New site, new aspirations /  by Grey Gallinger

Today is my twenty sixth birthday. At breakfast my friend, Emily kept pestering me about what I'm "going to do this year." I didn't have an exciting response, instead I just grumbled and sipped my coffee.

I'm not one of those people that make resolutions. I do however, recognize when change is welcome. After putting some thought into it I realized I want to write more, and better.

So this is my attempt at doing just that.

Sure, I could have written just the same on my tumblr, or any number of the other sites I maintain or let slip, but I chose to start fresh. I wanted my new project to be more focused and separated from the noise of social networks.

So hopefully this works out. I'm not promising anything amazing, I'm just making an agreement with myself to get better, at writing, and at focused idea curating.

The books I read in 2011 /  by Grey Gallinger

I read Neven Mrgan's post of the same title and got to thinking about what books I've read in the past twelve months. I don't consider myself an avid reader. I very much enjoy reading novels, the problem is the majority of what I read is short form non-fiction. My patience for reading longer form literature, especially fiction, is limited. I'm constantly promising myself I'll read more, but am perpetually disappointed by the quantity of books I read.

I didn't have the forethought to keep an ongoing list of what I've read, so I had to try to remember. So here it is, the list of books I read in the most accurate chronological order my mind could piece together.

I'm actually surprised by how many books I read, especially considering the George R. R. Martin books range from 704 pages to 1040 pages long. I'm also surprised that I thoroughly enjoyed all the books on the list. That might be skewed by my tendency to stop reading books I don't fall in love with within the first hundred pages.