APPRECIATIONS #1 – 50

This is a list of the first 50 APPRECIATIONS on this website. I consider these possible drafts of future essays and/or a way to explore a topic and see what insights or stories might be lurking in the shadows. Sometimes, like when I wrote about pine cones, it was just to try and figure out why I appreciate them. What do you appreciate? Do you know why? Might be something worth writing about.

Here are 50 things that I appreciate:

1. Appreciating Things
2. Laughter
3. Good Sentences
4. On Deck Circles
5. Scent Memories
6. Stories or Examples Used to Illustrate a Point (?’s)
7. Stories or Examples Used to Illustrate a Point (Answers)
8. First Paragraph of The Last American Man
9. First Paragraph of Moby Dick
10. Poetry
11. Those First Moments of Inspiration
12. Feeling Like Quitting, But Not Quitting
13. Reading
14. Two Specific Paragraphs in a Discarded Library Book
15. Hurdy Gurdy Concerts, Mucky Sand For Sale, and Savoring Specifics
16. Kaizen NOT Karoshi
17. Melvilles’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”
18. Finding the Right Influence at the Right Time
19. A Decade of Marriage
20. Launching “Expendable Efforts”
21. Conversation
22. Strange Dreams About School
23. My Son’s Storytelling Impulse
24. New Words, New Ideas, New Punctuation
25. Failure, Rejection, Misfires
26. Truth Tellers
27. Trustworthy Voices, Reasoned Opinion, Honest Commentary
28. “The Braindead Megaphone” by George Saunders
29. Movies
30. Van Gogh on the Blank Canvas
31. Jogging, Blogging
32. Traveling Through the Dark with William Stafford
33. Sporks
34. Finding Caterpillars in the Forest & “The Thing About Adventures”
35. Teenage Commentary
36. Moments Like Those Sitcom Pregnancy Scares Where You Realize How You Really Feel About Something
37. Pine Cones
38. “A Day In The Life” by the Beatles
39. Windows When Certain Jokes Work
40. ; (the Mark, the Tattoo)
41. Picking Up a Book Off Your Shelf That You Have Never Read (But Had For Years) And Reading It In One Sitting
42. Breton Fisherman’s Prayer
43. Alternatives to Reading (Input)
44. Dropping A Mug In a River In the Morning And Finding It Downstream In the Afternoon
45. Annotating Articles
46. Encounters With Wild Animals
47. Primary Sources
48. Siblings
49. Art as Rebalancing
50. APPRECIATE: A MANIFESTO