Hello, my friend!

I hope you’re doing well and that if you made any New Year’s resolutions, you’re enjoying the challenge, as well as some of the fruits of new, healthy habits! One change to my, and my son’s, life is having a lighter homeschool day in the middle of the week. Wednesdays, as a mere coincidence of instructor availability, is now a designated P.E. day, with pickleball and riding lessons on the calendar. It is a literal breath of fresh air to allow my son and I a break from the books in favor of nature, sunshine, and recreation!

Time for this week’s Top 4. I hope you enjoy them! (# 2 is the poem my son and I are memorizing this month.)

 

CONSISTENCY IS KEY

If George Bernard Shaw had not made it a rigid rule to do first things first, he would probably have failed as a writer and might have remained a bank cashier all his life. His plan called for writing five pages each day.”

— How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

 

“Little Things” by Julia Carney

Little drops of water,

Little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean

And the pleasant land.

So the little moments,

Humble though they be,

Make the mighty ages

Of Eternity.

So the little errors

Lead the soul away

From the paths of virtue

Far in sin to stray.

Little deeds of kindness,

Little words of love,

Help to make earth happy

Like the Heaven above.

 

CYNICISM & HOPEFULNESS

“Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils. I know this because much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent…

“Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like… keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.” – Nick Cave

ONE OF MY FAVORITE WRITING TIPS

“In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

― C.S. Lewis