Something In The Way She Moves

Gotta write something - each day, every day, no more skipping. It's not that I'm lazy, not really. Nor that I'm letting myself be intimidated by this whole process (OK, maybe it's a little of that). Mostly it's that I sit down to write and whoosh - all the ideas and any coherent thoughts just rush away from my fingers and brain.

So, today, I'll just steal thoughts from other people. Or perhaps it's less theft and more wool gathering. Either way - I firmly believe that to be a good writer (someday! someday!), one has to be a great reader. And here's what I'm reading, absorbing and, apparently, regurgitating today.

It's no accident, obviously, to find me reading The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. I repeat myself to say that I'm Searching for Something. And those who know, know that I have a gypsy history of moving from city to city in search of that Something. It's always incredibly validating to see your thoughts in someone else's words or actions - so here are a few gems I lifted this weekend from his lovely book:

1. One way Americans pursue happiness is by physically moving. Every year nearly 40 million Americans move.
2. We are shaped by our environment and, if you take this Taoist belief one step further, you might say we are our environment. Out there. In here. No difference. Viewed that way, life seems a lot less lonely. (Weiner is quoting what clearly must be my next read: geographer Yi-Fu Tuan's autobiography in a chapter titled, awesomely, "Salvation by Geography")
   
3. When you're in the bathtub, you need to move a little to feel the warmth.

I particularly like that last point... for it's our actions and our movements and, in some cases, our moving that create the biggest ripples. It's not what we plan to do, or hope to do, or even set out to do... but what we eventually get around to doing that matters. Forget "It's the thought that counts". Time to put some of those thoughts into action... if only I can remember them long enough to do something with them now that I've committed to the follow-through.
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