Yesterday I gave an update on how my 2014 pop culture goals turned out (I did okay). This year I don’t have a lot and know that if things go according to plan by the end of the year I will be going to graduate school in another country making things pretty busy and difficult to keep up with any sort of goal.

I do think that it is important to hear voices from diverse people and to do so one has to intentionally choose to seek out those voices. The first of my goals has to do with seeking this out.

-Watch 6 films directed by African, South American, or non-Korean/Japanese/Chinese Asian directors

The next goal is a personal one, to satisfy my cinephile heart and to be able to put myself in to any conversation regarding classic Japanese cinema. There are certain directors that I have not seen any movies from at all and this is something I want to change, so my goal is to:

-Watch a film each from these 6 directors: Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrei Tarkovsky, John Cassavetes, and Howard Hawks.

My final goal doesn’t really have anything to do with pop culture at all–it’s sort of a real-life resolution. My skills tend to lean toward the white-collar, sure my hands have felt hard work, my brow has broke a sweat, but my hands are not skilled. Name a movie and I can tell you the plot and who starred in it; teach me how to fix something and five minutes later I will stand there helpless. My grandfather is a master gardener, landscaper, and woodworker; my father an amateur mechanic. Me? Well, I write these blogs for no one to read. And this isn’t from lack of trying, my father taught me over and over; I went to my grandpa’s shop to design various things out of wood, but I never retained any of it.

This year I figured I should work toward trying to fix this. I am content in my manhood, it has nothing to do with this, rather it’s the practicality of it all. It’s that moment when you enter the mechanic’s shop and he asks you what’s wrong with the car and in one moment (this moment where you are thankful you have a beard to not look like a total wuss) all you can think is that’s your job! I don’t want to become a master mechanic–I don’t even like cars, but how much easier would it be for me to throw out words like carburetor or piston and be able to describe and fix things!

-Learn something about how cars work

Those are my goals for now.

I’ve still got three best of lists I plan on releasing within the next week or so, make sure you stay tuned.