From the desk of Teresa Jordan, Executive Director – I often wonder how it is that I can get so accustomed to a change so fast. Last night I started a novel that I had picked up at a yard sale a few weeks ago, written by one of my favourite authors. This is an author I know and love, and the book does not seem, so far, to be one I have read. Yes, I am that person who sometimes finds the story familiar a few chapters in.
Here’s the thing … it was printed some years back and it is in what we would now call “the old smaller format.” I read novels of this size for decades before the norm became a larger book. And yet, last night, I felt almost confined and I strained to hold the smaller version and to focus my reading in the tiny space. I have grown accustomed to the new feel, size, font of the larger novel and it is hard to go back.
I think this is human nature. We are constantly forming and reforming habits and it is hard to change. It stresses, for me, the importance of trying to lay good foundations for change and for setting things in place that will lead to a great change in habit. They say that it takes a long time to form a new habit and that almost any of us can become a real expert in anything after 10,000 hours of practice.
I am reminded that, with each of the hours I practice both good and bad habits, I am setting myself up to get ingrained in a way of doing, seeing or thinking about things. So, I guess it’s up to all of us to choose the kinds of hours of practice that make things better, more joyful and happier. In the book, so far, I do not recognize the plot and I plan to soldier on, in my confined space, in order to enjoy a great read … and some good practice at sidelining my ingrained habits.
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