The annual pop culture goals of the year list! Who’s ready?! This year I’m really swinging for the fences, even with a 3-month old baby. This is your life, are you who you want to be, right?
Read Infinite Jest
First up, one that I’ve been wanting to do for years, but didn’t want to casually start, knowing that I’d absolutely fail. This year I’m going to read David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, but I’m giving myself the entire year to do so. The book is 1,079 pages, so I’m committing to 21 pages a week to keep up and actually finish it.
Write something 71% of all days
71% is 5 out of 7, which is more doable than 100% of all days, but will still be quite the challenge and allow me to take weekends off. My writings will be based on random prompts that I find on the internet and will only be somewhere between 100 and 500 words, but will push me to practice something I really enjoy doing. Keeping up with the rhythms and being sure to work out sentence structures with consistency will help me creatively and in future employment.
Do the Stephen Soderbergh culture calendar
For those not in the know, director Stephen Soderbergh keeps track of everything he reads and watches with an unbelievable commitment. This year I decided to do the same as an exercise and did so for the month of January. This year I want to keep up with the entire year, because it’s a really fun way to reflect on all you did.
Watch 5 films from watch list
Last year, I was able to watch 5 films on my Letterboxd “watchlist”, a list of movie blind spots across the cinema landscape that I’ve yet to enjoy. For the most part they fit into the “eat your vegetables” of movies, which is why it’s good to push myself slowly across the essentials of film canon. My list is here. A series of films I’m particularly keen on trying to watch this year are the Apu trilogy, directed by Satyajit Ray.
Jacob Wilson 