Here are 5 things I learned reading, How To Be Idle, By: Tom Hodgkinson

1. Fishing might just be the ultimate sport for the idler.

2. Work for yourself, if possible. The prize for 22 years of school should not be taking orders eight hours a day from someone you depend on totally for your income.

3. Lunch was meant to be savored, like they still do in parts of Europe. Two or three hours, if possible. Drinks. Food. Conversation.

4. Some of the joy in idleness comes from doing it while others are working.

5. “Idleness as a waste of time is a damaging notion put about by its spiritually vacant enemies. The fact that idling can be enormously productive is repressed. Musicians are characterized as slackers; writers as selfish ingrates; artists as dangerous. Robert Louis Stevenson expressed the paradox as follows in “An Apology for Idlers” (1885): “Idleness . . . does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class.” Long periods of languor, indolence and staring at the ceiling are needed by any creative person in order to develop ideas.”

Here are 5 things I learned reading, Bread And Wine, By: Shauna Niequist

1. Prodigy is a myth. It’s repetition, grit, and a bit of luck.

2. Why should you travel? Because it’s there. And you shouldn’t miss it.

3. You can say grace before anything.

4. Sitting around the table, and sharing life giving bread and wine with those that you love can be an entirely sacred thing.

5. “I want to cultivate a deep sense of gratitude, of groundedness, of enough, even while I’m longing for something more. The longing and the gratitude, both. I’m practicing believing that God knows more than I know, that he sees what I can’t, that he’s weaving a future I can’t even imagine from where I sit this morning.”