Q & A #2: Why are you writing these APPRECIATIONS?

Lots of reasons. Desperation, enjoyment, exploration, practice. It is a helpful exercise to pause and evaluate why you do things. From what I understand, this is why I am writing these appreciations and putting them on this website to:

1. Proactively battle negativity, and boredom
2. Remind myself that there are a lot of interesting things in the world, to remind myself in the face of overwhelming resistance and negativity that the world is not boring and stupid
3. Obey Philippians 4:8
4. Display curiosity, wonder, and the act of appreciating in the hopes that it can be contagious
5. Show my students examples of expository writing and explaining why, and examples of things to write about from their LIST #1
6. Show how I use the process of LIST, STAR, TALK, WRITE that I talk about all the time in class
7. Train my brain to see the good, to focus on positive things. (NOTE: The book Find The Good by Heather Lende is a fun and short read from an Alaskan obituary writer that discusses this well)
8. Try to do something similar to what Brainpickings.org does, or what 1000awesomethings.com did, or what Jason Silva does with his Shots of Awe on YouTube (there are lots of similar examples)
9. Show work in public and get over the fear of not showing it or ever finishing it
10. Start bigger projects in smaller chunks to see if they might work
11. Figure out why I like things
12. Get on a consistent publishing schedule where I am willing to let my work exist somewhere other than in piles of notebooks inside of shoeboxes in the closet
13. Have fun

So much of who we are, and how healthy we are, and how we approach the world is dependent on how and what we think. Writing these appreciations is an attempt to improve my thinking, and share the process.