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Lessons from The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

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  As we get the New Year started and I launch into some new goals for reading (top last year's number of books) and writing (just start doing it again), one of the first tasks for me was to re-read a personal favorite, and reflect on it a little bit. I've read The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse  each of the last three years, and committed myself to reading it each year for a few reasons. One, it's a super-quick read and will help me pad my reading stats. That's not the main reason, but I have to call myself out. More importantly though, this book is SO GOOD. I love it because the messages in it are simple, but profound. To me anyway.  As for reflecting on it, I think each time I have read this book, something new struck me as the most meaningful parable. I guess it depends on the headspace you are in whenever you read something, and how it will stick with you at that point in time. In addition to doing some internal reflecting, I thought this would be a good oppor...
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2021 Book Report

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2021 was by far the year that I finished* more books than ever before in a year. I am self-imposing that asterisk on 'finished' rather than using the word 'read' in that sentence. In 2021 I finished 75 books (not counting children's books). However 2021 was the year of the audiobook for me. I may have listened to one or two audiobooks in the past, but this past year I cut a lot of the podcasts out that I had been listening to, and turned to audiobooks. I enjoy the audiobook format, but as someone who previously really only liked reading physical books, something about it doesn't seem like reading. Probably because it's not reading, it's listening.  I suppose I could go back and tally how many books I read versus listened to, but I might not remember on some of them. In any event, I really enjoyed finishing  a crapload of books last year. Incorporating audiobooks really helped me pad my stats. In October, I started a new job in Philly. For my commute, I d...
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2022- CREATE

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Once upon a time, I used to write blogs on a regular basis. It was a fun (and free) hobby that allowed me to continue my creative outlet of writing. Over the span of somewhere between 10-15 years, I wrote about 700 blog entries on this page. I don't know why I stopped, but hopefully this is the restart.  When I finished grad school in 2006, I moved from Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama for my first full-time job. I started sending some long emails to family and friends as a way to stay in touch, and eventually transitioned from those emails (from my Hotmail account, which I still use thank you very much) to this blog, which may be an underused and outdated platform, but hey, you're reading right now, aren't you??? Anyway, writing is something I enjoy doing and need to reconnect with. My undergrad major was Journalism. Despite never working a day in my life as a journalist, I felt that writing a blog helped me keep that skill somewhat sharp. And over the last few years, I jus...
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Notes from the Rhythm of Life

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2015 has not been a great reading year for me. For a long time, I have said that I need to get back into it, and still I am struggling. Maybe I needed a down year, and I'll kill it in 2016. Regardless, I read a book this summer that changed my life, called  The Rhythm of Life . This book was a gift from a friend, but had sat on a shelf for probably 6 or 7 months before I picked it up. Why did I start reading it when I did? I'm not sure, but it was  EXACTLY  what I needed to be reading at that point in my life. Funny how things work sometimes. I've referenced the book on here a few times, and was recently talking to a student about it. I'm going to lend it to a student, but before I did, I went to browse it and type up some of the things I highlighted in the book, and then decided to share that in a blog. This book is full of color now, thanks to the alternating pink and green highlighting I did while reading. Worth noting that the book is over 300 pages long, and th...
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