Constructive Summer

My internship ended yesterday and the sun is shining, so I'm declaring that summer (aka watermelon time) is unofficially here. (In case you're wondering, summer starts officially on June 21.) I have 3.5 months, give or take a few weeks, before I surrender my life to law school and I'll be damned if I don't make the most of it. To reference the Hold Steady, I'm going to build something this summer.

By build, I mean do lots of things. And to keep me honest and motivated, I decided to make it a blogging project as well. I've drafted a list of goals for the next few months and you can follow my progress as I try to keep up with them.

10 Summer Goals for a Constructive Summer:

1. Read a Book for an Hour Every Day - I have a TON of unread books on my shelf and I also don't read nearly enough for someone who allegedly loves books. Also, I need to preemptively make up for all the leisure reading I won't be doing once I start law school ~cries~.
2. Study Tagalog for an Hour Every Day - I shelled out $300 for the Rosetta Stone program a year ago and haven't really taken advantage of it. Learning Tagalog has been long been a goal of mine, so I should really stop procrastinating and just do it already.
3. Study for the GREs for an Hour Every Day - I may be applying for a concurrent degree in Public Policy, which means I have to take the GREs (blergh -- but there's no way it's going to kick my ass as bad as the LSATs did). I already ordered study material, so as soon as they get here, I'll get started.
4. Exercise 6 Days a Week - I've already been sticking to my Barry's Bootcamp workout video pretty consistently for the past month and a half or so, so I have high hopes of keeping this up. Yes, I use a workout video and it fucking rocks.
5. Cook Two New Recipes a Week - I want to expand my cooking and baking repertoire and I figure the best way to do this is by trying new recipes. Also, I recently discovered The Kitchn and an assortment of other cooking and baking blogs that are sure to keep me busy.
6. Watch Two Movies a Week - The utilization of my Netflix account is really pathetic. I once had a movie for a good month or so before I watched it. At the same time, my Netflix queue only continues to grow. I like watching movies, so this is really a matter of will rather than interests.
7. Dance Twice a Week - I've been meaning to dance more consistently for a while since that's really the only way to improve. With dance classes and semi-frequent dance dates with a friend, I already have infrastructure for this. I'm hoping to leap into Level 3 at Fat Chance Belly Dance whenever the cycle starts over.
8. Listen to One Album from the RS500 Every Week - For my music blog, I launched a project to blog the top 250 of the RS500. Surprise, surprise, I haven't started yet. But this is a constructive summer, so now would be a good time to start.
9. Develop Photographs Once a Week - I actually don't know how reasonable this goal is, it might end up needing to be every other week. I've been meaning to get back into black and white photography and developing my own photos. I commandeered my dad's beautiful 35 mm and paid for unlimited summer access to a local darkroom. Also, I ordered a decent scanner so I can post the images online.
   
10. Host More Parties - I don't have friends over nearly enough. I'm a big fan of theme parties, which are a good excuse to have people over. This also ties into trying new recipes since I don't like to bake things unless I have people to pawn the baked goods off on lest I undermine my 6 days of exercising and -- self control be damned -- I consume the entire batch. I think a party every other week is reasonable and doable.

I hope to blog about all of these things frequently over the next few months, with the exception of my exercising goal -- I will spare you the completely uninteresting anxious fretting over my self image. Feel free to chime in with ideas, comments and your own goals for the summer.