Happy New Year! After a year of mournnng, and a month of resting/slacking after having Covid, I’m ready to set goals and move forward into a better year with a better me.
I’ll revive a tradition I used to have, of writing my goals in a pretty notebook, including steps to get there.
While I don’t hit all or even most goals, it often surprises me how many things manifest in my life after doing this exercise.
Last year I lost weight and got fitter - I’m not done yet with this journey and plan to reach my goal weight this year, with a toned and fit body. The exercise bike has been working for me; I also have a great free weight workout video that I will start doing again.
This does present a dilemma - I’d rather meet a guy who thinks I’m sexy at my current weight, than one who meets me first at my ideal weight. But having a boyfriend right now would probably interfere with my regimen. Not really ready to date yet anyway, so rather moot at this point.
Other goals will include continuing to learn Korean, and advancing my drumming skills. Also cleaning and organizing my house and garage better.
Once I feel like I’ve made progress in those areas, later in the year, I think I’ll try dating again. I do feel too young to give up on male companionship in my life. Dating is a lot more complicated for me than it was ten years ago though, so I feel I need to be ready for those challenges.
Very happy that twice in the last day, I understood a sentence in my Korean drama without having to translate it in my head! Granted, they were very short sentences ("Don't go, please" "I'm doing okay") but still, I'm excited that things are starting to gel in my brain a little. I'm looking forward to the day when I can watch them without the English subtitles. This is really kinda unexpected, that I am having so much FUN learning a new language at this point. It really wasn't on my radar.
I'm not much of a singer but Breakdown was one that I had worked on with my voice teacher. It's nice and low so I can generally avoid the awkward break in my voice between chest and head voice. And it fit my sassy mood that night, which is probably why I ended up making out with the handsome Italian guy.
I'm so excited! I just got presale access to try to buy tickets tomorrow to see SUGA. So many people signed up for the fan presale that they used a lottery system and many fans are waitlisted. My access code lets me try to buy them as soon as the presale starts, although it still can't guarantee tickets. My chances are pretty good though.
I never thought much about BTS before a couple of months ago. I had only seen one late-night tv performance of Dynamite and kind of wrote them off as a Korean Backstreet boys - slick pop, good but not really my jam. But now I know all about the breadth and depth of their catalogue (much more hip-hop, rap and pop-punk stuff than you would expect) and appreciate the literary references and deep themes in most of their music. (When's the last time you saw a popular musician with a reference to a Ursula LeGuin story in their music video?)
So yeah - fingers crossed, I hope I'll get to buy two tickets tomorrow for me and my oldest son (who is enjoying their music with me). It's my birthday that month - happy birthday to me!
The last couple of days, I've also been enjoying some songs by a Japanese singer-songwriter named Reiji Kawaguchi. Check out I'm a Slave for You (Japanese and some English, from the soundtrack to a quirky Japanese show I watched) and R.O.C.K.M.E. (ft. Marty James) (David Aude remix) if you want to get your dance groove on. The video for R.O.C.K.M.E. is super fun too.
Also, just heard from my business partner about a local physician, younger than us, who has just had surgery for a gigantic brain tumor. Seriously, this stuff makes me not want to put anything off. I think I'll start planning that trip to Korea sooner rather than later.
Weird experience this morning. Driving to work, blasting my BTS dance playlist on my car stereo. Today is an annual fundraising drive for burn victims, where firefighters stand on the traffic islands and collect money. I was stopped at the light and put money in the boot. The firefighter started a whole long conversation with me (Where was I going? to work. Where's that? down the street. Where? Name the town. Are you an optometrist? (Wearing my glasses) No, a physician. The red brick building? No a block down. What's your name? What's your specialty?.... )
Now maybe he was just the world's chattiest firefighter. But I swear to god, it seemed like he was flirting with me. He looked to be in his 40's, no older than 50 I'm sure. What???? Maybe it was just my happy glow from singing all these uptempo songs for the last 20 minutes on my commute to work. But it made me think my white hair may not be such an obstacle to dating as I think??? He was cute, as most firefighters seem to be. Hmmmmmm.
