First of all, my apologies! I knew that I had been devoured by Christmas shopping, baking, cleaning, entertaining, and so on but I had no idea how long I’d been gone. I sat down at the computer in my home office yesterday to resume work as usual – you know the kind where you accomplish more than excellent thumbprint cookies and 7 foot tall decorated Christmas trees.
Sigh. The cookies were delicious and the tree was probably the most beautiful one we’ve had yet. Scratch the probably, she was extraordinary.
But life goes on, even after what seemed almost like a three month long family extravaganza:
October:
- Daughter #1 had a birthday
- Daughter #1 got married
November:
- Daughter #2 had a birthday
- Daughter #2 said she’d never get married… as in ever
- Thanksgiving
December:
- Christmas Eve
- Christmas
- Joi tries to remember what normal feels like
So, yeah, updates have been sparse in December – but to be fair, so have my thoughts. Thoughts that weren’t covered in powdered sugar or brightly colored ribbons, that is.
The crazy thing about trying to get back into the grind is that the mind and body almost forget how it’s done! Have you seen the ESPN commercial where the Oregon mascot (a handsome duck if there ever was one) is trying to work at his computer but can’t quit staring out the window at the other ducks around the pond.
It’s kind of a similar thing going on now at my desk. Except there aren’t any ducks by a pond to distract me. But there are after Christmas sales at the mall. And there are Christmas cookies and Christmas candy to atone for on my treadmill.
I have a lot of great posts and reviews lined up for the coming weeks – things that will center around the new year, mainly how we can get off on the right foot and keep our momentum going.
I hope your Christmas was outstanding. Below are some of my favorite quotes about Curiosity. Something worth noting is that the majority of them are from one of the greatest minds of all time: Albert Einstein. The connection between brilliance, success, and curiosity can’t get any more obvious than that.
At the bottom is a video starring some of my favorite things in the world: Polar Bears! They’re uncommonly beautiful, intelligent, and as this video proves… curious.
I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence. – Alistair Cooke
Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts. – Clarence Day
Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people. – Leo Burnett
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. – Albert Einstein
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. – Voltaire
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. – Albert Einstein
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. – Dorothy Parker
Sometimes questions are more important than answers. – Nancy Willard
I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way. – Franklin P. Adams
Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. – Arnold Edinborough
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. – Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity. – Albert Einstein
Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will. – James Stephens, The Crock of Gold
Be curious always! For knowledge will not acquire you; you must acquire it. – Sudie Back
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein
There are no foolish questions, and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions. – Charles Proteus Steinmetz
The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. – Ralph W. Sockman
The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions. – Bishop Mandell Creighton
I keep six honest serving-men,
They taught me all I knew;
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
– Rudyard Kipling
