Just Write Communications
  • Home
  • Contact Us
  • News
  • Clients
  • Testimonials
  • Writing Tips
  • Weekly Chuckle
  • Meals We Steal
  • Bad Golf

Backtracking

6/26/2022

6 Comments

 
Picture
​Backtracking is the best way to find something you lost. I applied this technique repeatedly as our kids grew up, and over the years successfully found everything from books to backpacks.
 
Backtracking is simple. Trace your steps. Remember where you were. Work backwards from you most recent spot to find something you lost.
 
In today’s world, there’s a need with some degree of frequency to apply the backtracking tactic to finding our smart phones, wallets, car keys or reading glasses. Our phones seem to enjoy falling out of our pockets and go find places to rest that we don’t usually consider. We break routine, so backtracking becomes more important to lessening your anxiety during the moment you reach in your pocket and get that sinking feeling that you have no idea where your phone is.
 
After finishing a recent round of golf, I had that heart-jolting sensation of not being able to find my wallet in the pocket of my golf bag that I was 100 PERCENT SURE it was where I’d stored it. I rummaged and dug. I zipped open every receptacle in the bag. I went back to my car and checked on the seats and under them. Nada.
 
Went back to the golf back. Dug my hand in the pocket I KNEW I’d put it in by using the backtracking technique and WALA, there was a hole. I stuffed my arm through it to the bottom of the golf bag, KNOWING the wallet had to be at the bottom of the clubs. Nothing. My heart twinged a bit more – that cold sweat thing starting, as you wonder whether your wallet is laying back somewhere on an 18-hole golf course. Not a good thing.
 
I stuck with it though, using logic and tenacity. I thought it through. Backtracked. Had to be in there. Which meant asking, “Where was it lodged?” Aha. How about it fell through the hole, went to the bottom of the bag, but somehow slid up into the middle of the bag as I moved the clubs? Certainly.
 
I stuck my arm into the middle of the golf shafts, and there it was, just as suspected. Joy. Relief. Life returning to normal.
 
It’s good to remember the backtracking technique, as a good friend of mine can attest. As he puts it, “It is so strange how devices seem to try and escape and hide from us.”
 
He had a similar experience to mine, but with his cell phone. This occurred a few weeks back. Somehow it became lodged between the middle arm rest and the passenger side of the car seat (a well-known hiding place that cell phones deviously like to slide into).
 
He tore through the house, checking everywhere, with his wife calling him so they could identify its location by sound. He had previously checked his car visually, but it was not until his wife called him that he figured out its location.
 
Even then, he could hear the ringing, but not easily figure out it was coming from the car in the garage. Talk about a huge sigh of relief!
 
Remember those places to look where you place things: the bathroom counter; your office desk in the basement; the easy chair where you nap; the window shelf next to your TV chair; the valet box on your kitchen counter; the phone holder in your car.
 
And, of course, don’t forget that dastardly slot between the driver’s car seat and the cupholder in the front. Keep on backtracking on you’ll find what you’re looking for.

6 Comments

Achieving Paranoia Status

6/20/2022

3 Comments

 
Picture
​The weatherperson can make you achieve paranoia status. When they hammer you for three days with an increasing level of intensity in their voice that “severe, violent storms, with cow-sized hail” will hit the area in which you live, they get your attention.

Typically, I take the weather report with a softball-sized piece of salt. “Mmmmmm, okay, sure, I’ll believe it when I see it.”
 
The TV weatherperson becomes hard to ignore though when they batter you relentlessly, as recently occurred for our area. The predictions with maps showed every color on the planet, huge masses of storms, lightning bolds etched across the screen. The announcer made me think of my car.
 
Over 10 years ago, we lived in Texas, and the place where I worked got hit by chunks of hail that destroyed windows of over half the cars in the parking lot. Insurance people and the car repair business were busy for months.
 
The psychological effect on the employees was what you’d expect. When a prediction of hail occurred, they asked their boss if they could go home for the day. This happened with a degree of consistency during the spring thunderstorm season. You found out who really didn’t want to be in the office that day. Or, you found out who had become paranoid about hail.

It was understandable. At some point, when an “expert” keeps telling you something, it seeps into your skin and consciousness. It becomes difficult to ignore.
 
During most of the year, I leave my car in the driveway because it’s easier to get in and out. Our garage is small and I have to angle the wheels into the corner to fit with my wife’s car in the space. Opening the door, you have to be careful. I do the lazy/easy thing and just leave it outside. Who cares if it gets rained on?
 
When heavy, large hail is predicted though, you take notice. You start to consider whether it makes sense to bring the car into the garage for the night.
 
Recently we got one of those incessant weather reports, expecting raging storms, with the big red exclamation point flashing on the screen. I gave in, sighing, heading outside, pulling my car into the garage. I think I said something to my wife about the predictions making me paranoid.
Amazingly, for once they were right. There was no hail, but we got almost 3 inches of pounding rain in less than two hours. I’d made a good decision. Branches littered our driveway and lawn. One easily could have tattooed the roof of my car.
 
The problem is that most of the time when you hear these reports, nothing happens. You wait, and the clouds disperse, heading south or north, and you’re left doubting any further predictions. Someway, we all need a barometer to rank the weatherperson’s barometer. When will their predictions come true?
 
We have to gather all the info we can and make our best-informed decision, weighing the combination of their expertise and the data presented. And, sometimes you have to let paranoia status take over and put that car away.

3 Comments

View from Above

6/13/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Perspective is everything. Where you’re standing when you look at something, how far away you are from the object you view, whether you are above or below a scene all contribute to how your senses process what you see.
 
Is it small? Does it seem bigger than you thought? What are those little match box cars and ant-like people doing WAY DOWN THERE when you look from the top of a high hill back to a scene below?
 
Recently we visited Multnomah Falls outside Portland, Oregon. Arriving, you get off the bus and receive your first sensory input: the pounding sound of water.
 
Your second sensory input is feeling the mist blasting off the rocks, whipping into you as you wrap your rain slicker tight. Then you look up, and go “WHOA, am I really going to walk up there?”
 
Yes. That’s the goal. It’s 1.2 miles from the tourist house and parking lot down below.
 
When you look straight up at a massive waterfall, you think to yourself, “There is no way I can hike up there.” All you see is the verticality of the water. Straight up.
 
The path doesn’t go linearly, of course. It winds left, then turns back right, again and again, slowly weaving you towards the top. Like any road paved through mountainous terrain, the human must work their way upwards bit by bit rather than ascending directly (probably a lesson in that sentence somewhere).
 
Don’t look down or you’ll get scared. Or you’ll lose balance. You envision yourself toppling like a tall tree and pinwheeling through eternity to the bottom.
 
Looking up, all you see is more hard work. Huff, puff. Sweat. Breathe in, breathe out (a nod towards “Karate Kid” and Mr. Miyagi). Don’t think about how much more is left. There are 11 switchbacks. You’ve hit three. You want to turn back.
 
At some point, you cross a threshold in your heart/mind that tells you you’ll make the top. You’ll be able to say you did it, and LOOK DOWN on the world. Change your view. See things differently.
The water rushes like a freight train at the top. Whipping through the final gully and slashing its way, perhaps even leaping to its journey into nothingness and the rocks that rest below. You can barely hear the sound is so loud.
 
The view from above changes you in subtle ways. Objects move slower. Your eyes focus on the oddities that distance provides – two people playing with their dogs in slow motion; a bus moving like molasses to navigate a turn; a boat on the far side of the Columbia River edging its way against the current, whether fishing or exploring it doesn’t matter.
 
Time slows. Your mind stills. You breathe in the moment. Life is good.
 
The view from above affords you an opportunity to step away from the instantaneous world in which we live, and step back to consider nature, the formation of rocks, how water carves terrain over hundreds of years. You can’t stand there forever.
 
Walking down, 

0 Comments

Stepping Back (to be Creative)

6/4/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Sometimes you need to take a step back to be creative. It opens the brain flow.
 
If you haven’t started to play the Wordle game, I suggest you give it a try. It clears the pipes. Gets you to think. Forces you to use counter-intuitive impulses.
 
Typically, when we choose to solve problems, we work linearly. We follow the path that we used before. If it worked, it makes sense to try that again.

For the most part, this is successful. Otherwise, we wouldn’t choose to solve problems using past experience.
 
At the same time, we face obstacles. Sometimes what worked before DOESN’T work the next time. We’re stuck.
 
Many years ago, I lived in the attic in a group house with multiple roommates. The door to my room often got stuck. I’d yank it, twist it, curse, physically try to force it open. With no success. It took me thinking through the problem to address it differently.
 
At that time, I had recently read the book, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” I clearly remember applying a lesson from the book, which was to stretch yourself and try a unique way to solve a problem. What did I do?


Rather than using my right hand to turn the doorknob (which wasn’t effective), I switched to my left. BINGO! The door opened with ease.
 
This past week as I did my daily Wordle, I was stumped. No matter what I thought, I couldn’t come up with the correct letters to get the word right. For the uninitiated, Wordle has you create a five-letter word, then the game lets you know if a letter you selected is in the real word by a certain color and if the letter is in the word, whether it is placed properly in the word, as designated by another color. By the process of elimination, you place the letters and eliminate letters that don’t fit. You get six opportunities to come up with the proper word.
 
In this case, I’d gone through four iterations and had __AR_.  The remaining letters I could use were W, R, H, T, Y, I, A, F, J, Z, X, V, B. Whoa.

My head swam. Which was good because I was about to go for my Friday morning swim and I had absolutely no f..cking idea how to solve the puzzle. I was tortured.
 
Getting away from the intensity, my mind released itself as I paddled through my morning strokes. I left the blockage behind and opened up. Bam, I came up with WHARF as the word. I was tickled.
 
I got home and plugged it in. NOPE! I was so sure, so happy that I’d figured it out by stepping away, releasing my mind and relaxing. In the recesses of my brain, I thought TIARA might have been the word, but I didn’t think it was a real word.

Turns out, of course, that TIARA was the daily word. I wasn’t disappointed about not getting right.

I was pleased that I came up with WHARF after stepping away, daydreaming, letting go. It was a great choice. I didn’t trust myself that TIARA was a real word. I failed and succeeded at the same time. Couldn’t get the correct word, but chose one that fit, made sense and sounded right. Sometimes that’s enough. Go for a swim.

0 Comments

Old Timer Baseball

5/29/2022

11 Comments

 
Picture
​Two weeks ago there was a pop fly to our leftfielder in the 62+ (years old) baseball league I play in. We’re all creaky, a bit slow, don’t get a jump on things. He didn’t see the ball clearly as I watched. A disaster ensued.
 
When a routine fly ball to the outfield is hit in baseball, the player gets to the spot to catch, waits, looks up, gets their glove ready and captures the dropping sphere. That didn’t happen.
 
Baseball at the 62+ level is an adventure. This play proved it.
 
Rather than pounding his glove with an, “I GOT IT,” our leftfielder decided to do an imitation of riding a merry-go-round. AW OH! “This isn’t going to turn out well,” I thought.
 
First, you must understand this guy. He’s a bit slow to begin with, kind of “out there” when you have a conversation with him, wondering if he’s really all there. So, you get the sense he’s easily distracted.

That wasn’t the case on this play. He couldn’t get a bead on the ball. So he circled. And circled. It looked like a skit from “The Three Stooges,” with Curly “whoob whoobing” away trying to make things funny, when you realized this was serious and our leftfielder was lost.
 
He finally stabilized. Got his glove up at the last minute. And wham, lo and behold, it landed in his mitt. He caught it.

But the momentum of the fly also caught him. He stumbled to the side, collapsed and didn’t get up. At our age, you think, “heart attack.” It has happened. In our league, players have passed away in the dugout, probably from too much excitement.
 
He moved though, so we knew he was alive. Whew. But he couldn’t get up. Bad. We all ran out to tend to him.
 
He rolled on the turf, trying to stabilize his body to rise. Finally, he did so, limping titanically in pain as he trudged to the dugout. We put in a sub.
 
In the dugout, I asked what happened. “I have diabetes,” he replied, “and don’t see very well.”
 
That probably summarizes the old-time baseball profile: We all have maladies. Something has gone wrong in all our bodies, but we still play.
 
In his case, his vision was hazy. That sounds scary to me, because I still see well. Not being able to track the baseball with your eyes puts you in a fundamentally dangerous situation and I’m not so sure I’d keep playing if I were in his shoes. Regardless.
 
The sound of Theraguns hum in our dugout. Hamstrings, calf muscles, rotator cuffs, biceps are all getting a pounding from the massage ball between innings.
 
Routine popups go for hits because no one can move fast enough to get under the ball. No one can hit a home run over the fence because none of the pitchers throw hard enough to generate power when make contact with your bat. Guys steal bases and slide, and you wince in pain just watching them taking a big chance with multiple parts of their body by putting it in unusual, comprising and non-flexible positions. It hurts just to watch them. But, still, they do it. Over and over.
 
When I was little, I remember going to old-timer games at Yankee Stadium. Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra would get out there for an inning or two and toss the ball around and take a few cuts to make the fans happy. They seemed old and slow.

That’s us. We are old and slow. But still in the ballgame. Probably doing silly things we shouldn’t be doing anymore, yet still wanting to show a certain mastery in the world. Demonstrate we’ve got it.
 
Last week there was a hit to the outfield and the ball was relayed to our second baseman. He had the chance to easily throw out the runner at home. Several of us yelled loudly, “HOME,” so he would launch the ball to the plate. Instead, he held onto it, and goes, “No one said anything.”

Oh well, sometimes you can’t hear either. That’s the way the ball bounces. At least we can still swing a bat. Despite how much your back hurts the next day. Oh, and by-the-way, our leftfielder was fine. Knee was sore, but he played the next week.

11 Comments

Dignity of Shoveling

5/23/2022

2 Comments

 
Picture
​Shoveling dirt is one of the most dignified things you can do. And, fun. You tend to forget those points when you haven’t shoveled in a while.
 
Recently, we brought some baby fir trees to our slice of this earth. Getting spots ready to plant them, my wife and I pulled out the trusted shovel and gave the turf that “dig-in” move, then stood on top of the metal to give the tool further leverage to pierce deeper.

Dig, deposit. Dig, deposit. Repeat.
 
You start sweating quickly. Your heartrate goes up. You breathe deeply. Nature smells of grass, pine, early spring flowers flow through your nose. You achieve a rhythm.
 
On big reason I love shoveling is the work involved. You accomplish something. There is a beginning (dig the hole for the plant and store the dirt to the side), middle (put the baby pine in the hole), and end (cover the base with dirt and water it). Then you get to mulch.
 
Our neighbor cut down a number of dead trees over the winter at the boundary line of our property. He ground up the stumps, leaving wood mulch. If you haven’t smelled that heavenly aroma, I charge you with finding some fresh cut mulch and breathing deeply through both nostrils. This will please you. Or make you sneeze.
 
After we planted the small firs, I dug into the much pile. Still moist, the pungent wood-smell wafted up as I tossed piles around the base of the next generation of trees to grace our property. Dig, sniff, toss. Dig, sniff, toss. Ah.
 
Last year we planted two blue spruce trees. At that time, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wielded a shovel. It showed. I was out of breath after digging half of one of the holes. Part of that’s the aging process of the one using the shovel, but the other part is that the dignity of shoveling means you’re pushing yourself, getting your body to take on new demands. That helps you grow and develop. Grow muscles (if you keep doing it) and develop a sore back and biceps (the longer you shovel).
 
Soreness, stiffness and aching parts of your body are a natural reaction to shoveling. It’s your body’s way of telling you that you did a good thing -- you tested some boundaries, sweated, applied focus to the task at hand.
 
The shovel helps new life spring forward. The shovel allows us to insulate plants to store moisture. Digging is Zen-like as your soul gains comfort with repetition.
 
We continue to dig and plant, adding biodiversity to the land we serve. We’re contributing to a greater whole (ha, or “hole” if you’d prefer that) with the shovel by adding trees, doing our part locally to help with carbon absorption.
 
The shovel helps us grow the forest, protect its health. It’s a dignified tool. And, there is great dignity for those who master it.
 
The shovel makes the world a better place. Use it.

2 Comments

Casual One to Casual Two

5/15/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
​It’s time. The time of year to move from Casual One to Casual Two.
 
The syndrome started with Covid. No more belts. Forget about dress clothes. Wear slippers around the house, flip flops, socks with no shoes, or just plain forget about anything on your feet and go barefoot. Who cares? No one’s looking at you. Except for those Zoom calls. Then you can do like those newscasters and just make sure you look decent from the belt up.
 
Casual One to Casual Two is the period of moving from winter sweat pants you slip on with no effort and switch out to shorts. As the temps go up, going casual gets even easier. Yank those shorts on and you’re ready to go.
 
For all the bad things about Covid, there is one good thing, and that’s the move towards casual wear. Not having to demonstrate to others how good you look that day has many benefits.

First, you don’t have to keep up with fashion of the workplace. Working from home means keeping up with the wardrobes of others no longer matters.
 
Second, because you don’t need clothes for your workplace, you save money. No more purchases. No more buying a shirt, blouse, jacket, sockets, pants, dress or shoes when an old set of any of those wear out. Instead, you can head to Goodwill or the Salvation Army and deposit your worn-out discards. The opens up your closet space, saves you money, and makes you feel good helping others.
 
Third, it takes less time (and thought) getting dressed in the morning. No planning. Just yank the clothes on. No wondering who you’re seeing today or what they’ll think of you. Think of those additional seconds of extra time adding up day after day, and by the end of the year, you’ve probably saved minutes in your life that you would use focusing on purchasing the best toilet paper on the market.
 
Fourth, hanging out casually at home lets you wear more comfortable clothes. This is probably the greatest benefit. You get dressed more quickly and are out the door with no hassles. Slip on those shorts. Yank on a t-shirt. Slide into those sandals. Out you go.
 
Seriously, there is something more relaxed about your body when you’re not constraining it with a belt, tight socks and pants that hug your legs, butt and waist. You breathe better when you wear sweats. When you move to the Casual Two time of year in shorts-wearing weather, that gets even more comfortable as your legs have the additional leeway by being freed up from constraints.
 
Casual One and Casual Two give us a little relief from the stress and worries these past two years on so many fronts. We can use that small gifts that keep us going.

0 Comments

Dogfood Eating Olympics

5/8/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Is there an Olympic event for dogs eating their food? If there isn’t, there should be. Our two hounds would dominate.
 
We have a male (Thor) half black lab, half gene pool from parts unknown. Our other speed eater, a poor second place finisher, is Pepper (female), half Aussie Shepherd, half Catahoula.
 
I mock them each morning. “Yo, Pepper, going a little slow today?  Thor, do you need a vacuum cleaner to help wipe your bowl clean?”
 
Seriously, they don’t need any help to prepare for the Dogfood Eating Olympics. Thor is the champion. 
 
My morning routine goes like this: Prepare a quick vitamin drink for myself. Open the canned dog food and watch both canines start to salivate. I’ll look at them, lick my lips, see if they’ll imitate me. If encouraged enough, usually they do.
 
Their eyes focus on my movements. Their ears perk up when the can opens. They go into their stretching routines as the canned meat is scooped into their bowls. Finally, as the last stage of their warmup, they start beating the walls with their tails in happiness. Oh, to have that perpetual joy to slop it down.
 
Warmup finished, the bowl goes to the floor with a “clink,” and they pounce. Thor takes the early lead. Pepper licks the bits of canned beef on the side rims of the bowl, kind of like licking the frosting off a cake – eat the best part first.

This gives Thor the edge he doesn’t need. His inhalation capabilities are beyond belief. His tail hammers the cupboard.
 
By the time I’ve finished my drink and moseyed around the kitchen, I hear them propelling their metal dishes across the floor, clonking into the walls. Bam, clang, bam. Their noses drive their dishes rapidly across the floor, serving as a steering wheel to maneuver their metal receptacles with an energy you can only marvel at when you’re still pulling sleepers from your eyes and wondering what day of the week it is.
 
Thor emerges as the champion, deciding he must finish and lick the dish to a sparkle before I’ve exited the kitchen to use the facilities. I hear a final bonk against the wall, signifying he’s polished off the morning feast. Then he goes to water dish to fill his camel hump for the morning walk.
 
“Thor, you pounded it down, buddy. How did you do that? You weren’t really that hungry, were you?,” I say, emerging from the bathroom. He smiles and wags his tail.

Some days I do a fitness routine in our basement. I head downstairs, and Thor hesitates, then thunders down the steps after me. The faint clinking of Pepper’s dish continues as she pulls to the finish line a distant second place, rummaging far into the corner to pin the dish and extricate the last juicy morsels.  She’s thorough, so perhaps that is why she isn’t the champion. Style over speed.
 
Who knows what the Dogfood Eating Olympics “wiping the bowl clean” record is? All I know is that it’s damn fast. Turn around, open the refrigerator, turn on the faucet, rinse out a cup, and WHOOSH, you hear the empty metal dogfood bowl skidding across the floor as Thor dominates the field once again, that dang tail flying side to side, knowing he’s left the competition far behind.

0 Comments

Controlling the Media

5/1/2022

2 Comments

 
Picture
​A meme made the rounds last week. It included multiple billionaires buying news outlets.
 
We can’t verify exactly the financial numbers in the meme of billionaires buying news outlets. We can verify though that people with exponential amounts of money now hold more sway in what the rest of us will see, read or hear in the years ahead.
 
With Elon Musk taking up the Twitter mantle, we will have another billionaire using a platform to determine how and what we view of the world. Non-journalists purchasing into news isn’t necessarily new, as publishers of newspapers, for example, have always had to run a business and survive. That means making compromises sometimes in news coverage, even though a purist reporter would like to believe otherwise.

Still, the sheer scale of the money being pumped into these enterprises, and the nature of news entities are incredibly pricey. Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post. Marc Benioff buying Time. Lauren Powell Jobs purchasing The Atlantic. There are more.
 
Here’s the scary part to me. It’s not that a successful businessperson is in charge of a large news enterprise per se. It’s the size, scope and influence that comes with the responsibility of running a HUGE information processing machine that affects hundreds of millions of people.
 
How news is researched, developed and delivered has never been a perfect process. There are time and money constraints to many stories. There are also roadblocks in terms of gaining access to sources, data, individuals. And, then, there is bias from reporters and editors. None are perfect. All have limitations. But a true journalist is tasked with digging up solid information that paints a fuller picture of an event for the reader or viewer.

Yes, that perspective is a bit old fashioned in our time-bite, Tik Tok, quick hit world today. Snippets rule.
 
I don’t think Elon Musk has any idea what he is doing messing around with Twitter. As James Corden, the late-night host said, “It must be nice to be so rich you can decide to buy hell.”
 
Wouldn’t it be better for the uber rich to purchase the Chicago Public School system and pump money into making it first-rate with all the laptops necessary, rehabbing buildings, putting world class resources at the fingertips of those kids who typically get left behind? How about if the multi-billionaires chose to set up a scholastic entity, investing in the future of our youth, putting together cutting-edge programs and staff to help us address the many problems we face today and the years ahead?
 
You can’t stop a super-rich person from doing what they want with their money. It’s what a lot of money allows you to do – buy things, take over, impose your will.
 
It’s that last piece -- “impose your will” – that’s most concerning when it comes to news and journalism. When you are able through massive financial wealth to impose your will on the flow and direction of information, you wield massive amounts of power. It must be used wisely.
 
None of us are changing this trend anytime soon. Pay attention and understand where the words and images are 

2 Comments

Savoring a Book

4/24/2022

2 Comments

 
Picture
​Reading books, long stories in newspapers or magazines appears to be a goner. Most people don’t do it anymore.
 
We get our news in bursts through social media outlets or 8-second blurbs on TV. Our attention span reacts accordingly, shortening up.
 
I recently sent a lengthy article from the newspaper to a close friend. He replied, “This is too long. I won’t read it. Give me the summary.” So, I did.
 
But, I shouldn’t have had to do that. Sending the article to him implied it had a high level of interesting and insightful points. Reading it would have kept him engaged.

Sadly, this is but one of many examples along these lines I could cite. Several years back, a coworker was riding with me in a car and stated something that made absolutely no sense based on analyzing news coverage at the time. Another coworker challenged his perspective, asking, “Don’t you read?”
 
His reply was, “No. I just look at social media.”
 
Reading lengthier writing (fiction or non-fiction) is a growing part of my life these days. I do it to relax, entertain, learn. It’s become a staple during certain periods of the day, with many benefits.
 
Most importantly, good lengthy writing absorbs your attention span and forces you to step outside yourself. That means you think. You dig into the storyline.
 
Through that process, you also relax. This, to me, has become the huge selling point to read more and more – you reduce personal stress.
 
I find myself calmer, taking time to think through the plot or the actions, working my way through what is happening in a novel or determining the main take-aways in a piece of non-fiction. All of those benefits help me stay sane in our fast-paced and crazy world.
 
Savoring a book means you taste it. You inhale it. For example, I recently finished “Woman Last Seen,” by Adele Parks, and “Free Love” by Tessa Hadley. There’s that cliché line about, “I couldn’t put the book down.”
 
I haven’t been able to say that about any book in a long time, despite having read a lot in any given year. What Parks’ and Hadley’s novels did was build suspense, keep you guessing, push you to figure out what the next twist would be. Beyond that, each compelled you to turn the pages. You did not want to put either down.

There’s a lot to be said for any type of entertainment that so thoroughly grabs your attention span and locks you into your easy chair. When you consider all the options available today to distract your attention span, it’s not hard to see why reading is declining, particularly material that requires deeper thought and concentration.
 
We live in a fast-paced world, from the cars we drive to the speed of information transferal. Reading lengthy pieces slows you down. It takes you away from the attention-seeking swirl of images, slogans, logos and snippets of words.
 
When’s the last time you couldn’t put a book down? It’s happened to me twice in the past month, and I can’t wait to find that magic again. Keep seeking. 

2 Comments
<<Previous

    Archives

    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013

    Categories

    All

Proudly powered by Weebly