Next Year’s Plan

Part One:

Every year I choose a challenge to take on for 365 days. In recent years, these challenges have included reading the top 100 Great Books (according to one list I found), sleeping outside in a tent at least one night per month, not drinking alcohol, adhering to a vegetarian diet, adhering to a vegan diet and, in this past year of 2025, taking a photograph of the sunrise every day.

My success rate is pretty good. I’m a disciplined person and when I set my mind to something, I generally stick with it. (The trouble is setting my mind to it…sometimes the things that would be the healthiest options for me are not the things on which my mind is easily set.). Of the examples given above, the only one that I failed at was the Great Books challenge. I veered off course in the middle of Don Quixote but did, before that and to my great amazement, make it all the way through Joyce’s Ulysses– admittedly doing only a cursory reading. My sister-in-law Joanne is part of a two-year study group in Cambridge, Mass that is parsing Ulysses one small bit at a time and, no doubt, getting infinitely more out of it than I did, tied to an armchair every morning for a half hour for months on end.

I have literary aspirations- I want to read more Charles Dickens, all of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, and more John Donne than I’ve got under my belt. I’d love to re-read some classics that I read in a hurry as an undergrad (English Lit minor) and barely understood- Faulkner, Woolf, Steinbeck. Reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch on a beach in Puerto Rico during spring break in my Junior year was an especially weird and unsatisfactory experience. I’d also like to break from my provincial English and (white) American framework and read authors from other parts of the world and of different racial and ethnic groups. I remember that when I traveled to Sri Lanka a few years ago I was encouraged to do some reading ahead of time and learn about the Sri Lankan Civil War and the great tsunami of 2004. I read the works suggested to us and I loved how I was able to connect and learn in advance of the trip.

But this year, I am drawn, again to consider my diet and food as I plan my 2026 challenge.

For some time- decades, really – I’ve had an interest in food production as it relates to our environment and our health. I remember reading Diet for a Small Planet when it first came out in 1971 ( I was in Junior High) and I read the 50th anniversary edition when it was released in 2021. Its focus on food choices and how they relate to global environmental and social issues struck me as a young teen and still makes me think as I sit down to plan our weekly menus. In 2006 I read Marion Nestle’s What to Eat – a seminal work in learning about food production and how to eat healthfully- and I just got her updated version, What to Eat Now, that came out this year. I’ve also been captivated through the years by the importance of food and dining as a cultural focus, enjoying classic works of MFK Fisher and her Italian equivalent, Patience Gray.

Some of my interest has to do with having worked as a cook and caterer for several years when I was just out of college. And, as I became more interested in theology and Christianity as a practice and profession, it was not lost on me that food, hospitality, and gathering together in community is also central to a life of faith. The focus of our weekly ritual in church, after all, is a meal… a heavenly banquet at which we are nourished and fed by Christ himself!

Another theme that is hard to ignore is … aging. In my seventh decade, now, I’m all too aware of how one’s body begins to betray oneself and the increased efforts that are needed at “upkeep” if longevity and mobility are among our personal goals. I do want to remain active and mobile and agile. I do want to be sharp witted and aware. Food -and exercise- are key components of any plan to remain active and healthy in one’s advanced years. In the past few years I have lost flexibility, strength, and have – through the indignities of menopause- lost most of my hair. Today, I have a physical shape that could best be described as “pudding in a sack.” (Credit to my husband for that descriptor but relax, he’s not said it in reference to me.) And finally, as someone who never took more than a vitamin or a couple of Tylenol for the first 65 years of my life, I find that I am now on both blood pressure medicine and statins for unhealthy levels of “bad” cholesterol. For the first time I have one of those plastic 7-day pill boxes that sits on my bathroom counter, taunting me. Ugh.

I want to hike the rest of the Appalachian Trail when I retire in 2027.

I want to be healthy for my children and grandchildren.

I want to travel, to garden, to hike, and to live on… healthy and strong.

I’m still concocting the specifics of the 2026 plan, but stay tuned. Details to come in a next entry.