- Reading New Books – After checking various electronic records and the drain that sucks up my spare income and phone space (Amazon Kindle) I can safely say I read at least one new book every week this year, which was sort of like making a new friend every week. Some of them, like A Tale Dark and Grimm and The Ocean at the End of the Lane went straight to my heart and onto my re-reading list. (I am a re-reader of books). Others were nice and interesting for the interval but not a lifetime love. A couple, like The Forsyte Saga, could only be defined as “new” books because I hadn’t read them before and one or two I read not from paper or through a book-friendly program, like Kindle, but as text files on a screen simply because I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. While each new book may not life up to its hype, each unread book brings new hope when it’s opened.
- Re-reading Old Books – When I was in Girl Scouts, we used to sing a song.

- Well loved books are like old friends and I have to stay in touch. Wherever I go, they go with me and yes, I’ll put down the new books to re-acquaint myself with the prose and poetry that I’ve known for decades. If that makes me weird, so be it. I just wish I had more time to spend with them. Still only part of this word year was about reading
- 2015 is, for me, the year I stopped writing in short, painful bursts (and re-writing, re-writing and hiding the finished product in shame) and began the discipline of printing something at least twice a week. Something the public could see and criticize. I still have an enormous amount to learn but I’m not as afraid of failure as I was a few years ago. Instead of thinking, “Oh what if I fail!” and then scrambling to hide under the bed, I’ve learned to think “Of course, I’m going to fail; so what!” I learned I can survive being rejected. I can’t recommend it as a life-experience but learning I don’t implode after hearing “No” was heartening. I even learned I can write something new to submit for rejection. Amazing.
Reading, to me, is honest-to-God magic, a way to climb inside someone else’s soul and understand their feelings and thoughts. Because of words, I know the voices of so many people I’d never have the chance to hear, sometimes voices of people who died long before I was born. Writing then becomes the act of sending out a new transmission, adding my own voice to the chorus. Amazing. Words are a human creation but, arranged well, they bring us into the family of mankind.