Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.

Victor Hugo

The sights and sounds that drift through the window during a lockdown are different from beeping access doors of an office with the humming printers, elevator dings, and the sounds of keyboards.

I’ve gotten used to some new middle of the day sounds from my neighbors: 

The sharp slap of a skipping rope on concrete.

The clang of equipment hitting other equipment and dropped weights. 

A child practicing scales on a trombone.

The dog next door barking and getting shouted at by his owner. 

Empty wine bottles dumped into a recycling bin.

A food delivery motorbike whizzing by.

There’s no going back to 2019. 

“In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.”

C.S. Lewis – “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays”

How are everyone’s 2020 new year resolutions doing?

Late adopters are late on the front end and then also late on the back end.

They get it wrong upfront and then compound that mistake by holding on too long.

Doves cooing on a Wednesday afternoon.

Enjoy the serenity and the conjured memories.

The problem with people who don’t have to work hard for things is that they don’t know how to work hard.

The water is crystal clear and cleanest, closest to the spring.

You have to be ok with people hating you or critiquing you whenever you do something interesting, or try something new.

Nobody mentioned that to me when I was growing up. Figure out what you feel is right and go for it, regardless of what others think.

The world is full of people who will criticize you, no matter what you do. Do it anyway.

In the Northern Cape, South Africa, Andy, the Anatolian sheepdog, starts his first day of winter boot camp. Enjoy