Category: Self-Improvement

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January Open Write Day 5 with Jessica from Chicago

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Jessica of Chicago is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com, inspiring us to write poems to the theme of “This is the Year.” She writes, “January is a time for self-reflection, goal-setting, and aspirational thinking.” You can read her full prompt and poems of others here. She encourages us to write poems about the changes we wish to see in 2025, structuring it this way:

  • Line 1: This is the year that _______ (your hope or aspiration comes to fruition)
  • Lines 2-5 and beyond: Provide a concrete description of what this would mean

Enough!

this is the year that

my one little word, enough,

takes on new meaning

helps guide decisions

about life, work, and spending

I don’t want too much

I already own enough

books, shoes, clothes electronics,

and other gadgets

it’s time to pare down

time to use the library

to tone down the noise

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January Open Write Day 2 with Gayle Sands of Maryland

Gayle Sands of Maryland is our host for Day 2 of the January Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can read her prompt and poem here. Today, we are writing KonMari poems to honor the legendary clutter-clean out queen Marie Kondo. I’m bringing my One Little Word into the first line of my poem today – enough.

“To truly cherish the things that are important to you, 

you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose.”

Marie Kondo

Keepsakes Unkept 2

we’ll keep just enough :

*the dogs

*each other

(in that order)

*our jobs

*our dream of downsizing

for camper travel

*our sparse simplicity

that might seem boring

to anyone else

we’ll jettison some cargo:

* “gifts” bestowed, heavily-storied

relics with sentiments not ours

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January Open Write Day 1 with Shaun Ingalls of Las Vegas

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Shaun Ingalls of Nevada is our host for Day 1 of the January Open Write at Ethicalela.com. You can read his post here. His poem and prompt has my mind spinning with all the possibilities for classroom engagement. Shaun encourages us to write poems using slang words and phrasing from an urban dictionary.

One thing I could do all day is watch Greg Edwards deliver his Thug Notes – – I crack up every single time and love this approach to explaining classics. Even though I never could have shown them in class for fear of parent complaints about language and innuendo, I think Dr. Sparky Sweets (a play on Spark Notes) would have drawn my students into a deeper love of classical literature. I have to say: I got an education as I explored the Gen Z dictionary on Wikipedia. We certainly have a different culture of language from back in the day.

Another thing I could do all day is watch Sam Fricker dive. Lately, I have been following his style on the board and his prankish humor in real life. He has amassed quite a social media following. I’ve always enjoyed watching divers, and I think it stems from my fascination with the high dive at The Beach Club on Sea Island, Georgia. I swam there almost daily in the summers as a child, and there is still something about that high dive that lures me straight into its fear just like those people in horror movies that think they have to go outside alone when they hear a noise in the dark. I jumped off of it several times, but never got my courage up to dive headfirst from it. At that age, it looked like I was looking down from the tip top of the universe. And that’s one of the many reasons I love watching Sam smash all my fears of heights as he boldly twists and flips his way into the pool.

When Sam Fricker Dives

the GOAT looksmaxxes
then plunges without a splash!
who is this diva???

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The Stillness of Snow

We had far more ice than snow last weekend, but there is something transformative about the stillness of snow. As a year turns, the tranquility of snow brings a feeling of a clean slate. All the old crap of last year is frozen solid, then melts away faster than a million snow cones on a hot summer day at the softball field, leaving only the fresh breath of newness, ripe for the rightness of a new start.

Which, I’ll speak for myself while knowing it isn’t just me, we all need. Therapists often tell patients to write down all their woes and then ball up the paper and throw it into the fire to watch the negativity burn away. But there is also renewal in the power of cold. Take this pine tree farm, for example. It suffered the least amount of loss of any other pine tree farm planted in this area the year it was sown. I remember my husband telling me that he, his father, and his brother were so cold that day that his father’s eyes and nose were stinging and running so heavily that the frigid temperatures made ice crystals all along his eyelashes and mustache and beard. They worked in rotating positions that day. One of them drove the tractor, while the two on the back end were the planters. One would unbundle the frozen saplings, and the other (lying down on the back end facing the ground) pushed them into the earth in spaced out rows. When the foresters asked them what they had done to prevent such loss of trees, they didn’t really know – until they all looked at the calendar and made some comparisons of data. They’d planted the Johnson Funny Farm pines on the coldest day of the year.

If pine trees thrive when they’re planted on the coldest day of the year, I like to imagine that this cold and snow and ice have repotted people, too. I’ve needed a hard reset for well over a year now, and my sapling spirits-at-heart have needed a re-rooting.

That is what the stillness of snow does. It brings a magical reset, filled with a Narnia-like magic to all the possibilities for the year ahead. And there are snowflake pictures for Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, too.

As I stood on the porch so many times taking in all the beauty last weekend, I couldn’t dismiss the feelings of sadness and fear that I felt for my California friends evacuating from the wildfires at the opposite end of the cold spectrum, on the opposite side of the country. I reached out and checked on them, and they replied that they are fine but are keeping heightened awareness of the fires. I continue praying for their safety.

it speaks for itself

the snow, silently falling

blanketing the hush

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2025 Book Club Picks

If you’re ever in the small rural county in Georgia where I live, you might find yourself at one of the two traffic lights we have, right along the courthouse square. You’d look at the historic buildings lining the square and wonder about the curious little shops and what all goes on inside once you stood back long enough to take note of the intricate patterns in the old brick facades. There’s a bank, a couple of hair salons, a coffee shop, a donut shop, a few boutiques, a couple of restaurants (every small town in Georgia must have a good barbecue joint), a dentist and an optician’s office, a realty office, a mercantile, a Chamber of Commerce office, and…….{drumroll, please}………my favorite: a bookstore, A Novel Experience. Click here to check it out.

It’s not just another familiar bookstore. This one is magical, with its historic interior brick walls with rustic plaster repairs, a creaky wooden floor, a refrigerator where you can have a free water if you need one (there is wine in there, too, and a coffee bar), a circle of eccentric mismatched comfy chairs by the back door so you can sit and talk or write or knit or….just sit, and the most amazing lineup of books for the monthly book clubs. They have a few different clubs, too, which meet at different times and focus on different interests so that there is a club for everyone.

I got there on their first day of business in 2025, and I saw that they had their books already chosen from their last meeting of 2024. They’ll create cards that readers can take to put on their refrigerators to remind them of which book is scheduled for which club for which month, but I took a snapshot or two of the “rough draft” of the lineup with the cards that tell what the books will be. Some of them have not even come in yet.

This is the place I go when I need the calm reassurance that there is still peace to be found in a place other than my own home. I swear, I think they have some kind of essential oil that is called stress-free small-town down-home-rooted belonging or something. Every bit of hurried pace disappears right when you walk in. Of course, I’ve lived here long enough to know all who work there, and this shop is one of several places that still greet customers by first name. It thrills me when I walk in and Karen throws her hands up and says, “Hi, Kim!” Chris does, too, and they stop to talk to their customers with sincere interest in what is happening in our busy lives.

What are you reading this year? I’ve started the year with Rosamunde Pilcher’s book Winter Solstice, but I’ve already cheated and delved into the movie. I finished The Beautiful and the Wild over the break just as the year turned, and we’ll have our office book club to discuss that one January 21. I started James, and I’m halfway finished. If you have any recommendations, please share. I tend to prefer nonfiction that reads like fiction or that spotlights travel or nature in some fresh and unexpected way. Sy Montgomery is always, always a favorite. I’m looking for a few readers who can recommend some amazing reads, and I hope you’ll be one of them!

If you’re ever here, call me and I’ll run right down to the shop and meet you for coffee or wine and book talk, ’cause that’s how we do things in small towns here in Georgia.

our local bookstore

announced its monthly choices

for each reading club

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Action Planning Acrostic

Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom on Pexels.com

As the year begins, we

Consider all

That we want to accomplish:

Insurmountable

Obstacles

Never-ending

Projects

Loom large

As we stand back

Navigating a path

Negotiating the tasks ahead, asking:

Is it all that insurmountable, really?

Not when there is a structured plan to

Get the wheels turning…….

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Green Tea Goals

I’m sitting with my

cup of green tea by the fire

contemplating life

today, I reflect

on the past year, plan for the

year ahead: paper

and pencil in hand

to capture my thoughts and then

calendarize them…….

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My One Little Word for 2025

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It’s that time of year: time to choose a word as a beacon to guide me through 2025.

I chose the word listen as my One Little Word three years ago, and for the past two years I have chosen the word pray to guide me through the years. My former words won’t leave me – I still keep them as my own – especially pray. Once a new word has been chosen, former words don’t vanish, turning down some dark alley lurking between the minutes of the midnight hour of New Year’s Eve. They stick like blood kin that want more words to come to the table in the family of chosen words, much like siblings wanting more brothers and sisters.

I’m not abandoning listen or pray. But a strange word took hold of me a few weeks ago, and I don’t fully know why. It’s an adjective and adverb and, according to the dictionary, can also be used as a pronoun and is sometimes used interjectionally, too. This is not an actionable verb as my former words have been.

My One Little Word for 2025 shall be enough.

It seems an unusual choice to me right now, but I know it will become clear once the year gets going. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that once we pray for the right word, we must listen hard enough when it comes alongside us with the pick me! pick me! promptings.

I felt tears welling a couple of years ago when I discovered I was a one on the Enneagram – an overachieving perfectionist whose own worst enemy is…..well, …… ME. I can’t ever seem to live up to my own bar – it’s been set far too high for far too long. I often feel I fall short, even when I succeed. I need to be able to say that I am enough – – and to believe me when I do.

If I do a thing, I overdo it.
I cook for an army rather than for the two of us at the table. I own too many books and too many shoes. I need to learn to appreciate the blessings of having enough– without having too much. I need to find my library card more often than the Amazon cart. I need to learn what is enough and to be a good steward of the management of it.

My sense of adventure is insatiable. I want to explore every GPS location on the globe and don’t quite know what to do with myself when I get there, while under-appreciating that the exquisite beauty of my own town is a unique world all its own – enough to keep me fascinated right here where I am if I only see it with the wonder-filled eyes it deserves.

And my world gets out of whack. I work long hours, and I’m feeling my bones and my soul tell me that doing too much in one place leaves too little in another. More balance would bring enough to both the professional realm and the personal one. I’m often rushing my husband through the extra glass of iced tea he likes to have at the end of a meal if we are in a restaurant, even at times when we have no hurry or particular place to be. I envy his ability to amble where I can’t seem to slow down and fill my lungs with enough air to take the time to relax and breathe a little.

There are gestures where I fall short: phone calls, birthday cards, random text messages to say I love you to those who mean the world to me. I fail to do enough to let my family and friends know how frequently I think of them.

The first word that appealed to me for 2025 was less. I almost chose it – then, I realized that less may not always hit the marks I need to hit. I could eat less, I could weigh less, I could spend less. I could check a few boxes and say I did less. But the real challenge will be sorting what needs more and what needs less to find the just-right balance of enough.

If you have chosen a OLW, please share it in the comments. I love the stories of how words manifest themselves to the people they choose. This is the first word that has me scratching my head about its reasons for knocking at my door. But here we are.

Happy New Year, and happy word finding!

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Calm Christmas: Reflecting on the Holidays

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This December, I’m slowly making my way through Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year by Beth Kempton (2019), and in Chapter 8, she presents ways to reflect on the holidays and to take stock in considering ways to grow through the coming year as we count our blessings.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin tugs at me each year in January. It’s the ultimate book on how to take a year and be productive while seeking happiness by creating order in the areas where we can rein in some disarray by creating goals and eliminating what we we no longer use or need. Kempton provides a similar structure in this chapter – – a reflection table to take stock of areas needing improvement and to create a plan to address them through the year by mapping the year, reflecting, and letting go of things we need to release in order to move forward. It’s a way of establishing purpose and achieving goals with a monthly emphasis to avoid feeling a sense of overwhelming defeat by looking at all the things that need to be done. These authors break down tasks into manageable steps.

She begins by inviting readers to draw a table in a notebook, beginning with the top row, with columns that begin with the word theme and are followed by each month of the year from January to December. The left columns are labeled home, work, change, growth, ups, and downs. This takes time reflecting to consider the milestones and major events in these areas – and should be brief.

Next, couples or individuals can add some short notes about change and growth, along with ups and downs that may or may not be related to those areas of home and work. In the next step, where the real thought comes into play, the table makes it easier to notice the patterns of change and their effects. Readers can answer questions related to dreams and practical things, and also can consider things that they may need to let go in order to move forward with a better mindset. This enables clear goal-setting and helps achieve a sense of purpose and mission.

And goals, throughout my life, have proven more successful than resolutions. The clear focus and the way that a goal offers incremental steps in an overall process is far more effective in shaping change than one pop of a resolution ultimatum in January. I need a year to accomplish most of the tasks I set out to do as I look at the year ahead. It takes planning to be successful. It takes forethought and intentionality to create conditions that bring happiness and peace.

My plan for the week between Christmas and New Year’s is to return to Chapter 8 with the table. I want to invite my spouse, too, to be a part of the shared goals so that we work together toward a common vision for the coming year.

For today, though, it’s all about the moment of getting to the end of the work day and the beginning of the holiday break. There are some days that have ONE GOAL, and surviving the last day of school before Christmas break is one of them!

The table as it appears on my Kindle (the top row is on the previous page and contains the first months of the year).