Really?

It’s just a few days until Christmas and then we hurtle towards to the new year. I set two “digital” goals this year: a picture a day at flickr and the librarything 75-book challenge. I gave up the first one in July and I’m pretty confident that I won’t finish seven more books between now and the end of the year. Oh, so close.

But, in January, when I began these leisure time challenges, I had no idea what the year held for me. A new “part-time” job that began in July added to my other projects quickly overwhelmed any leisure time I had. I did keep reading but just couldn’t keep up the pace needed to reach the magic 75. By the end, I took the route of all potential losers and questioned the whole goal: maybe reading more isn’t necessarily better? At least once or twice this year, I picked a book because it seemed like a shorter, easier read. Poor John Adams is still languishing on the shelf and Churchill‘s history of the second world war has joined it.

Mostly, I’m finding that my concentration has gotten increasingly fragmented. I have memories of spending whole days readings books, and now after 15 minutes, I’m sure there must be something else I should do. Today I managed an hour in a sitting.

I am enjoying Shannon by Frank Delaney. He has hit a certain satisfying balance between history and fiction. And my reading friend sent me a wonderful Christmas gift that I opened the moment UPS left it on the porch. It included the Colonial Williamsburg triology by MG McManus. I’m imagining practicing my reading concentration skills on them during the holiday week.

I think I will take up the camera again in 2011. I took some pretty good pictures during the first half of 2010 and would like to try again. For now, I’m working on the 1998 pictures from our Lewis & Clark trip. I dug out the trip journal to check on some dates. And, I learned that the Camp Wood Monument near St. Louis was now under water! I wonder how much else has changed in the past 15 years.

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