1) "Take Time to Reflect"

"I accomplished zero percent of my New Year’s resolutions last year," says Tish Harrison Warren in yesterday's NY Times. "I’m obviously no sage of discipline."

I had to smile--it's an inviting first line. I don't know that I've ever sat down and written out bona fide New Years Resolutions, which means, of course, that I've never kept them or broke them but doesn't mean I'm guilt-free. But that opening line got me grinning, and my life partner (I'm trying to be politically correct) is a big Tish Warren fan, so I read the piece and came away with an idea.

What Tish Warren does in her New Year's op-ed is gather ideas from people she likes and respects, as if to say, "here's a list even a woman who's no "sage of discipline" might use to harness her ambitions in the year of our Lord 2022.

Here's what she picked up:

1) Take time to reflect

Jen Pollock Michel, author of “A Habit Called Faith” and “Surprised by Paradox” (no, I haven't read them) claims she's been noting a daily reflection in what she calls a "pandemic journal," and loves the exercise: "It's the single best thing I've done over the last two years." That, my friends, is high praise.

Somewhere behind me in the cupboard is a disk labeled "Letters to Mom." Every once in a while, when I'm searching for something else, I run across it and am reminded that for the last fifteen years of her (and Dad's) life, I wrote them--and eventually just her--most every Sunday morning.

This blog has been chugging along since 2006, when I stopped doing a daily Thanksgiving journal (that was really good for me, but you do run a little thin after while), and took a running shot at a blog.

Honestly, I'm not about to read weekly notes to my mom nor a couple thousand blog posts. Furthermore, when I'm dead and gone I don't expect my kids  will be interested either. 

What I will say is this: I don't regret doing any of it. I'm not about to suggest you and yours should take up blogging or journaling or even keeping track of lame New Year's Resolutions, but when I look back on my life (sounds foreboding, but it comes easily to someone my age), I can't and won't say that all the time I dedicated to daily blogging/journaling was a big mistake. In so many ways it was good for me, and, the old guy says hesitatingly, still is.

I do think often about quitting. I regularly run up close to shutting things down, and then I hear from someone somewhere who says they appreciated the blog post about whatever, and I tell myself that even if I'm nothing but a selfish blogger--doing this journaling only for myself--for me at least it ain't entirely a waste of time.

So, Tish Harrison Warren and Jen Pollock Michel, that's my two cents' worth on journaling.

But here's an authentic New York prediction: in 2022, somewhere along the line, I'll give up the daily grind. Not today or tomorrow, but sometime.

Maybe.

[Tomorrow: Plant Sees of Humility]

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And if you're asking yourself what on earth the picture up top has to do with anything, you've got a right. I had to take some pics for the local museum last night, and decided I just love this one. She's a mannikin, of course, so my love is on the up and up; but the whacko Dutch hat, and the old sailor sort of fuzzily composing a background--I just like it. This year I should get out more with the camera! There's a resolution.