1. New Zealand
2. Australia
3. England
4. France
5. Switzerland
6. Italy
7. Greece
8. Austria
9. Hungary
10. Germany
11. The Netherlands
12. Mexico
13. The Dominican Republic
14. Peru
15. Colombia

So it’s time again for the Days of Discipline.  The DoD was something I invented in college.  Basically, I was finding myself not really getting anything done.  I felt like I was just spinning my wheels and days would go by without me accomplishing anything I actually wanted to accomplish, and just wondering where all the time went.

So I created the 12 Days of Discipline.  I made a list of 12 things that I wanted to be disciplined in.  These would be things that I wanted to be a part of my routine, but because of laziness or bad habit, was not.  Things like flossing.  And working out.  So I made my list, and I told myself for the next 12 days, I would just simply force myself to do them.

No excuses, no exceptions, no special circumstances.  These 12 things were daily non-negotiables.

And what did I discover after my 12 days?  I learned that discipline really is a choice, and that I was lying to myself before when I thought I didn’t have the willpower to do them.  Some of the things were hard to make myself do, but ultimately it just takes the decision to make it happen.  I had the willpower in me, I just had to exercise it.  On top of that, after 12 days of doing these things every day, I was well on the way of turning these things into habits, and they were much easier to do by the end.

A couple years ago I decided to again do the Days of Discipline, although this time I wanted to go more hard-core, so I instituted the 40 Days of Discipline — 40 daily disciplines for 40 Days.  Again, it was hard, but I forced my way through it, and halfway through, it didn’t seem hard anymore.  By the end, I formed habits that lasted me months and some for years.

But it’s come that time again.  I feel like with my busy work schedule, it’s hard for me to get everything done personally that I want to do.  I’m finding myself tired after work and just sitting on the couch watching TV or movies, instead of accomplishing the things that I really do want to have as a part of my life.  That all changes now.  For the next 60 days, I am going to be going through the follow list of 60 things.  The whole things seems a little daunting now, but if my previous experiments in this have taught me anything, the difficulty I experience now will go away and will be far overshadowed by the benefits of making these disciplines into habits later on.

So without further adieu, here is my list:

Daily:

• Wake up early and get out of bed immediately (no snoozing)
• Make my bed
• Track my weight
• Do stretches
• Do push-ups
• Do sit-ups
• Exercise
• Read Bible
• Pray
• Carry a pack between home and work
• Drink more than 4 glasses of water
• Write down everything I eat
• Memorize a verse
• Memorize something else
• Clean my apt/kitchen/bathroom/car
• Take a picture a day and upload to Facebook
• Call a friend
• Read a book
• Journal
• Brush twice a day
• Floss

Once A Week:

• Call home every Sunday
• Take contacts out
• Clean shower
• Go to church
• Study for Bible study
• Work on my life story
• Watch a Netflix movie
• Go for a motorcycle ride
• Hang out with a friend

General Principles:

Personal:

• Eat healthfully
• Plan out meals
• Only drink free diet soda
• No unhealthy fast food
• No candy
• Put dishes away right after using them
• Stay clean-shaven
• File mail immediately
• Write down everything I spend
• Get gas when it falls under a 1/4 tank

Work:

• Start work by making a To Do list
• Dress appropriately to work
• Keep office, storage closet, and portable clean
• Respond to emails and calls right away
• Keep files organized
• Keep my work calendar up-to-date
• Label all tapes
• Don’t look up Facebook or Reddit until all my work is done
• Track work hours and tasks

One-Offs

• Finish list of Things to Do Before I Die
• Sort computer files
• Get new gym key
• Burn Ish’s Wedding to DVD
• Put up Facebook photos
• Finish Waldo video
• Make dentist appointment
• Make eye appointment
• Visit Planet Fitness
• Do a Video CoPilot tutorial

1. Go big or go home

This is my number one life motto and the most important of them all.  In every decision we make, we can decide how we behave.  I want to live a life on purpose and with intentionality.  “Going big” means not taking the safe route, but the exciting one, the route that’s got risk but also greater reward.  I don’t want to do something halfway, but rather have big goals and big accomplishments.  “Go big or go home” is the reason I moved down to Florida.  It was an adventure and a stepping out of what was safe and easy.  Something else I love about this motto is that there is no judgment in whether you “go big or go home.”  Sometimes it’s time to go home, and that’s ok too.

2. Be the change you want to see

Ghandi said this first and I’ve just kind of stolen it from him.  Basically what it means is that if you look around you and notice a problem, don’t just complain about the problem, fix it.  Don’t look around the room and say to yourself, “Wow, no one here is talking to anyone else” and then leave because of how unfriendly everyone is.  Go and talk to people.  Help create the positive change you want to see, because the only responsibility you can control is your own.

3. You gotta dance with the girl that brought ya

This is a very important one to me.  I often find myself not wanting to say no to people or opportunities.  If someone wants to hang out or needs help with something, I’m most likely to say yes.  Unfortunately, if different people all ask you to do something, saying yes to all of them will often end in disaster, and the people you didn’t want to disappoint end up very disappointed.  This motto for me means that once you commit to something, you must stand by your commitment, no matter what other opportunities come up.  If you ask a girl to the prom and she says yes, then you need to go with her to the dance.  If later a prettier,  more popular girl asks you to go with her instead, you simply have to tell her that you already have a commitment, and you stand by your commitments.  In the end, you and the people around you will be happier if you stick to your commitments and “dance with the girl that brought ya.”

4. It can’t all be wedding cake

This comes from a song by Spoon called “The Underdog.”  Here’s what I take from it: There are many different types of cake in the world, but if you’re just looking and hoping for wedding cake every time, you’re going to be very disappointed.  Sometimes life’s going to give you birthday cake instead.  Or coffee cake.  If you only care about wedding cake, then you’re going to be upset.  But coffee cake is delicious, and there’s a time and a place for it.  If you can understand that it’s not always going to be wedding cake but that’s ok, and sometimes other cake is better, you’ll be much happier.  In fact, wedding cake isn’t really all that good all the time.  Sometimes a nice angel food cake will be even better, and you’d miss out if all you’re looking for is wedding cake.  Don’t get me wrong, sometime it will be wedding cake, and it’ll be delicious and there will be celebrating and that’ll be great, but “it can’t all be wedding cake,” and that’s ok.

5. You can’t wing a button

Where I got this motto from is a little sillier, but the lesson is important.  There have been a couple times in my life where a button has fallen off of my shirt and I’ve had to sew it back on.  Easy right?  That’s what I thought.  I’d take thread and make the most convoluted knots, convinced that it would then stay on.  Inevitably, at the slightest gust of wind, my button would fall off again.  What I learned was that there are things, like buttons, that I personally could not wing.  I couldn’t just go into that situation and say to myself, “I don’t need to prepare for this, I don’t need to give this any thought, it’s just a button, and I can wing it, and it’ll be fine.”  It turned out that I couldn’t wing a button.  To properly sew a button back on, I was going to have to pay attention and take my time and do it intelligently, maybe even ask someone for help.  And that’s ok.  There’s going to be things in your life, like buttons for me, that you have to work for and will take patience and time and energy and will not come easily.  Now that’s not to say there isn’t anything you can wing.  Somethings will come naturally to you and you can wing it.  But other things you will not be able to, and like buttons, you will have to work at.

• The Pilgrim’s Regress – Lewis
• Phantom Tollbooth (Reread)
• Bambi vs. Godzilla  (Reread)
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Chabon
• Freakonomics – Levitt and Dubner
• A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bryson
• No Logo – Klein
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – Armitage
• The Secret History – Tartt
• Consider the Lobster – Wallace
• The Year of Magical Thinking – Didion
• Gilead – Robinson
• The Tipping Point – Gladwell
• The Road – McCarthy
• Life of Pi – Martel
• War and Peace – Pevear and Volokhonsky
• Bad Science – Goldacre
• White Teeth – Smith
• The Plot Against America – Roth
• Everything is Illuminated – Foer
• Eats, Shoots, and Leaves – Truss
• If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – McGregor
• Blank Slate – Pinker
• The PowerBook – Winterson
• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned – Tower
• The Ascent of Money – Ferguson
• The Carhullan Army – Hall
• Children of Men – James
• Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott

I also recently got some great suggestions from friends on Facebook which I need to look up.  Do you have any more suggestions of book I need to read?  Or have you read any of these?  Would you recommend them?

• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Israel
• Egypt
• South Africa
• Malawi
• Madagascar
• Komodo Island, Indonesia
• Alaska
• Nepal

What about you?  Where would you like to go?

• Read every book in the library and see every movie in the movie store
• Sit down with a different person each day, talk and learn their life stories
• Make it a goal to try to sneak in and ride every animal in the zoo
• Steal a plane and learn to fly…the hard way.
• Run up to random people each day and scream NOW WE KUNG-FU FIGHT!! and then start fighting them.  I would make it a goal to defeat everyone in the city.
• Eat in every restaurant and try everything on the menu at least once.
• Learn piano
• Learn the lottery numbers, play them, win money, and walk around handing people thousands of dollars on the street and see what happens.
• Practice ways of witnessing to people without any fear of how they’ll react
• See how well talking things out with the different gangs in the city would go…

Ok, so that’s some of mine.  What would you do on your Groundhog Day??

• Standing backflip
• Publish a book
• Memorize Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians
• Protest or picket something
• Save a life
• Get married
• Take a photo good enough to blow up
• Lead someone to Christ
• Sky-dive
• Bungee jump
• Run a marathon
• Do a triatholon
• Learn how to spell triathlon
• Get a motorcycle
• Backpack across Europe
• Travel to every continent
• Learn several worship songs on guitar
• Learn to play piano

What’s on your list?

After spending a lot of time and thought on this, I created a list of my 100 Favorite Movies.  This turned out to be really hard to do, since I love movies very much.  I decided to make a set of criteria to help me decide which movies deserved to be on the list.  The five things that I considered when making this list were:

• Rewatchability
• Memorability
• Enthusiasm For
• Artistic Appreciation
• Nostalgia

Since film is such a subjective medium (one of the things that makes it so great), my list is sure to be different than anyone else’s.  A lot of these movies are very personal to me.  Hopefully you can find some films on here that you love as well, or some that you’ve never heard of and want to give a try.  I certainly recommend them!

1.  Braveheart
2.  Good Will Hunting
3.  Disney’s Robin Hood
4.  Once
5.  Brick
6.  Children of Men
7.  Contact
8.  Gattaca
9.  The Postman
10.  Jurassic Park
11.  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (and Trilogy)
12.  Babe
13.  Matrix
14.  Primer
15.  Moulin Rouge
16.  Groundhog Day
17.  Fiddler on the Roof
18.  Me and You and Everyone We Know
19.  Clue
20.  Romeo + Juliet
21.  Aladdin
22.  Swingers
23.  Amadeus
24.  Bicycle Thieves
25.  It’s A Wonderful Life
26.  Miracle on 34th Street
27.  The Secret Garden
28.  Flight of the Navigator
29.  Phenomenon
30.  The Parent Trap
31.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
32.  Gerry
33.  Shakespeare in Love
34.  Maverick
35.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
36.  The Lion King
37.  This Is Spinal Tap
38.  Schindler’s List
39.  Swiss Family Robinson
40.  The Incredibles
41.  Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
42.  The Shining
43.  Forrest Gump
44.  All the Real Girls
45.  Mulholland Drive
46.  Singin’ in the Rain
47.  Saving Private Ryan
48.  The Princess Bride
49.  There Will Be Blood
50.  Punch-Drunk Love
51.  Fight Club
52.  Full Metal Jacket
53.  The Godfather Part I
54.  I Am Sam
55.  Memento
56.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
57.  The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (and Trilogy)
58.  Rounders
59.  Gladiator
60.  Back to the Future (and Trilogy)
61.  The Conversation
62.  The Neverending Story
63.  Fame
64.  Hook
65.  Spirited Away
66.  Garden State
67.  Spanglish
68.  Zoolander
69.  Tombstone
70.  Annie Hall
71.  The Passion of Joan of Arc
72.  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
73.  Lawrence of Arabia
74.  Almost Famous
75.  Atonement
76.  Serendipity
77.  The Usual Suspects
78.  The Dark Knight
79.  American History X
80.  Paris, je t’aime
81.  Glengarry Glen Ross
82.  Amorres Doggies
83.  Some Like It Hot
84.  The Shawshank Redemption
85.  The Sword and the Stone
86.  The Fugitive
87.  Wait Until Dark
88.  Stargate
89.  Ocean’s Twelve
90.  Toys
91.  The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
92.  Die Hard (and Trilogy)
93.  Cabaret
94.  Redbelt
95.  Apollo 13
96.  Glory
97.  Hero
98.  The Purple Rose of Cairo
99.  Swing Time
100.  Whale Rider

1 hen

2 ducks

3 geese

4 porculant porpoises

5 limerick oysters

6 pairs of Don Elviro’s tweezers

7 thousand Macedonian warriors in full battle array

8 brass monkeys from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt

9 sympathetic, apathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth

10 lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who quiver around the quarry of the Quay; all at the same time

11 ferocious, vivacious, ostentatious appetites of a gaggle of antelope singing their own praises by the light of the moon

12 dented cars counted by the Federal Bureau of Indentations one week after the hail got the upper hand

13 simple-minded survivors from a sunken ship somewhere of the coast of a Caribbean island looking for laughs in all the wrong places

14 rival gangs of kleptomaniac cat-thieves working together to steal cable from the noisy neighbors next-door

15 perfectly good reasons why the girl across the room would love to have him as her man, or so the boy thinks

16 hippopotamuses in trashcans in the terrain of Timbuktu eating beef jerky in the most barbaric fashion

17 signs that alert the attentive driver of the dangers of the road ahead, so comprehensive in their caution that the only hazard they failed to warn against was a freshly laid oil slick left by the leaky engine of a Ford F150

]]> http://zachswee.com/1-hen-2-ducks/feed/ 5 http://zachswee.com/movies-directors/ http://zachswee.com/movies-directors/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:07:01 +0000 shawbin http://zachswee.com/?p=138

I’ve made two lists of directors.  The first is a list of directors that I particularly like.  The second is a list of directors I tend to not like their films.  Without further ado…

Directors I Like (in alphabetical order):

• Woody Allen
• Paul Thomas Anderson
• David Fincher
• Milos Forman
• Terry Gilliam
• Rian Johnson
• Stanley Kubrick
• Richard Linklater
• Baz Luhrmann
• Hayao Miyazaki
• Mike Nichols
• Christopher Nolan
• Gus Van Sant
• Steven Soderbergh
• Steven Spielberg

Directors I Don’t Like (in no particular order):

• George Lukas – Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Wars, but starting in the ’90′s, Lukas has ruined everything else he’s touched.  The final straw for me was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He’s over-emphasis on CG was part of the reason I hate that movie

• M Night Shyamalan – He is the ultimate example of diminishing returns for me.  I liked Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but I grew to feel that he’s starting to wear his normal shtick thin.  He’s incredible at setting a mood and atmosphere, but his characters are boring (and emotionless) and his movies are getting kind of ridiculous.

• Peter Jackson – I loved The Lord of the Rings movies (I even liked King Kong) but I credit him more for being an incredible producer than director.  Some of his directing choices leave me shaking my head (for example, I hate all of the slow shutter speed shots of the Orcs running around…it looks so silly to me).

• Quentin Tarantino - Uh-oh, did I really just say that?  I appreciate the fact that he’s a movie buff and he definitely is in control of his films.  But his particular obsession with certain aspects of violence really bothers me and I feel uncomfortable with how he uses violence in his films.

• The Coen Brothers – I know I’m supposed to like them, and for sure I liked The Big Lebowski and The Hudsucker Proxy a lot, but overall (and perhaps because of how much I dislike Barton Fink), I don’t like how they do dialogue and again, their way of including violence in their films bothers me.

• Tim Burton – His movies are generally too dark for me.

• Wes Anderson – I wouldn’t say that I dislike this director.  I have realized, however, simply that I do not seem to like him as much as other people do.  I’ve seen all his films and liked them all, but that’s about where it ends for me, whereas the rest of the world is in love with him.

PS. 10% of the people who read this will find this controversial, and 90% won’t care )