“No act of kindness is too small. The gift of kindness may start as a small ripple that over time can turn into a tidal wave affecting the lives of many.” ~Kevin Heath 

When I started this blog in January of 2015, it was going to be a one-year deep-dive into kindness. It has resulted in eight years of diligent and then sporadic blogging, mostly about kindness, but sometimes other topics that caught my fancy (jazz, baseball, cats, books, nature, politics….). It also resulted in my 2018 book, A Year of Living Kindly (YOLK), which is now in its 9^th printing, with multiple literary awards, and several foreign language editions (that’s the end of the shameless self-promotion, I promise). Another result: gratitude—so much gratitude—for this blogging community and the friends I have made through it, as well as the wonderful people I’ve met through my publisher, book talks, book clubs, and YOLK events.

As we commence 2023, my hope is that enough of us are tired of divisive politics, rampant incivility, and misguided actions driven by fear and prejudice, and we’re ready to transform the world by actively choosing kindness. Realizing that in my first and most prolific year of blogging about kindness, there weren’t many people following this blog, I thought I’d revisit and update some of those early posts. There’s more to say on some topics, and less on others. There are nuances and new ahas.

For those of you who have followed this blog since the earliest days, thank you! I hope you’ll still find new ideas and good reminders. For more recent community members, may you find what you were hoping for when you signed up to follow. I’ll try to keep posts short and to-the-point.

For this first “rebooted” post, let’s revisit one big reason why kindness matters, and why we need to choose it every day: Continue reading →