I was almost 40 when I started too read.

Like so many others, after my schooldays I maybe only picked up and read a few books each year – it felt the right thing to do.  There was no love in it.  It had been something I had to do in order to get the marks or pass a test.

Around sixteen years ago, something happened.

You might say, I fell in love with reading.

Someone presented a bigger picture of the world to me and of my life within it, and I was hungry to see how I could get there.  Reading provided me with a means to make the journey, a journey I’m still on.

Then there’s writing:

‘Writing is organised, permanent talking, it is the brave way to express an idea.’*

This may be one for the introverts, but I’m finding, writing is where I can talk.

I’ve never been someone who’s enjoyed standing up and making a speech;** I much prefer a conversation: I say something, someone else says something, I respond (I love conversations with purpose).

My attempts at writing is driven by a passion: to see people living their ever-growing potential, towards making the world a better place, even if this is one person’s world.

We need dreaming to be added to reading and riting^ to help us move from the requirements for competence and rote obedience, towards imagining a different life and a different world.  Reading an riting become a means to turning us around, helping us to see there is always more, and to ask the all-important questions.^^

(*And to work upon an idea.  From Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams in Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?)
(**I admire and try to learn from those who do; check out How to Deliver a TED Talk by Jeremey Donovan.)
(The third “r” is rithmetic, which has always been a mystery to me, but mathematicians with imagination are amazing people who change the world.)
(^^Three “motions” offered by Otto Scharmer for the movement from downloading to presencing.  He imagines a facing into a cave, then turning around to see out of the cave there’s a bigger world to explore.)
(Cartoon: The quote from Val McDermid comes from The Library Book.)