Reward the Increments

One of the cruelest things about Christmas Day is we have built up months of excitement which is rewarded with a brief instant. Even the best explosion of presents often leaves people disappointed, not because they didn’t get what they wanted, but because the reward isn’t equal to the effort or the expectation. While “having…

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Shaking Off the Debris

Some years come in like sun after a rainstorm, shining a new light on things, making everything seem shiny, clean and full of promise. Some years don’t seem to come in at all. They just slink into being while continuing everything that went before in an unbroken trudge. Other years come in with a *bang*…

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2017 – Year of the Rooster

It’s tempting, especially this year, to shake off everything that happened in the year which is ending and look forward with high hopes and idealistic expectations to the year ahead. If we do this in a celebratory way, as a means of breaking up old energy, evaluating and celebrating what has been through roasting it…

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Follow Through

It’s New Year’s Eve and it’s traditional to make resolutions for the year ahead. We try to figure out what happened over the past year, what the take aways are, what we could have done better, should have done, were successful at, and have to work with in the next year. From this we make…

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Snow Globes

The Holidays (Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah) tend to shake people up. It’s like we’re snow globes. We’ve been calm and settled for most of the year. Just and occasional shake to get things moved into a new position and then everything settles down again. But then comes the Holidays and a shake fest. Absolutely everything at the surface…

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Jolabokaflod

In Iceland there’s a holiday tradition of giving each other a book on Christmas Eve: Jolabokaflod.  The entire family sits down with chocolate to snuggle and read. Being a book person I couldn’t resist, so  I started doing this myself a few years ago. It always brings to mind a memory from a time when I…

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