I spent some time this week working on the chapter I’m writing about my year-long projects. I still have not figured out exactly what my project will be next year. However, I do think I will “re-up” on writing sonnets at the pace of 2 lines a day, so one 14-line poem each week. I’m having fun with this, and if two years means 104 sonnets, three years will mean 156 and change. Listening to Bach has also been just such a wonderful soundtrack to the year. I will reach the end of the 1080 BWV numbers next week. There are others, but if a work is lost, I can’t really listen to it…
Yesterday we had a crew here installing lights on the trees. I’d decided to do professional Christmas lights installation this year, and so it will be festive to look out the window and see the trees all wrapped in lights. I forgot to take a picture last night so unfortunately that isn’t an accompanying photo for this post, but hey. We’ve started working on scheduling in parts of the holiday fun list. It’s going to be a tight year because Thanksgiving is so late. We did buy 7 tickets to the Rockettes! And the breakfast-with-Santa tickets are purchased. Still trying to figure out when the Nutcracker and Longwood Gardens are happening…
(I’ll probably publish that list next week.)
In the meantime, here’s this week’s content round-up.
The Before Breakfast podcast interview featured Charles Duhigg, author of Supercommunicators, and The Power of Habit. We talked having better conversations and his own productivity tips. In the shorter episodes, I suggested that we “Don’t consent and resent” (it might be better to just say no!) and I asked “What’s on your holiday fun list?”
The Vanderhacks newsletter suggested that people “Set relationship goals” and “Reduce chores, don’t reschedule them.” I suggested that we can serve the people around us by being a calming force — “Be the eye of the storm.” Behind the paywall, I suggested “A little way to take your reading up a notch.” The Vanderhacks newsletter turns one later this month. I’ve had a lot of fun doing it, and hope to grow this newsletter over the next year. Please consider a free or paid subscription!
The Best of Both Worlds podcast featured an interview with Gabrielle Blair (the Design Mom). Over at our Patreon community, we’ve been discussing suggestions for filling the time from 5-8 p.m. when it’s dark and cold outside. We also — believe it or not — had a camp question already. Is it better to put kids in one day camp for the whole summer, or to curate different camps on different topics? There are arguments for both. Please come join the discussion! Membership is $9/month. We’ll have our next Zoom meet-up on November 26th to discuss holiday planning.
Finally, a sonnet, called “The coat.”
A London park, October, and the leaves
are bright amid the city’s settled gray.
Two people walk, our narrator perceives
that they are lovers, new ones, as they stray
from sidewalks we take notice of her coat:
a brilliant white, as shiny as their bond.
Would travel mar its luster? She might float
that thought, but then her roommate might respond
that no, you need to wear it — on this trip.
This is the girl that fell short on the rent.
Another mindset, but, my friends, we skip
two decades forward, care cannot prevent
a coat from turning beige. But memory’s true —
that coat is London, all still bright and new.