A Time Of Gifts

Met with a dear friend today whom I don't see often enough. An annual pal.

Of the many things covered, caught-up-on and discussed, my friend said something that we may know to be true, but somethings are retold to us, for us to listen, and be reminded and mindful of...

You are what you do.

And it's true.

..of course, we both digressed and had a laugh - at our weak disguise of how all we both pretty much naturally "do" is sit and think about things...all the time...to the point little actually gets "done"...but this isn't about our propensity toward sheer unadulterated unparalleled laziness....
(made even funnier as it literally takes about year to finally sit down together and catch up)

I mention that because I am in need of a holiday. WHAT !?!?

In my overdue dire need of a holiday, a vacation, a change of scene, a break, a reprieve, respite from all I know...

I did what anyone frugal person would do...I bought a book.

A book called: A Time of Gifts

And what a gift it is already proving to be.

The reason I mention THAT is....the author...Patrick Leigh Fermor - a British lad of 18, in 1933 (pre WWII) wanted to *be* a writer. But didn't know how to sort of ....do it...and sitting in his London rainy drizzly flat lacking inspiration to *write* that which would help him become a writer...he left his flat, and literally set out, on foot, at the age of 18, in November, in 1933 and walked to the ferry docks to get a ticket to take him to the Hook of Holland - where he walked through Holland (with every natural & wondrous thing to be seen, experienced, learned, thought, known and felt along the way), he walked through Germany, travelled along the Rhine and the Danube, through Vienna, to the "edge of the Slav world", into Prague "under snow", through Slovakia, and got as far as Hungary....no doubt hungry.

But what Patrick Leigh Fermor did was....put down his pen, set out on foot, and in doing do became that which he wanted to be.

A writer.

And write he did. And what a gift.