Monday, January 26

Motivational Posters of the Year

I know it's still early in the year, but nothing will top motivational posters featuring our hero, Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite is still "Purpose."

Monday, January 12

Harry Potter and the long cold winter

So I started re-reading all the Harry Potter books on the first day of winter, thinking, 'reading all the Harry Potter books again will be a fine way to pass the winter.' Three weeks in, and I'm through the first four books and yesterday started year five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's a pretty fun way to spend these long cold dark (sometimes snowy) winter nights, speed reading about Harry, Ron, Hermoine and their many adventures with Hagrid, Dumbledore, Malfoy, Snape, He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named and the others.

I've read the books before, of course, and seen the five movies too. (In fact, over New Year's, we watched the first four again, two each night, back to back.) Then again, the first time I read them I was reading them aloud to my then-little children, and to my then mid-sized children. K and I took turns reading the books at night to the kids, so parts I read, parts I listened to, parts I missed, and parts I had to re-read alone to catch-up, and then too there was a year or two between books, waiting for Ms. Rowling to write them.

This time, I'm just racing through them (well, as fast as I can, which admittedly isn't that fast). And while it's pretty fun to read them like this, it's also a bit bittersweet, since, y'know, my children aren't listening this time, they're no longer little, and they're both likely to be out of the house and off to college in 18 months.

Sigh.

Tuesday, January 6

Keep pushing

Advice to myself:

"I write a lot about "keep pushing" and the notion that simple perseverance will see us all through hardship, competition and just plain life. Gladwell and his 10,000 hours show the data behind that notion. So as we launch into the New Year, I will not be doing flashy workouts that are different just for the sake of being different. I will write, I will run, and I will ride my bike on a somewhat continuous loop throughout the year. I will get better, just a little, every day. And I think that's one of life's great elations, that daily progression to a better version of ourselves. "
-- Martin Dugard, in a blog post on life -- and on writing

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