Tag: Scholé Sisters

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Taking Steps

A year ago, I bought myself a FitBit watch, and grew accustomed to wearing it within a couple weeks, just like my friend Abby said I would. It had been years since I had kept the habit of wearing a watch! Mostly because I always had my cell phone with me, and it’s not like I really needed to keep track of time minute by minute. I have clocks throughout the house anyway, and the digital one on the car’s clock radio works just fine for me, thank you very much. But I have grown to actually really enjoy having a watch, especially because it means I don’t have to be pulling my phone out of my pocket every time I want to glance at the time… which is also particularly helpful, as I don’t necessarily always have it on me, since I like to practice the “foyer phone” mentality (so described in a recent Simply Convivial email by my friend Mystie) by treating my cell phone as a house phone rather than an additional appendage. Its home is in a pocket of my purse, which has its home on a hook by my desk in the kitchen. The kids all know how to access it and how to use it, and only once has one of the kids accidentally called 9-1-1.

But I digress.

My wrist is now a happy home for the watch. Which happens to count my steps, in addition to keeping me informed on the current time and reminding me to move if I grow too sedentary and showing me when a text message arrives. And while I do not have any firm or lofty goals like “lose ten pounds this year” or “go down one dress size by 2022,” I would like to continue striving toward reaching my daily (6 days a week) step goal. In fact, I would love to do 150% of my goal three times a week. I’m not sure I can do it, but having a little friendly competition does help. I am not the early bird at getting my steps, but I do like to get a quick walk in a couple times a day, and I love walking stairways after putting kids to bed or walking circles in my family room as I read aloud to the kids in the afternoon… or listening to an audiobook while I sweat on the elliptical in the basement every now and then.

I do like to take steps.
I enjoy the feeling of stretching, growing, progressing, hitting goals.

And another way I am trying to take steps this year is in my continued reading habits in pursuit of personal education & study. I have shared before about my Scholé Sisters reading challenge, and my decision to dive in over my head by adding a Literary Life reading challenge as well. A friend of mine at Redeemed Reader gleefully told me that I may as well try to fit all of those things into a 100-book reading challenge. We will see if I can squish and squash my books into that. Could be fun! I used to have my kids participate in the Read Aloud Revival read aloud challenge every January… but this year we finally outgrew it, as it felt completely obsolete: my kids all read aloud constantly! To each other, to themselves, to me, even to their great grandma. They ARE still doing the Ticket to Read reading challenge that earns them free admission to a nearby amusement park (it only requires ten hours of recreational reading, which my kids accomplish lickity-split on the regular anyway), and they will certainly want to sign up for reading challenges at Barnes & Noble and Pizza Hut again… as always… because they are avid readers, so they may as well enjoy some perks along the way.

As a busy mama of five super active (including some officially hyperactive, and gifted, or 2E) kids to educate and shape and discipline and disciple… not to mention supporting my husband with his company (and in four weeks he will officially be working from home fulltime), running our home, showing hospitality, and my part time ministry doing Paideia Northwest conferences every year… I actually need to practice good planning and lots of self-discipline if I want to keep up with my own education through the pursuit of reading and study.

How in the world do I accomplish this?! By taking the appropriate steps. By walking the journey alongside friends. Sharing reading lists and thoughts on the newest books we have finished. By writing down what I want to read, keeping a TBR (to be read) stack on my bedside table as well as a virtual list of audiobooks in a queue. And by giving myself other little reasons for taking each step (each book), one by one.

One of my most recently accomplished incentives was knowing that three friends of mine would be reading Salt Fat Acid Heat together. And since I have been wanting to read that for a while, it was a great reason to simply take the step of reading it. What a wonderful book! I really loved it. And now if I hear these three friends talk about it in the future, I will have a great idea of their conversational context, and just might be able to insert an occasional intelligent comment of my own. (No promises though.)

And my newest incentive was being asked to speak at a women’s retreat this spring. A knee-jerk reaction of mine was that I could toss together the two sessions without studying or planning or prepping much… but that is not what I want to do. I want to be stretched and grown and studied. I want to revisit books I have read before, and read a couple others that seem pertinent. And not only do I want to read these things as steps toward being well-prepared for public speaking in two months, but I also would love to blog my way through some of the thought processes.

So these are some steps I am taking in 2021. Physical steps to care for this physical body God has given me. Educational steps to grow the mind and spirit God has given me. Please walk with me as I take these steps, one by one, regularly and consistently. And please share with me what steps God is putting into your path! I love to see how He is at work.

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Well-Read

“Well-read” may be an adjective attached to someone you know, and I am quite confident that I have many friends who fall well within this category, but I am not positive I have ever thought of myself as well-read. Of course, it technically means that a person is knowledgeable and informed as a result of extensive reading: which perhaps is only allocated to a specific subject or realm. Perhaps well-rounded and well-read do not always overlap, or perhaps the Venn diagram would show only a minor connection between the two. Regardless, as we come to the close of another calendar year, I am looking back at my reading journal and consider myself as growing towards the well-read. My friends at scholesisters.com have encouraged and challenged me to read widely, think deeply, and apply faithfully this last year… and now I am gearing up to jump in again.

A year ago when I created my first 5×5 reading challenge with the Scholé Sisters, I chose five categories and assigned myself five books within each. I thought it might have been lofty, especially as I do not always stick to a set reading stack, but tend to read a good bit on a whim, particularly when relying on library holds because those are absolutely unpredictable. I can put twelve things on hold at once, and never know whether they will be doled out one by one or all arrive the very same day. And if they are a popular title at the time, I may only have a month (or, in some cases, a mere 14 days if it is a newly released title) to finish the book before it is due back for the next person in line on holds. Let’s just say, I do find this more than a little anxiety-provoking.

But I gave it a shot, and apparently it went well enough for me this last year that I am willing to give it a go again! In fact, I have friends telling me to add the Literary Life reading challenge to my year… perhaps if I can overlap them enough, I might just see how far I can get on that one… but I make no promise and will not hold my breath.

I thought about going through my entire reading list in a post, but realize that isn’t necessarily helpful or even fun. I’m not entirely sure I want to read the lists of others, so I decided not to share mine either. 😉 The point is: I read widely, I thought deeply (and enjoyed deeply), and have been seeking to apply faithfully. I set out to read 25 specific books for the 5×5 challenge, and completed 23 of them. One is still untouched on my shelf, and one was a “through the year” prayer book that I wasn’t nearly as faithful to as I had hoped so I am not counting it. But when I received an email from the Scholé Sisters which said “twenty books counts as complete for 2020,” I was pretty stoked.

In all, I have read (combining audiobooks with handheld paper books) 115 books this year… plus countless picture books that I would never even begin pretending to keep track of. I am actually really surprised that I have that many titles under my belt for 2020! While some people have said this year brought them a superabundance of free time, or time for different pursuits, I absolutely did not find that true for myself. As a fulltime homemaker and home educator already, this year did not give me less time commitments or responsibilities: if anything, it added to my plate. The presupposition that homeschoolers didn’t find 2020 bringing alterations to habits or routines is completely false. Let me tell you: we were thrown for a loop as much as anybody.

I read 60 books on my own this year: 31 nonfiction, 29 fiction. I had zero plan of seeking to balance fiction with nonfiction, but I am rather pleased that it happened to shake out that way. I also did 40 read alouds with all my children (please note that when you live out in the country, you can make a lot of headway in audiobooks while driving over the course of a year), and 15 more read alouds with just certain children (some with just my daughter, a couple with my younger set, a few with just one son at a time and a few with my two oldest sons).

I knew that I was always keeping my reading stack going as well as always keeping my earbuds at the ready. I went through this year continually acknowledging that I wanted to be engaging in both fiction and nonfiction, with and without my children, on a regularly ongoing basis. But on a day to day, or week to week, basis I never really knew how much progress I was making. The plod of my daily and weekly routines as worker, wife, mother, educator, and friend kept me so constantly on my toes that I simply kept reading, kept listening, kept writing titles down upon completion… and only now have finally gone back to count them up and see the real accomplishment. Honestly, it is super satisfying, gratifying: a blessing.

I may not have read as well-rounded of a list as some others I know, but this was a year where I branched out, planned ahead, kept moving forward, and honestly grew. I didn’t know I could grow even deeper in my love of reading… but I actually did. Just when I thought I was already passionately in love with books, I realize there is always more to learn, more to apply, more to love, more to read.

I have always known that I loved historical fiction, but Susan Meissner and Ruta Sepetys have shown me that there is a bittersweet depth to it which I had not previously plumbed. I have also always known that I loved books which marry cooking with memoir (thank you, Robert Capon), but I discovered Ruth Reichl this year with great pleasure. I learned that I feel a much stronger gravitational pull toward Christian nonfiction than secular, particularly when habits or disciplines are discussed: for instance, while I really gleaned goodness from Atomic Habits, I can not get over how much more it would have left an impression if James Clear had backed up his philosophy with fruit of the Spirit. (I genuinely missed Jesus in that book.) I learned anew how much my children love a good series, and are much disdained if I ever feel tempted to give up a series before its completion. They are diehards and love to complete a story arc. I also learned this year that it is okay NOT to complete a series, or even to set a book aside that isn’t whetting the appetite. There are too many marvelous books to read in my one short life to waste hours on something that doesn’t spur me on to love, good works, blessing, or fancy. And honestly: I want my kids to learn that lesson too.

As I type this, my five year old is sitting beside me with exactly twenty picture books splayed all around… he is reading them aloud to himself, and each time he picks up a new book, he declares with glee: “ooooh I love this one!” That’s my boy. (Let’s be honest: I only produce bibliophiles. Ginger book-lovers, all five.)

Are you setting reading goals for 2021? Do you put together a literal TBR stack? How do you keep track of your reading habits or completed books? What reading challenge(s) are you signing up for this year?

I will occasionally share more bookish updates here as I seek to become ever more well-read. It brings me joy right here in the center of my domestic little life. Bring on the books!