I’m joining up with Ruth Ayres for her weekly link-up, Celebrate This Week. Check out all of the posts linked up at her blog HERE. Thanks for starting this, Ruth!
I’m squeezing my weekly
celebration in under the wire, typing here at 9 pm Saturday night. There are
many weeks I forget to write this post, but today my celebrations were just
popping up everywhere and I had to take a moment to reflect.
One, I’m celebrating friends
that inspire. In June I attended a writing retreat with these folks, among
others. Jen (on the right) had a great idea to begin a Google Spreadsheet to keep each other
accountable for writing when we got back, and we began this week. It has only
been seven days and I wrote 7,000 words this week. Not all were great, some
were horrid, but it was 7,000 more than I had last week at this time, so I’m
celebrating being brave enough to ignore the inner critic and write anyway.
Two, I was excited to find
out that Ruth Ayres and Christy Rush-Levine are beginning a Twitter chat called Teach
and Celebrate Writers. #TandCwriters will be on the first Sunday of the month
at 8:00 pm EST. I am beyond pumped to join in this chat and am honored that
they asked me to co-host the first one this August. Hope to see you there on
August 3rd.
Third,
and finally, I’m celebrating this guy.
Luke
is twelve and has had a unusual baseball season. He was on two teams—one team
was a super positive experience, one was a learning experience, both had value.
He is wrapping up the season with his second team, the super positive team,
this weekend.
Luke
was also in my reading class this year when we read this book:
We
had great discussions over Snail’s actions and what it means to be brave.
Hitting has been a struggle this year for a variety of reasons. I’m beyond
proud of Luke for choosing to be in the Homerun Derby tonight. You didn’t have
to be in any of the skills contests, but he chose to participate in this one.
He
tried knowing many games have gone by this year with nary a hit.
He
tried knowing others would be hitting it over the fence.
He
still tried.
When
he was bummed he got four or five hits out of seven pitches, but none went to
the fence, I told him how proud I was that he jumped, just as Snail did.
That
he was brave.
I
think, no I know, that he thinks I’m sappy—and maybe I am—but I’m so happy he
made that decision tonight. Being brave is important. I teach that to all of my
students, and sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t.
I’m
grateful Luke did.
