New Year's Resolutions 2020

[Florestan]

Mine, in no particular order except #1.

1. Not to post anymore anything not related strictly to music and not to get myself involved anymore in yet another HIP controversy.

2. Exploring Medieval & Renaissance music more in-depth.

3. Celebrating Beethoven by listening to all of his works in chronological/opus order

What are yours?

Also, I sincerely apologize to all GMGers I have offended intentionally or inadvertently in 2019. I'm an impulsive, temperamental sort of guy online, quite the contrary of what I am in real life (a quiet and peaceful person ). Please, guys, make allowance for that and forgive me. I promise to do my best to behave myself next year.

Cheers and best wishes to all!

[steve ridgway]

1. I'm taking part in a group on another forum where we each draw a daily Tarot card over 12 days and analyse it for ourselves, and discuss if we feel like it. We're half way through so far but I'm getting a very consistent message about the need to leave all the negativity of the past behind to make way for something better. And not getting involved in winner vs. loser conflicts.

2. I actually like enough classical composers now that I could consider posting in the favourite 10 thread, and would like to concentrate on exploring these further.

3. I've just started another attempt to read a favourite series of fantasy novels I first read as a child. It's taking years as I'm reading a German edition on a Kindle using its German dictionary and web based translation, but it gives me much more time to properly imagine the scenes.

[Biffo]

Mine, in no particular order except #1.

1. Not to post anymore anything not related strictly to music and not to get myself involved anymore in yet another HIP controversy.

2. Exploring Medieval & Renaissance music more in-depth.

3. Celebrating Beethoven by listening to all of his works in chronological/opus order

What are yours?

Good luck with your resolutions but I think the second half of No 1 and No 2 are mutually contradictory. I will certainly try and listen to more Beethoven.

Also, I sincerely apologize to all GMGers I have offended intentionally or inadvertently in 2019. I'm an impulsive, temperamental sort of guy online, quite the contrary of what I am in real life (a quiet and peaceful person ). Please, guys, make allowance for that and forgive me. I promise to do my best to behave myself next year.

Cheers and best wishes to all!

[Florestan]

Good luck with your resolutions but I think the second half of No 1 and No 2 are mutually contradictory.

Thanks. And no, not really. Firstly, most recordings of Medieval & Renaissance music are HIP by default. Secondly, HIP or no HIP, if I enjoy what I hear it's all good. I'm not interested in comparisons or scholarly essays on how to perform this type of music. I'm interested in enjoying it. Period.

[drogulus]

     1680x1050

[Florestan]

Florestan, your #1, at least the first part, is also on my mind and something I hope to do a better job of when participating on GMG.

Well, fingers crossed then. 

[Mirror Image]

Mine, in no particular order except #1.

1. Not to post anymore anything not related strictly to music and not to get myself involved anymore in yet another HIP controversy.

2. Exploring Medieval & Renaissance music more in-depth.

3. Celebrating Beethoven by listening to all of his works in chronological/opus order

What are yours?

Also, I sincerely apologize to all GMGers I have offended intentionally or inadvertently in 2019. I'm an impulsive, temperamental sort of guy online, quite the contrary of what I am in real life (a quiet and peaceful person ). Please, guys, make allowance for that and forgive me. I promise to do my best to behave myself next year.

Cheers and best wishes to all!

I have to say in all my years here on GMG that you've never offended me, Andrei, but I'm not easily offended anyway and I don't believe I have offended anyone, although, to be fair, my recent tirade against thread proliferation wasn't exactly noteworthy behavior on my part. Anyway, best wishes to you and your loved ones.

I suppose I do have a few resolutions (in no particular order):

1. To listen to more music, which is obvious, especially of composers whose oeuvres I want to get to know better.

2. I really hope this year my love life gets some kind of cattle prod to it, which means I'm going to have to get out there and meet more people, which isn't always easy for me even though I make it look easy. I know deep inside of me, I simply want to escape back into my own mind and shut out the outside world.

3. I'd love to actually start taking some composition classes and learn how to be a better sight-reader.

4. Be a better person and treat people much better. Sometimes it is difficult for me to be nice all the time. While I'll always have my weaknesses, I would like to find a way to hide them or, at least, not make them so blatantly apparent.

[vandermolen]

1) Continue to lose weight. I've made quite a good start if I say so myself. I followed the Harcombe Diet for Men for five days with some success. Then I developed a cold which became a chest infection, a by product of which was that I lost my appetite and didn't drink alcohol for about ten days. I continued to lose weight. Prob about 1 stone in total. Today has nor exactly been an abstemious day but it is Christmas Day!

2) To de-clutter my CD and book collection (don't laugh). I'm sure that at my stage of life it's more therapeutically healthy to reduce what I own rather than continue to add to it. The whole lot will end up on a skip one day anyway.

[Mirror Image]

1) Continue to lose weight. I've made quite a good start if I say so myself. I followed the Harcombe Diet for Men for five days with some success. Then I developed a cold which became a chest infection, a by product of which was that I lost my appetite and didn't drink alcohol for about ten days. I continued to lose weight. Prob about 1 stone in total. Today has nor exactly been an abstemious day but it is Christmas Day!

2) To de-clutter my CD and book collection (don't laugh). I'm sure that at my stage of life it's more therapeutically healthy to reduce what I own rather than continue to add to it. The whole lot will end up on a skip one day anyway.

Those are two very good New Year's resolutions, Jeffrey. I, too, need to do both of these, but tonight my mom is making stuffed shells and cheese, so I'll have to pass on number one for now.

[Ratliff]

1) Continue to lose weight. I've made quite a good start if I say so myself. I followed the Harcombe Diet for Men for five days with some success. Then I developed a cold which became a chest infection, a by product of which was that I lost my appetite and didn't drink alcohol for about ten days. I continued to lose weight. Prob about 1 stone in total. Today has nor exactly been an abstemious day but it is Christmas Day!

2) To de-clutter my CD and book collection (don't laugh). I'm sure that at my stage of life it's more therapeutically healthy to reduce what I own rather than continue to add to it. The whole lot will end up on a skip one day anyway.

I lost about 20 pounds over 5 months by cutting out sugary drinks. It is good to have something to give up.

[steve ridgway]

1) Continue to lose weight. I've made quite a good start if I say so myself. I followed the Harcombe Diet for Men for five days with some success. Then I developed a cold which became a chest infection, a by product of which was that I lost my appetite and didn't drink alcohol for about ten days. I continued to lose weight. Prob about 1 stone in total. Today has nor exactly been an abstemious day but it is Christmas Day!

2) To de-clutter my CD and book collection (don't laugh). I'm sure that at my stage of life it's more therapeutically healthy to reduce what I own rather than continue to add to it. The whole lot will end up on a skip one day anyway.

Oh yes (4) I need to keep weight under control too. That diet sounds pretty reasonable, we avoid sugar and processed food as much as possible, including bread.

[Biffo]

Thanks. And no, not really. Firstly, most recordings of Medieval & Renaissance music are HIP by default. Secondly, HIP or no HIP, if I enjoy what I hear it's all good. I'm not interested in comparisons or scholarly essays on how to perform this type of music. I'm interested in enjoying it. Period.

That is all that matters

[vandermolen]

Those are two very good New Year's resolutions, Jeffrey. I, too, need to do both of these, but tonight my mom is making stuffed shells and cheese, so I'll have to pass on number one for now.

I don't think that I'd be able to resist stuffed shells and cheese either!

[Roy Bland]

Survive

[Mirror Image]

I don't think that I'd be able to resist stuffed shells and cheese either!

Yes, indeed.

[staxomega]

Listen to more music that is new to me. Maybe get a Qobuz subscription to help with this, several people are saying it sounds much better than Spotify.

Get a lot faster on my mountain bike when spring time comes, I've been training pretty hard at the gym since the weather got cold. I'll never be one of the top guys in Strava as some trails require you to be fearless which I am not.

Spend less time online. Several years ago I read some books on internet addiction and this caused me to really take a look at myself when our first child was born. I was mainly wasting time with online video games which have that reward/pleasure principle when you win which feeds into the cycle. I basically cut out all of them and stuck with only single player games which are easy to play for 30 minutes a day and leave it at that. Next will be the web. I think I'll be able to do this using Pomodoro timers which is what I used when studying for board exams and it worked extremely well. Ideally I'd like to get on the web just twice a day for non-work related things, maximum 30 minutes a day. There might also be a linear (maybe log based  ) curve of my time spent online and how much money I spend on music.

[Mirror Image]

Spend less time online. Several years ago I read some books on internet addiction and this caused me to really take a look at myself when our first child was born. I was mainly wasting time with online video games which have that reward/pleasure principle when you win which feeds into the cycle. I basically cut out all of them and stuck with only single player games which are easy to play for 30 minutes a day and leave it at that. Next will be the web. I think I'll be able to do this using Pomodoro timers which is what I used when studying for board exams and it worked extremely well. Ideally I'd like to get on the web just twice a day for non-work related things, maximum 30 minutes a day. There might also be a linear (maybe log based  ) curve of my time spent online and how much money I spend on music.

All food for thought for sure, but I would argue that the time you spend online can be used to benefit you instead of the opposite. Like, for example, I spend a lot of time online reading through old articles about favorite composers and so forth. Last night, I read about 4-5 articles on Britten that I never read before and learned quite a bit in the process. I think if your time is used wisely when you're searching the web (i. e. gaining some kind of knowledge about a topic you knew very little about), then this can only add positively to your life rather than getting online to argue with someone about something that doesn't even matter at the end of the day (guilty of this myself but I'm definitely doing much better). As long as you stick to something you're passionate about and learning about it, I see no harm in staying on the internet for hours at time. Of course, I don't know your living situation as to whether you're married or have kids, but if you're single and have no partner, then you've got more time than most people.

[staxomega]

All food for thought for sure, but I would argue that the time you spend online can be used to benefit you instead of the opposite. Like, for example, I spend a lot of time online reading through old articles about favorite composers and so forth. Last night, I read about 4-5 articles on Britten that I never read before and learned quite a bit in the process. I think if your time is used wisely when you're searching the web (i. e. gaining some kind of knowledge about a topic you knew very little about), then this can only add positively to your life rather than getting online to argue with someone about something that doesn't even matter at the end of the day (guilty of this myself but I'm definitely doing much better). As long as you stick to something you're passionate about and learning about it, I see no harm in staying on the internet for hours at time. Of course, I don't know your living situation as to whether you're married or have kids, but if you're single and have no partner, then you've got more time than most people.

I should have been much more specific in my post about spending time online, this should mostly have been about things that don't advance my knowledge in any way, there are some really inane forums (not this one) in particular. Everything you wrote on advancing your knowledge of the arts is what I would not consider a waste of time There is little finer than reading about your favorite composers or pieces of music when you are passionate about their works.

I generally have a good amount of time, job that lets me work at my own pace, never any on call, etc. But I feel like this is just something a bit personal that will allow me to grow more, spend that time learning about other things in much more detail (took up studying astrophysics a couple of years ago, want to read philosophy) or spend more dedicated time with my family.

[Karl Henning]

Mine, in no particular order except #1.

1. Not to post anymore anything not related strictly to music and not to get myself involved anymore in yet another HIP controversy.

2. Exploring Medieval & Renaissance music more in-depth.

3. Celebrating Beethoven by listening to all of his works in chronological/opus order

What are yours?

Also, I sincerely apologize to all GMGers I have offended intentionally or inadvertently in 2019. I'm an impulsive, temperamental sort of guy online, quite the contrary of what I am in real life (a quiet and peaceful person ). Please, guys, make allowance for that and forgive me. I promise to do my best to behave myself next year.

Cheers and best wishes to all!

Let us gladly exchange forgiveness.

[Florestan]

Let us gladly exchange forgiveness.

Gladly done, Karl.