Here are some things my Fitbit credits as exercise:

-practicing the drums (sometimes, it even gives me cardio!). It usually classes this as “outdoor cycling”

-practicing the harp (it only logs this about half of the time, probably when I’m practicing faster music, and it automatically categorizes it as “walking;” since I *actually* walk at other times, I recategorized it. There is no option for “musical performance” or “fine-motor handwork,” so I went with “gardening”)

-walking, but only if it’s cold out and only when it feels like it

Here are some things my Fitbit does NOT credit as exercise:

-hourlong yoga classes

-TRX classes (come on! these are no joke!)

-a one-off exercise class I did titled “Best Butt Ever” (I spent about 30% of it making jokes along the lines of “FitButt” to myself), during which I definitely was working more strenuously than when I’m playing celtic music on the harp

Hmmm.

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Today I misread “hazelnut” as “amazelnut,” which I think would be excellent branding. You’re welcome, nut lobby.

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I’ve always liked the week between Christmas and New Year’s. This year I was even lazier than usual and spent most of my time sitting around in a panda suit and face mask, watching the new season of Black Mirror. I leave the house to go to yoga and also so that my Fitbit will congratulate me on things.

I read three more books through the end of the year:

Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid

Secondhand Time, by Svetlana Alexievich

Love and Math, by Edward Frenkel

I was reading the last two somewhat simultaneously – Secondhand Time is pretty large to be a subway book – which felt somewhat thematic, since they’re both nonfiction and take place (at least in part) in the later days of the Soviet Union. Initially I found Secondhand Time difficult because it’s so vast and seemed both static and amorphous – a chorus of voices that aren’t always identified, starting stories that are related by time, place, and theme but don’t necessarily begin at the beginning. It started to coalesce around page 150, or maybe something changed in the way I was reading it. That was also the point at which it became more depressing, such that I had to stop reading it on the plane home to Ohio for Christmas and read O Magazine instead. I think I would still recommend Voices From Chernobyl over Secondhand Time; an oral history of a singular event in one place has more clarity than one of a complex period over thousands of miles.

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I actually made some progress on my bedside book stacks, which is good as I was tripping over them with some frequency. Granted, I have tripped getting out of bed even when there’s only a pristine floor.

I’m in the middle of both Love and Math, by Edward Frenkel, and Secondhand Time, by Svetlana Alexievich (so, technically, those are either *on* the bed or in my purse…but we’re being analog here).

Still forming the foundation of pile #1 are Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart, and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Joining them are Amen, Amen, Amen by Abby Sher and All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

Pile #2 consists mainly of borrowed books: Preparations for the Next Life by Atticus Lish, Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, and, on my Kindle, Goodbye Vitamin by Rachel Khong. Rounding out that stack is Augustus by John Williams, which was my holiday office party prize.

(And underneath all of that are about five magazines that I haven’t gotten to. That’s okay, because I like to take them on flights as a sort of ballast.)

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There are too many things that I hope happen in the world in 2018 that are depressing enough and obvious enough not to list. That said, I really need 2018 to bring me

1) a better approximation for “is not equal to” than =! (because really, that should be interpreted as a joyful shout of “EQUALS!” or “is excitement!”)

2) a past tense version of that sign. I need this both for a keyboard and also just for any written communication. “Is not equal to/does not equal” is not the same as “did not equal/was not equal to.”

Please! I’ve been good. Or decent. Though decent =! good.

(See, I really need it. I’m going to buy it in stamp form.)

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I intended to write this…I think before Halloween.

With reading, I’m something of a completionist (I think the number of books I’ve started and not finished is five or fewer, and most in the past couple of years). With writing, clearly, a procrastin…ist.

Anyway, as I was doing live-DJ yoga and thinking about mashup titles, I was also thinking about graphic design and visual puns. Their analogue re: sound is obvious–mixes–carrying on the declaration of “This thing looks like this other thing,” but with music. Sound, of course, also gives us puns.

So we’ve covered vision and hearing. Food contributes double: in terms of taste with things like herb substitutions, and visually when people do things like make mashed potatoes in the shape of cupcakes. So sight, sound, taste. What about touch and smell? All I’m coming up with are: peeled grapes as a Halloween-time petting zoo substitute for eyeballs, and durians smelling like…well, a whole heap of things that are highly unrelated to durians or any fruits.

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I do listen to (aka read) the news, as grotesque as it is these days, but I will say I prefer listening to people talk on the subway, like the pair of older women I sat next to the other night. They must have just come from a reading; one said “I’ve never understood singing–I mean, I understand why YOU would want to hear yourself sing, but why would *I* want to hear you sing?” The other shook her head and muttered, “Everyone just writes about orgasms these days. I’m tired of hearing about orgasms. They’re great–done. Write about something else.”

As we neared my stop and I stood to depart the train, I heard a snippet of conversation that ended with “So there he was, lying prostate on the floor…”

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Okay, it’s a lie. But I do love overhearing conversations like this:

Woman 1: They should make a movie out of his life story.

Woman 2: Would Troy be in it too? With all of his womanizing?

Woman 1: He is a SOCIOPATH.

Pause

Woman 2: Man, I’m going to go back to work and my fish is going to be dead.

Woman 1: You have a fish?

Woman 2: Just the one beta. You know, the kind that looks like it has a mohawk.

Woman 1: I thought you didn’t like anything breathing except humans.

Woman 2: Fish don’t breathe.

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Looking back through my (very…extensive) computer diary, which I started at age 16, I found an entry from my freshman year of college that begins, “What, March already? I’m going to wake up tomorrow and be thirty.”

OKAY THEN

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The Idiot, by Elif Batuman: Someone recommended this to me after reading my book-in-progress, though it would have been a delightful recommendation regardless. It’s my pick for my office holiday party book exchange.

A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman: Very…treacly. Too twee for me, though I understand the appeal, I guess.

Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead: Brutal and brilliant. I LOVE the conceit of a literal railroad.

Prosperous Friends, by Christine Schutt: This was quick, captivating, and totally depressing.

The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante: I finished this, the last of the Neapolitan novels, the same evening that I watched this season’s Rick and Morty finale, so I spent the remainder of my waking hours in existential despair. I want to reread the first two, but I think The Story of a New Name remains my favorite.

Man v. Nature, by Diane Cook: My former classmate’s short story collection–I LOVED this so much.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie: I’d never read this before, but recently assigned it to my seventh-grade student. I’ve been having her track the repeated imagery having to do with transportation, outer space, and natural disasters throughout.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage, by Bill Bryson: I came around to this by the time I finished, though I found it a little thin. Bryson is a very likable narrator, but I wasn’t dying to get home and read it. Also, the type is really faint! My eyes…

Ghosts of the Tsunami, by Richard Lloyd Parry: Really amazing, though the word “amazing” feels wrong, of course.

The Vegetarian, by Han Kang: Technically still reading this one. It’s the perfect subway book in that it’s slim, but because it’s short, I feel I have to take another book with me in case I finish it…so I guess that negates its merits as a subway book.

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