"Bring the first thing that hits you on the nose." 

This is one of my favourite things to say, a somewhat inner joke with myself, and it comes from a deep place in my heart; a place of childlike wonder.  A comment one of our readers made on our Facebook page about the best gifts being from the heart had me thinking about gifts and my general habit of shunning the celebration of Valentine's Day in favour of spontaneous gifts from the heart that occur for no reason at all, except perhaps, love.

Blossoms in February
Warm my winter heart
Soft colour against grey skies

February in my part of the world is a strange month.  Winter has not quite departed, yet teasing signs of spring are beginning to appear; small gifts of colour which leave us yearning for the Equinox that brings warmth to the sun's rays while we still await news of winter's last hurrah.

Thoughts that flowed during a timed writing exercise with my writing coach.  Memories of a life lived with love and our annual return to a shared love - camping on our favourite West coast beach:

Sandcut Beach:  humble west coast beach, cobbled, lacking sand as the name implies.  Walking along the beach creates a chorus: the crunch of rocks against backdrop of crashing waves sucking into themselves through rocks.  Pebbles tossed up then sucked back. Rough edges smoothed by an endless cycle.

Boredom breeds passion.  Really?  Apparently so, at least in Tony Hsieh's life.  

A bored, rich young man who recently sold his start-up to Microsoft for $243 million realized making more money was meaningless to him and he wanted a life of passion.  Oh, but what to be passionate about?  Sounds like a problem some of us would like to be faced with.

I just read a blog on Life as a Human about teacher appreciation week which is apparently a big deal in the US.  I suppose we have a specific week or day in Canada for teacher appreciation, though giving teacher appreciation gifts has certainly become a common thing at Christmas and at the end of the year.  I have a lot of friends who are teachers and at these times of the year they receive a ton of chocolate as gifts from their students.