On Streaks
Dear Marigolds,
I’m not sure what’s gotten into me.
Were you to read the letters I’ve written to myself in the past you would notice a pattern. At the start of each year, and usually also halfway through, I would pen a list of the behaviors and habits of my ideal self. And then read them again another 6 months later, noticing a contrast to my actual self’s behaviors. Repeat x 10, 15 years.
The list items have been innocuous but consistent - drink more water, wake up earlier to enjoy slow morning time before jumping into work, read less on my phone & more from the stack of books on the nightstand.
So imagine my surprise when, at some point in 2023 and almost without trying, I practically landed into a few good habits. Since the middle of last summer, I’ve been to over 50 Orange Theory classes. I began my day with a 10 minute meditation for 8 days in row, which the app tells me is my longest streak since 2020. I read a whole ass book and wrote about it here. I am writing this letter now. Writing is hard.
Let’s keep this streak going too, shall we?
In 2024, I propose we continue with my selection: The 1946 London Lectures, by Maria Montessori.
I want to keep the momentum from our last read, which was a collection of essays and talks. It felt so alive and dynamic. Sometimes I would read it aloud to myself, with a poor Italian accent, imagining what it must have felt like to hear it delivered from the Dr. herself. This book is the third (so, most recent) in the 3-part series of collected lectures. Perhaps we’ll read backwards? From the publisher’s site:
The 1946 London course was the first training course given in Europe by Maria Montessori when she and her son Mario returned from seven years of exile in India during World War II. In these 1946 Lectures, six years before her death, the reader can sense that Montessori has travelled the world and has observed, profoundly and scientifically, an immense amount of children. In these lectures, taken down in English by one of her assistants, Maria Montessori speaks with the mature wisdom of a lifetime spent studying, not just early childhood, but human development as a whole: infancy, the elementary-school years and adolescence. The typescript of this course was to have significant pedagogical consequences, since The 1946 Lectures became the foundation of AMI’s 3-6 courses.
Friends of this project, please feel free to join us in reading.
Tom - endless gratitude to you for creating the space. Justin - endless surprise and delight that you have managed to write at all, considering how it kicked off.
Cheers to the first letters of 2024.
And.
I drink the water I’m thirsty for. I stay up as late as I want and snooze without shame, happily making the morning decaf while checking to see which meetings are planned for the day. I actually just freaking like to read on my phone, especially at night, and I tend to pick from my library stack on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Hoping to communicate and commemorate in my otherwise-Montessori letters to you here, the streaks of actual self shining through, too.