What I learned this week
Sometimes, surprise yourself.
Similar Posts
Respecting Literature
One of the the things I adore about Spain is how strong the book culture is here. There are countless bookstores in the area where I live – I can think of eight within a kilometer or so. They’re not franchises, just small, family-owned businesses that thrive despite the fact that Amazon and ebooks are…
On how we are free
Years ago, Jessica had a big plastic castle that she got for Christmas, and a number of princess figures that fit inside. One day she came to me and she said, “I let all of the princesses out of the castle and now they are free!” She was beyond excited; she was thrilled. And…
On picking your battles
So a while back, I got steamrollered into doing something I didn’t want to do, and the day I had to do it, I broke out with the most glorious case of hives you have ever seen. Huge, red, welts all over my arms and upper body and face, scratchy HIDEOUS hives that started as…
The next step
I recently mentioned Terry Pratchett, who occasionally writes about a young witch, Tiffany Aching, and her obnoxious chums, the Wee Free Men, and if you haven’t read Sir Terry, you should. At any rate, he was still on my mind when I started writing this post, and I thought it appropriate to give a nod…
Developing habits that protect the work
“True originality eschews its trappings.” That’s about the only thing Freud ever said that I agree with. Being a creative person — writing books, painting pictures, developing the theory of evolution — is incredibly time-consuming. It’s hard. It’s an awful lot of work. If you’re spending all of your time on appearances, on the trappings, you simply don’t…
On going back to school
__________________________________ I am at Mini College, a kind of week-long summer school intensive for university alums, and I am remembering back to who I was twenty years ago. Thinking, if I had known then what life had in store for me, I would never have done it. But the person I am now would never…