Day Two - Project 1

  I want you to know things.  I guess because I'm a teacher and I guess because I'm as self-absorbed as the rest of the species.

  If you read the first post you get what this is about.  If you didn't, I can summarize (though apparently I could not yesterday).  I am a lazy person.  This bjournal allows me to document and by needing to document reinforce my 100 attempts at 10-day personal betterment projects.

  I want you to know that I chose the name Vitruvian Manifesto as a word play on the Leonardo Da Vinci sketch "Vitruvian Man".  I think the project is a way to embrace the "Renaissance Man" ideal in a 21st century way, and the use of Vitruvian Man-ifesto is a rather clever descriptor for this mental/physical/personal quest.

  I wanted you to know that because it is the nonsense I thought I wanted people to believe about me.  The name "Vitruvian Manifesto" stemmed from a particularly difficult time a couple years back.  I am old for a new teacher, and with three of us in my family, a substitute's wages don't really pay all the bills.  I actually became a security guard again before my daughter was born because I was taking a long time to get all my teaching license ducks in a row.  I kept the security job even once I found a school that liked me as much as I liked it, and was subbing (that's SUBstitute teachING for those of you who hate inference)  five days a week.

  Five days a week.  Five nights a week.  Oh, and then I got a tutoring job, two afternoons a week.  Add my daily cardio to stave off my evil blood sugar, and some things in my life started to fall by the wayside.

  Friends.

  Reading.

  Date night.

  Seeing my little girl.

  Sleep.

  Memory.

  Sanity.

  One night, where events conspired (no, that implies events had some intent - they didn't care) to give me a Friday night off, I rediscovered the joys of ironic insomnia.  And I started...not Drunk Dialing.....I guess Awake Typing my friends on Facebook.  I was witty.  I was absurd.  I was creative.  I was probably none of these things.

  And I signed them "Vitruvian Manwich".  Some of the more ridiculous, sleep-deprived thoughts were collected and called.....yep.

  So I had the name, and nothing to attach it to, like my vetoed wish to name a potential future male-child "Finn Swinemer" (my partner is smarter than me by like, an order of magnitude).

  Until the One Thousand Days thought.  It felt like my "Eureka!" moment, but running naked from my driver's seat on the highway seemed counterproductive at the time.  I resolved to be naked later.

  So.  Here it is.  I have divided my thousand days into, as I've said, one hundred ten-day projects.  Each project will be designated as part of one of the following three categories:

•     Academic Pursuits - reading, writing, math, languages, etc.  An example would be "Read the Complete works of - Someone Dead who Wrote an Imposing Body of Work", or "Learn a New Language Well Enough to Have a Passable Conversation".

•   Physical Challenges - sports, speed/flexibility/strength improvements, and such.  Examples here would be "Learn Cheerleading for the Amusement of my Eight Graders", or "Bench Press My Own Body Weight" (yes, for most of you, this one isn't a big deal, but again, you don't stay lazy for this long without having a whole lot of no upper body strength).

• Human Skills - artwork, crafts and repair, and so forth.  The things that make our species so weird/scary to the other animals.  Examples would be "Knit Clothing", or "Repair a Small Engine".

  For the record, I know that many Physical Challenges and Human Skills take real ability and education, so don't bother calling me an elitist.  I created Academic Pursuits because I know that after some of the Physical Challenges I'm probably going to need to sit or lie down a lot due to soreness, exhaustion, or injury.  Calling it Academic Pursuits lets me attempt something while I'm potentially laid out and lets me justify it as learning.

  I need to spend at least 2 hours a day on each project, and I will mention it when I scrape the minimum.  And to be clear, the next ninety-nine projects will not be so self-indulgently self-referential.  Self.

  An "About Me" page, and a post.  2 hours, 15 minutes.

Tomorrow's Post:  Vitruvian Manifesto - Across the Second Dimension.  Okay, I'm just adding pictures.

-Mike