365 Days of Something

I know this whole x- in a year thing has been building up on blogs for a while. Whether it's living biblically, living sustainably or just cooking your way through a lot of butter, it seems like we can only be productive people - or at least earn a book deal - if we're doing it in a calendar year. I noticed it, but didn't really care until I read a little article about a NPR staffer who baked a cake a week for a year and, yes, ended up with a book deal. Something inside me broke, and it wasn't just because I was hungry.

Since there has already been tons of blog posts and newspaper articles deconstructing and analyzing this trend, I won't do that.

Instead, I'm going to try and figure out how to get my ass on this gravy train before it pulls out of the station.

1. Live like it's 1805 FOR A YEAR.
Pros: Everyone likes Austen. Ever since her pop culture revival in the 1990s, people can't seem to get enough of those high-waisted gowns and deep, deeply repressed emotions. Plus, I already have the dress.
Cons: Waiting at home because nobody careed about the "Lady Q. Protagitron will be receiving at home from 10-11" cards that I had made up might get old fast. Also, I might not be able to make rent if I quit me job because "it is beneath the dignity of the daughter of a gentleman to labour."

2. Read a Russian classic a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: If this lady can "read" a book a day for a year, I can do her one better. I'll read nothing but Russian, in the original Russian for a whole year. All the books must way 10 pounds each and end with the protagonist's soul being crushed under the wheels of their society. Book deal about books here I come (book?)
Cons: I know Russian. Except for the Russian word for refigerator, and I figure the number of books focused entirely around Firgidaires and originally written in Russian is a small, small number.

3. Eat a different animal a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: Getting back to nature is big and food writing is even bigger. I will take my reader on a adventure through my stomach and around the world as I soak up culinary knowledge and expand my horizons by butchering a different, and probably adorable, animal each day.
Cons: While January would be a breeze what with beef on the 1st and chicken on the 2nd, I feel like my commitment to the project would waver sometime around day #321 when I realize I need to cleave a steak from the back of a platypus.

4. Sleep with a different guy a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: I really need to get out more, and maybe I would meet a nice fellow. Make some babies. Get another book out of motherhood.
Cons: Herpes.

5. Watch an episode of the Simpsons a day FOR A YEAR
Pros: The Simpsons, although perhaps now but a shadow of its former self, might be one of the most influential and quotable shows to ever hit the airwaves. What will be revealed about our society me through as we I regard life through it's prism?
Cons: This is already my life. As well as everybody 20-30 years old with the tv on and nothing better to do.

Alright, so I can't come up with anything. It looks like all the good ones, or at least all of the tasty ones, have been taken. Or maybe I'm just starting to think that this year thing is a comforting way of keeping change clean. Of packaging our growth into convenient time periods we can plan for it to start and to end. I don't know. Give me a year to think about it.