Hello from a basement out here in central Minnesota. I hope this missive finds you and yours doing well on this seventh day of Christmas, and that your true loves have bestowed a septet of swimming swans upon you.
A Happy New Year’s to you as well. If I’m being honest, there’s no way I’m going to make it to midnight, which is more than okay. No need to ring in the new year at 12:00. It will be there when I get up in the morning.
Steadily coming toward the end of winter break around these parts. Had a full house for Christmas with both Audrey’s folks and my Mom coming in to spend the holiday with us. It was a lovely visit. Mom flew back to California this morning.
It was a low-key New Year’s Eve day. I got to finish Nicholas Eames’ follow-up to Kings of the Wyld, Bloody Rose, this morning, which put me at 50 books read in 2021. I enjoyed the hell out of the whole book, but there was a passage in the epilogue that grabbed hold of me:
There will be kinks, of course, but it’s a noble ambition. If our war against the Winter Queen taught us anything, it’s that evil thrives on division. It stokes the embers of pride and prejudice until they become an inferno that might one day devour us all.
Given the state of the country right now, it felt like a timely and timeless quote. Too much divisiveness, which says that perhaps evil’s afoot. We need to try harder to keep it at bay, to build bridges rather than walls.
Erp got an early birthday present from my mom, Just Dance 2022 for the Switch. We played together today as a family, and while I don’t recognize any of the artists or songs (with the exception of ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky”), I had a blast playing, and got the heart thumping.
Beyond Burgers for dinner, and after we had family read-aloud where we finished Richard Peck’s A Season of Gifts, (which gave me 51 books for the year).
Finally, I spent some time working on my SLIME Goals for 2022. I got the SLIME method from John Spencer (an amazing educator) who developed it while he was in college.
S=What do you want to start?
L=What do you want to let go?
I=What do you want to improve upon?
M=What do you want to maintain?
E=What do you want to experiment with?
And while there are goals, the method is really about the process/action steps needed to reach the goals. I’m looking forward to writing more about my SLIME goals throughout 2022.
And with that established for the new year, I’m ready to watch a little Hawkeye, then go to bed.
Be well, folks! Take care. Heaps of huzzahs to all of you.
-Purdy
Ryan L. Purdy 