New Year's Resolutions.

I've never taken New Year's resolutions very seriously. So I haven't really made any over the years. 

​This year might be a little different though.

Finished listening to Gary Taubes' The Case Against Sugar. My #NewYearsResolution? To eliminate refined sugar from my diet by New Year's Eve 2018 in order to try out a sugar-free diet for 2019. pic.twitter.com/e56k800Los

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) January 3, 2018

For the drive to Smithers, I listened to most of Gary Taubes' The Case Against Sugar, which basically posits that sugar leads to most of the "Western diseases" that plague our society. In the end, Taubes does not offer much of a solution: he claims that there's no way to scientifically prove his point about sugar's toxicity, but that his correlation-causation conclusions should nonetheless be heeded, that there would be no way to narrow down the culprit to sugar for type 2 Diabetes, hypertension, and cancer, specifically. I listened to another podcast on the way back from Smithers that featured The Science Moms who essentially debunked most of Taubes' points,

But perhaps this year I will aim to minimize sugar in my diet, if only to learn how to cook properly for myself. I'm a sucker for processed foods—in particular, cookies—and perhaps minimizing sugar would help me rely a little less on processed foods. I don't expect to go full sugar-free, but I'd like to get it back to the point where sugar is a bona fide treat. 

Beyond that, though, I think it's time to focus on music again. I've written about this before, but it's been tough over the last few years to play music. My musical ego was slowly worn away over the decade since I made my first super-independent CD, and it even got to the point where I didn't want to play music barely at all anymore.

But over the last while, I've been able to get a bit of that mojo back. Regularly playing at that restaurant in Harrison Hot Springs has really helped me regain some of my footing as a performing musician, and those two community theatre performances helped me regain some of the pleasure of being on stage.

What I haven't been able to do, however, is sit down and write. I have a couple dozen extracts of songs sitting on paper, on the computer, on my phone, but I don't think I've completed a song for the last few years. There are numerous reasons for this lack of production, but if I write them down I'm sure they'll come off as excuses. So I won't write them down. 

Instead, perhaps I can base a New Year's Resolution on this idea: Quantity over Quality.

Perhaps, if I commit to a certain number of blog posts or completed songs on a weekly basis or something, I'll get some good stuff out of it. Amongst all the quantity, some good quality, or quality practices at least, might emerge.

So here goes:

• One blog post a week.
• One completed song a week.

That's my goal. And perhaps, if possible, at the end of the year, I'll aim to record at least one song semi-professionally.

What I need to figure out is a system for keeping up with them. Perhaps a filing system? Perhaps a calendar? 

And how will I keep myself accountable? Especially as separation stuff gets overwhelming?

I don't know yet, but I'll start by trying to post my status updates here.

So here goes?

And home again. #pipeline #FraserValley

A post shared by Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) on Jan 3, 2018 at 5:00am PST