Three Old-School Goals for 2024 That I Might Actually Achieve

My time is short and I need to get these done

It’s the first week of January, a time when everyone sets goals for the new year, and I am no exception. Unlike many others, however, I tend to set goals that anyone who knows me will quickly see are clearly unattainable. A few recent ones that ended in abject failure included finally reading both Ulysses and Infinite Jest (Charlie Brown has a better chance of kicking that damn football than I do of ever finishing either of those monsters), stopping smoking (it really is the only joy I have left in life), and not being so grumpy all the time (I’ll give you time to stop laughing before continuing on).

In looking back at 2023, any goals I might have attempted were derailed on January 3rd when my mom went into the hospital, triggering a ten-month stay in the woods of East Texas. It was a schizophrenic existence, to be sure, and one I may write about more in-depth at some point. For now, suffice it to say that I was too busy keeping mom’s meds straight, trying to find a decent internet connection, and ignoring the fact that there were more “Trump 2024” flags than American flags (though nothing outnumbered the Texas flags; we are proud of that bad boy) to worry about goals.

If I was honest with myself, my goals for 2024 should be to stop smoking before my lungs go completely black, do more exercise than simply walking from the desk to the refrigerator (ah, the joys of writing from home), and maybe finding a job that pays the rent on time. Fortunately, I avoid ever being honest with myself; the cheapest insurance available through the Affordable Care Act doesn’t cover the amount of therapy that would cause. So instead, I’m going with three goals that should be attainable and that should have been checked off my list sometime in the 1990s.

As the title of this piece says, they are old-school goals. There is, for the most part, no fancy technology needed. None will cause me any stress at all; I have enough of that nonsense trying to figure out if the algorithm will allow me to earn enough to buy macaroni and cheese or just the macaroni. And all will please Simon Dillon, which is never a bad way to start the new year.

1. Read all of the novels of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. If you assumed that a former bookstore owner with the Seinfeld-esque nickname of “book guy” would have read all of Austen and Dickens by the age of 10, you would be sadly mistaken. I’m ashamed to admit that even though Jane only wrote six novels (Lady Susan was a novella, not a novel), there are still three I have never finished: Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. And no, watching the Keira Knightley film adaptations does not count.

I’m not as ashamed when it comes to Dickens, though I would have finished all of his 15 novels by now if I had simply read three each decade I’ve been alive. It’s time to move beyond Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities and finally tackle The Old Curiosity Shop, Bleak House, and The Pickwick Papers. And if you’re counting A Christmas Carol as a Dickens novel you’ve read, don’t: it’s a novella.

2. Watch every film on the Vatican Film List. Last month I wrote a story about a list the Vatican released in 1995 naming 45 films so important that everyone should see them. While reading Simon Dillon’s effusive praise of a number of them I had never seen, I decided to go back and count how many I actually have seen: twelve. Twelve out of 45. St. John Paul II is not smiling down on me right now.

I could use the excuse that many are not in English, but I love foreign films and am not intimidated by subtitles. Fifteen are specifically religious in nature, which is also right in my wheelhouse. Completing the list will also address another flaw in my normal cinematic preferences: if it’s not a John Wayne movie, I rarely venture back in time prior to 1950. Given that one of my all-time favorite movies, The Third Man, is from 1949, this really makes no sense at all.

3. Finally give classical music a chance. This last one is easily the most outside my comfort zone. As anyone who reads my music articles knows, my tastes are squarely in the rock and old country genres, with a heavy emphasis on The Smiths, Judas Priest, Gin Blossoms, anything ’80s, and a certain gentleman from New Jersey. For most of my life, the only time I heard classical music was while watching Bugs Bunny cartoons or during the “Ride of the Valkyries” scene in Apocalypse Now. I had no problem with the violin, but where I’m from we call it a fiddle.

My attitude changed this past Christmas season. Tired of hearing countless version of “Last Christmas” and The Jackson Five’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” on repeat every time I turned on the radio in my car, I switched over to the local classical station; to my shock, the music was not only excellent, it was calming. I am rotating between Mozart and Bach at the moment and my only complaint is that they need better names for the songs. “Piano Concerto №21” just doesn’t stick in the brain like “Born to Run.” If you have any suggestions for what I should listen to next, let me know in the comments.

There are a few more goals I should add, but I’m going to knock these three out first; as I said before, they’re ones I should have finished long ago. It’s even possible that I might become a little more “cultured” in the process, which is fine as long as I can keep eating fried chicken with my fingers. And tacos; always tacos.

Happy New Year everybody.

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