“I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther I was thinking about Goethe after my traveling companion…
With a bit of travel coming up and a keen desire to be able to hold up my end of the bargain in a conversation, I’ve doubled down on my use of language learning apps recently. My primary method of learning to this point was Duolingo, which aims to make learning a language fun with…
Lately I’ve doubled down on getting lost. Now, I understand that deliberately putting yourself into a place where you’re lost might seem counterintuitive and odd. But the thing about being lost is it forces you to find your way out, and this is where learning takes place. Case in point: I dove into the deep…
“I don’t know what that means. To truly live.’…‘To find work that you love and work harder than other men. To learn languages of the earth, and love the sounds of the words and the things they describe. To love food and music and drink. Fully love them. To love weather, and storms, and the…
“I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages…
“Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost soul seeking a hope when all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious. Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wanderer.” – Beryl Markham, West With The Night Doesn’t it feel a bit like the world is about to explode into an…
Coming up on a year of taking French lessons using Duolingo, and I recognize I’ve got a long, long way to go. Nothing impresses that on a person like listening to someone sing softly and rapidly in French, as Lous and the Yakuza did in a remarkable Tiny Desk Concert on NPR. It really wasn’t…
I’ve been toying with the word inveterate in my mind for a couple of weeks. It would make a good New Year’s Day post, I figured. I mean, just look at the definition in the dictionary, practically screaming for a post: Inveteratein·vet·er·ate | \ in-ˈve-t(ə-)rət\Definition of inveterate1: confirmed in a habit : HABITUAL an…
“Build streaks. Do the work every single day. Blog daily. Write daily. Ship daily. Show up daily. Find your streak and maintain it.” – Seth Godin, The Practice I made a relatively big deal (by my standards) of blog number 900. Well, this is 914 and I just keep quietly going. I have some exciting…
I’ve been skimming the surface with the French language for eleven months now. Eleven months of daily lessons on the Duolingo app, making sure I hit the bare minimum and some days a little bit more. And as you might expect I’ve learned the basic words that they repeat in their lessons, struggle a bit…
