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Happy New Year!

I have never been a big fan of New Year’s Eve, but I am a big fan of New Year’s Day and the feeling of optimism I always seem to have on January 1.

This morning I drove to the East Bay to a friend’s open house and, returning over the Bay Bridge, the sun was shining, the city of San Francisco was spread out before me, and I just had that feeling, you know? Of course, it helped that for once there was almost no traffic, even at the toll booths!

Remarkably, this optimism continued as I walked home through the somewhat industrial, somewhat gritty neighborhoods between dropping off my car and my apartment downtown. I’m not sure how long it will last, but for now I am looking forward to 2019.

It reminded me of a quote I usually post on Facebook on January 1.

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.

—E. L. Pierce

Of course, since I scheduled my Facebook account for deletion yesterday, I’m putting it here instead. Lately, I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter lamenting what many social media outlets have become and wishing out loud that people would go back to blogging, and I guess that is partly why my primary blogging resolution is just to be more regularly active here. Not in any regimented way, as I’ve always let my posts be guided by my cultural whims and activities of the moment, but as part of my overall need to be better about scheduling as a whole. In short, I tend to fall into the classic self-employment trap of not setting boundaries to my work day, frittering away time when I should be working, and then not really having down time for reading or music or movies in the evening because I still have deadlines to meet. (And, yes, I realize the parents out there are probably laughing about now.) Luckily, I am going into 2019 with a few stable projects lined up so I should be able to plan my time better than last year, which was a bit of a mess in that regard (though somewhat more lucrative at least).

In any case, what can you expect to see at Sly Wit over the next year?

Films, of course, with Oscar coverage starting with the nominations on January 22 until the ceremony on February 24 and then a return to quarterly reports on film throughout the year. I may do something on female directors to coincide with my Women 101 series in March (where I have plans to finally give Zenobia her due) and I will almost certainly do a full series on noir this November to coincide with the celebration of #Noirvember on Twitter. I’d like to do another film series in the summer, either a genre or a director, but, as I attempt to write up thoughts on the 250 films I watched this past year, I feel like I have skewed too far in that direction of late and hope to give more time instead to reading and reporting on books. Or at least get back to writing up the (Half) Year in Books that I used to do. As I wrote in The Year in Podcasts, I attended the Readers Retreat here in San Francisco in September, which made me realize how much I had fallen off the book wagon, even if I just managed to make my Goodreads goal by the skin of my teeth (and with the help of a number of short books). I’m mulling over trying once again to read War & Peace but I’m not quite convinced of the feasibility of that plan. Last, but not least, there will be opera in the summer and fall, with hopefully a smattering of music and dance performances throughout the year. Mostly, when something strikes me, whether it be a book, film, or musical performance, I hope to be in a place where I can write it up individually and share my thoughts in the moment.

Regardless of whether any of this actually happens, at least I am starting 2019 in the right frame of mind.

the Zach Stewart mural at the intersection of Folsom and 11th streets, San Francisco, New Year’s Day, 2019