29. Listen to five albums I don't have on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

I've been curious about The Beatles' White Album for awhile. I would describe myself as a so-far casual Beatles fan. I have two of their greatest hits collections, Abbey Road and Let It Be. I'll confess I'm more of a fan of their songs with broad appeal (whoo, "Hey Jude" and "Paperback Writer") and not so much one who sits down and dissects their albums. Though the times I've done so for Abbey Road and Let It Be I've been pleasantly surprised ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer" isn't so bad and may have some deep meaning, but I'll never get "Octopus's Garden").

So the White Album is...

....a collection of amazing rock songs ("Back in the USSR", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "I'm So Tired")

...no, wait a minute, actually it's more like an experiment with folk ("Blackbird", "Mother Nature's Son"), country ("Rocky Raccoon", "Don't Pass Me By"), and blues ("Yer Blues", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road").

...no...it's a collection of weird psychedelic songs that make no sense unless you're on drugs ("Bungalow Bill", "Revolution 9", "The Glass Onion").

...or is it really a lot of tear-inducing odes to women ("I Will", "Julia", "Dear Prudence")?

I'm so confused...

Says Rolling Stone, "Each of the three main songwriters was pursuing his own vision, with the other members, however reluctantly, serving as backup musicians. Once a whole far greater than the sum of its parts, the Beatles were now a tense alliance of daunting individual talents." OK, so that clears things up a little.

According to Wikipedia, there was some debate over whether it should have been released as a double album, edited down to one album with B-sides, or released as two separate albums. Separate albums, I think. Enough good stuff and enough filler for two.

Wikipedia also has some interesting nuggets about the White Album. Are there secret messages in the album? Wikipedia cites Ian MacDonald, in his book Revolution in the Head, in saying that "The Beatles was the album in which the band's cryptic messages to its fan base became not merely vague but intentionally and perhaps dangerously open-ended, citing oblique passages in songs like 'Glass Onion' (e.g., 'the walrus was Paul') and 'Piggies' ('what they need's a damn good whacking')." I kind of want to know what Revolution 9 is all about.

The White Album is definitely mind-blowing in a lot of ways. I try to imagine the youth of 1968 listening to this on a turntable for the first time. What a wonder this must have been. "The walrus was Paul"? Really?

11. Reread Walden

As part of my list I included rereading two books. Until recently I haven't been a person who rereads. I can count on one hand the books I've read more than once -- Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, books of the Bible. I guess I've always thought it was a waste of time. If you've read something once, why read it again?

But my attitude has changed lately. I'm getting to the point where it's hard for me to recollect my so-called favorite books. Embarrassingly so. Is a book still a favorite if you read it ten years ago and can hardly remember anything in it? My favorite books list is becoming a list of books I know had an impact on me at some point, not really a list of books whose ideas and stories and characters I've thought about recently.

Walden is one of those books. The actual details of the book are pretty mushy to me now, but I can remember the fire that Walden started when I was 19. It was a volatile time in my life, and Walden was the spark that started the inferno. I remember questioning society itself, possessions, even food and drink. I remember feeling powerful, possibly for the first time in my life. I literally remember reading the passage about "castles in the air" and thinking, I need to read this again in a few years or else I'm going to forget how to live.

Ah, but of course I never read it again, and I did forget how to live :-).

I'm curious now, ten years later, will reading it again result in the same reaction? Walden is a dangerous book. Not if you read it, put it back on the shelf, and forget it. But if you really did live the way Thoreau describes in the book, this would be a different world.

I doubt I'll be ready to move to the woods after reading it for the second time. But after ten years of accumulating stuff, I think I need some dangerous philosophical ideas to put things into perspective.

I'm ordering the Kindle edition on Amazon and giving myself six weeks to read it. I'll update the blog with my reaction.

Another training update

The good news is the knee pain has subsided. I almost didn't run today because it was raining. Fortunately the rain didn't last very long. Saturday I begin Week 3 of the training regimen.

5K training update

Cool Running has tips on dealing with knee pain. I'm going to try the strength training exercises. If that doesn't work I'll look at some shoe supports.

17. Enter a 5K

If I was really an overachiever this would be "enter a marathon" but a 5K seems like a good starting point. A 5K = 3.1 miles. Twelve times around the track. Compared to 26.2 miles for a marathon a 5K seems easy...and yet, it's not *that* easy, when right now I can run less than a block before I run out of breath.

Last week I found this schedule online, which promises to get you "off the couch" and onto the 5K course in nine weeks, which is just about enough time to enter the "Clean and Scary" Halloween Run.

After one week of training I like the regimen a lot. 60 seconds of running, 90 seconds of walking, repeat for a total of 20 minutes, three times a week. I don't feel exhausted or too sore by the end of each session. Though running 30 straight minutes seems like it would be impossible right now, I guess the training plan will get me there if I stick to it.

I've had sore knees in the past when I go jogging, but so far my knees feel fine. Hmm, we'll see. Hopefully they will hold up.

It's nice to have a goal in mind when you exercise. Lately my fitness goal is to not allow myself to get too fat :-). A goal helps you stick to the regimen -- if I miss a session then I won't be where I need to be to run the 5K.

1. Start a new blog

So one thing is already crossed off the list -- I have started a new blog. I'm not new to blogging. I've had a blog but have been contemplating starting a new one for awhile.

Why? I enjoy writing but I feel like my skills have been languishing for awhile. Also I need a creative outlet. And well, it just might be fun.

I think focus is really important for a blog. Instead of just blogging about random crap like my commute and how cranky I was that day, why not make a real project out of it? I like the idea of a seasonal blog. This way the blog can not become a daily chore that drags on for years. I see this blog as like a chapter in a book. It's a chronicle of one time period in my life.

I'll make it a goal to post twice a week through May. Hopefully it will be entertaining and a few people will read it. If no one reads it, at least it will be there for me to look back on and I can laugh at my 29-year-old self.

I can hear my 40-year-old self laughing now...

The list

Birthday Graphics

The big 3-0. The end of my 20s, time for a freak out. Actually maybe I'm not as freaked out as some people are. I'm not so hung up on attaining the accessories of adulthood like a house, husband and/or child. But there are a few things I've always intended to accomplish or experience, and yet I never get around to them. Why not do those things *right now*?

So here's my list -- 30 things (a fitting number) I intend to do and blog about in the months leading up to my birthday in May 2012.

A few notes on the list: I didn't want to get so ambitious it's unrealistic (I don't think I can climb a mountain, visit Italy, run a marathon and read War and Peace in the nine months before the big day), but I think I included enough meaty goals to keep me busy for the duration. I tried to keep a mix of serious and not so serious. Yes, I think drinking a beverage can be a goal.

I've avoided resolutions as much as I can -- of course I'd love to become a better person in the upcoming months, but it might be difficult to write a blog post about that. I also have to leave work-related goals out, since I like having a job and I want to keep it that way. Also, some goals have been left open-ended to give myself some flexibility.

Well, here they are, in no particular order:

1. Start a new blog
2. Go on a hike
3. Submit a proposal to a magazine
4. Learn Spanish
5. Drink an Irish car bomb
6. Plan a 30th birthday party
7. Go on vacation to a place I've never been
8. Decide on a life philosophy
9. Ride on a roller coaster
10. Volunteer for an ongoing project
11. Reread Walden
12. Reread On the Road
13. Buy three new albums by up-and-coming bands
14. Create a Twitter account
15. Learn how to make enchiladas
16. Get a massage
17. Enter a 5K
18. Go on a diet for a month
19. Make a chocolate souffle
20. Finish reading the Old Testament
21. Go to a concert
22. Visit a farm
23. Watch 10 movies I haven't seen from Roger Ebert's Great Movies list
24. Read five books I wouldn't ordinarily read
25. Subscribe to The New Yorker
26. Start a book club
27. Find a date NOT via an online dating service
28. Decide on an idea for my book
29. Listen to five albums I don't have on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
30. Find peace with God

And so the adventure begins...