being not doing

As I roll into the last quarter of the year, I’m pausing to take stock of how well I’m doing on my own personal book-related challenges. As expected, I have had no trouble actually reading, but a bit less success powering through some of the denser works that have been sitting by the side of [...]

At the end of month two, I have faced two major hurdles in my efforts to not buy new books this year, and come over them slightly battered. Vows were meant to be tested, right? Slips are an opportunity to get back on the wagon, right? Right. In January, I visited Powells for the first [...]

My main holiday gift to my partner this year was a cookbook, Great Cookies. It is, as the title leads one to believe, a cookbook entirely consisting of cookie recipes, over 300 of them. The author does include in the ‘cookie’ moniker some types of bars (i.e. Florentines), balls (i.e. peanut butter ones), and culturally [...]

Welcome, new year! I have quite a few big intentions for 2007. They mostly involve creating daily habits: daily walking, daily zazen, daily yoga, daily vitamins, daily reading, daily writing. I could add ‘daily drinking coffee’ and ‘daily watching the birds out my back window,’ but those are habits I already have pretty well established. [...]

This past year included several good changes for me. I bought a house, I left teaching, and I moved to a new state. I also learned to do two things I’ve wanted to learn for years: how to use a pottery wheel, and how to make art mosaics. I plan to work in both these [...]