I am intimidated by his skills but I think the real reason we haven’t played together is I am worried that we’ll get too big and have to leave our families to do a world tour.

That would be a real strain on our relationships.

With that, cheers to 2018.