R: Read, Read, and then Read After That!!!

Read? Is that what you want to do? Then do it! You don't need anyone to tell you to do so, just read, read to your heart's desire, but read something, anything, and then read it again. Or read something else. And read something while you are waiting for that.

As a child we have books read to us if we are lucky. We try to learn the words, the spellings, the sounds, but most importantly, we pick up our first books and try. And we develop a strategy, in an environment, with support, that reading is acceptable, even if we're still not sure what is, or if we're even doing it right. I'd read somewhere (go figure) that if you enter a kindergarten class and ask how many are artists, virtually every hand is raised. When you enter a sixth grade class, and you ask, about half the hands are raised. If you enter a twelfth grade class, only a hand or two are raised. We're artists because noise has told us we're not. I think it's the same for reading. Our first experiences are for pleasure, but as time goes on, more structure is added, more requirements are added, more demands are added, and more critiques are added. 

Sadly, we look at reading as a chore, and the pleasure is removed for many of us. We have to put more of an effort into finding the joy, the passion, the pleasure that we found the first time we started. Things got in the way, we had to make cuts in our schedule, and those that make the cut are due to others expectations, or requisites to the next level of growth. There is a great video by Sir Kenneth Robinson on TEDtalks who talked about how schools are removing creativity. I want to believe that isn't intentional except when I look at new benchmarks, standards, requirements, and testing, things that we enjoyed for pleasure seem to be pushed to the side. And it doesn't seem to end after we graduate - with more schooling, work, family, obligations, there isn't any time for us, for what makes us happy.

So you have my permission to take time for yourself. Schedule "me" time - with a quiet corner, a comfy chair, perhaps a beverage and a snack (you earned it), a book that has no purpose but to make us happy, and READ!!!! Open the book, flip the the pages, sniff them (nothing better than new, or old book, smell), and savor every passage, read a page, set the book down for a moment and visualize what you just read. Read another page, and another and another. Doesn't it feel absolutely incredible??? Just you and your book, away from the world and worries, while opening more wondrous worlds inside. Now carry on, and most importantly, READ ON!!!!