Welcome 2019

As you'll see below, one of my New Year's Resolutions is to start blogging again. So, first post of the year: New Year's Resolutions. In my line of work September tends to feel more like the start of a year than January does, but there's still something about the turning of the calendar.

(1) Facebook, Blogging, Social Media

I'm going to cut way back on giving my content to facebook in 2019.

I don’t currently plan to leave — I still get more value from it than I’m willing to give up — but I want to be more conscientious about when and how I contribute proprietary value to facebook. One of the strategies I intend to employ more often this year is to write more of my thoughts in my own spaces like this blog. I can still link it on facebook, which is important for visibility, and where a lot of the discussion still tends to happen, but at least I’m not doing as many things that you need to be on facebook to see and engage with.

The one thing that facebook is good at, and that I don’t have a great alternative for, is sharing with a broad audience that isn’t the entire world. There are two reasons it’s good to be able to do this. One is that there are some things I’m happy to share with those who are interested in my life, but which I wouldn’t want to presume everyone cares to know about. Another is that sometimes I have things to say that I’d like to have reasonably broadly heard, but where I know that some individuals would make my life difficult if they saw it. I’ll continue to think through my options in these cases, and I may well continue to rely on facebook some, but I want at least to make sure I’m being deliberate and conscientious about how and why I am contributing to facebook’s social media dominance.

It's likely the tone of this blog might change a bit, as it is in this post, if I decide to share more personal things here. (This post is only interesting if you care about me and my life and my goals. Not all of my posts are like that.)

(2) Photography

View this post on Instagram

Happy New Year! (Photo from November 2016)⠀ ⠀ One of my New Year's Resolutions is to take and post more photographs. Can I post a photo (new or old) every day? Let's see how it goes.

A post shared by Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (@jonathanichikawa) on Jan 1, 2019 at 10:24am PST

I have gotten out of my photography habit. (I have thousands of photos that I’ve taken that are waiting for me to process and post them, and I've slowed way down on taking new ones.) I want to get back into the habit. I set up a new 500px account and I'm gradually uploading to it, mostly from my archives so far. I plan to let my flickr photostream go. (They're going to start deleting soon if I don't pay.) I'm going to try to see whether it's feasible to post a photo a day to Instagram.

(3) Research

2018, especially the second half of it, has been incredibly busy with things other than my philosophical research; I’ve produced less writing so far than I’d hoped. I don’t regret my 2018 balance, but I want 2019 to be weighted more heavily towards research, and I hope a year from now I have some pretty concrete results to show for it. I intend to finish my defensiveness paper and my contextual injustice paper, and to have significant new work related to my rape culture project.

(4) Fitness

2018 was a phenomenal running year for me. I met all my race goals. In 2019 I plan to continue running, but less, diversifying my fitness strategies. The resolution is to get into the habit of regular strength exercises. I also plan to get a new half-marathon PB.

(5) Van

Carrie and I bought an old RV last year but haven't gotten around to getting into adventure shape. In 2019, I'm going to make sure it happens.