1 Second a Day, 365 Days of Sudoku, 1,000 Paper Cranes • 每天1秒，數獨365天，1,000隻紙鶴

Hello, my name is Halden Levin, and you are listening to Little Dragon’s Journey. 你好！我叫李靜辰，你正在聽小龍的旅程。

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Happy New Year! This is the time of New Year’s Resolutions and people planning on becoming their best self. I can’t say I really have any traditional New Year’s Resolutions, since I already have a number of ongoing goals. However, I have decided to start three year-long challenges:

1. Challenge #1: Record a video or take a picture everyday of 2021, providing a caption and a few notes about what events occurred that day.

2. Challenge #2: Complete one sudoku puzzle everyday of 2021, using the Page-A-Day Calendar purchased from Barnes & Noble.

3. Challenge #3: Fold 1,000 paper cranes, about two to three each day, by the end of 2021, using the sudoku puzzles and standard origami paper.

On New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, I didn’t suddenly announce my year-long challenge plans. It wasn’t until a trip to Barnes & Noble and a sudoku puzzle Page-A-Day Calendar later that I developed the idea for completing three year-long challenges.

On January 4th, my mom, sister, and I went on a shopping trip to purchase a few items I need for my trip to Taiwan. Since March of 2020, I haven’t gotten out much, besides runs, bike rides, walks, occasional trips to the grocery store, and a few masked, socially distanced, and outdoor events (and by a few, I mean like maybe five to seven).

First, we stopped at Target and were pretty much able to find everything we needed, but since we rarely have the opportunity to get out, especially with just the three of us together, we decided to extend our trip to TJ Maxx and Barnes & Noble.

I didn’t really need anything from TJ Maxx, but I did have some thoughts for Barnes & Noble. Personally, I’ve always that writing down what I need to do daily and weekly and keeping track of everything on paper has helped me stay on track and productive, so my first mission was to find a planner. Barnes & Noble had a very extensive collection of planners: classic, simple planners, fancy, colorful planners, planners with stickers, planners with monthly calendars, weekly calendars, and daily calendars, etc. I ultimately decided upon a simple looking, but fairly thick, blue planner with both monthly and weekly calendars, monthly dividers, space for notes, and even stickers (which I didn’t realize until after I decided upon it). After succeeding in accomplishing my first mission, I set out on the second, namely finding a Page-A-Day Calendar.

For the past two years, my parents have given me a Page-A-Day Calendar, those types of calendars that provide a new quote, word, game, picture, cartoon, etc. everyday throughout the year. The first Page-A-Day Calendar I received taught you a new word every day; when a word intrigued me, I would thumbtack it to a cushioned board in front of my desk at school. The second Page-A-Day Calendar I received presented a new leadership quote every day; I saved a few of those too. This year, I did not receive a Page-a-Day Calendar for Christmas, since my parents didn’t go to the bookstore as they usually do. However, I took it upon myself to look for one, since we were at Barnes & Noble and all, and I settled upon “The Original Sudoku Calendar” with a sudoku puzzle for every day of the year.

Satisfied, I purchased my finds, and on the way home, I started making up the few days’ worth of sudoku puzzles I needed to complete. In the process, I noticed that each page was a perfect square, unlike the previous two calendars I had. Since I wasn’t planning on saving all, or any, of the completed sudoku puzzles, I tried to think of what else I could do with the pages of this calendar that didn’t just simply equate to recycling a whole year’s worth of sudoku puzzles. The sudoku squares led me to think of origami and ultimately to establish Challenge #3: fold a thousand paper cranes over the course of 2021. Luckily, over the years, my sister and I have amassed a fairly sizable stash of origami paper, enough origami paper to last me for probably two-thirds of the year or so. We’ll see.

I feel like you’ve probably heard of people folding a thousand paper cranes. In elementary school, or maybe it was middle school, I remember reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, which is a historical novel based on the life of Sadako Sasaki. Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl who developed leukemia due to radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II. While in the hospital, she set out to make a thousand paper cranes. In Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Sadako did not achieve her goal before passing away, so her classmates finished the rest for her. However, according to those who knew her, Sadako did finish folding one thousand cranes, and even more on top of that. At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, there’s even a statue of Sadako holding a paper crane above her head.

Her story helped bring attention to the legend of folding one thousand paper cranes, which is senbazuru in Japanese; it’s said that anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes will be granted a singular wish or possibly happiness and eternal good luck. To be honest, my inspiration was those sudoku puzzles. I don’t know exactly what I plan to do if I finish folding one thousand paper cranes; maybe I’ll offer them as a gift to someone who needs a little luck and a little love.

I will let you know if I complete my mini challenges by the end of 2021. The wonderful thing about these mini challenges is that they’re not too time-consuming or difficult, but the results, if accomplished, are meaningful: a wish, as well as a year worth of memories.

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Please visit haldenlevin.wixsite.com/littledragonjourney to access the transcript of this episode, and know you are always welcome to contact me through my website, email, or social media. Thank you for joining Little Dragon’s Journey. 謝謝你們參加小龍的旅程。拜拜！