A Calendar of Small Skills
A sample year for lesson one. Borrow it as it is, swap any line for something you have always wanted to try, or leave a month blank and decide on the first. Each line is a skill that fits into fifteen minutes a day.
- January: twenty bird calls from the feeder
- February: four knots that hold a boat or a tarp
- March: the names of the stars over the porch
- April: a dozen polite sentences in a new language
- May: one tune on a borrowed instrument
- June: the plants in the neighbor's garden, by leaf
- July: sharpening a knife on a whetstone
- August: a simple card trick, start to finish
- September: drawing a hand from life
- October: the rules of a board game nobody else plays
- November: a family recipe, written from memory first
- December: a short poem, recited without the page
Write the month you are on at the top of a fresh page in the notebook. When the month ends, mark the line here with a small check and a word or two about how it went.