Today's blogging challenge: Why did you start blogging?
This seems a little too related to Saturday's post. Who came up with these prompts, anyway? ;)
Since you already know why I started blogging, I'm going to share with you some stuff I've read recently that I've been saving to share. This is one of the things I enjoy most about blogging, even if it's not exactly why I got started in the first place!
Clean office or messy office? I totally take issue with the findings of this study that says a disorderly desk space invites creativity and new thinking. I can't think straight in a messy space.
Favorite tweet from last week, relative to IOS7 rolling out:
Also in the IOS7 realm, this rundown of new ringtones is hilarious. The descriptions are quite elaborate. I never would have thought of a ringtone as having a backstory. Who knew?
Read anything interesting lately? Tell me!
Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.
on't you just love the optimism with which that title is stated? Yes, there are BOOKS on my reading list. And yes, 13 of them. For. The. First. Quarter. So there, silly internet feeds, blogs and Facebook. Take that. I'm claiming reading back, for me. Books, in paper form (yes you) I've missed you. Let's fall in love again.
All it takes to get me aching to read is just sitting in front of my bookcases--I have stacks of books I haven't ever read, horrors. I'm sure a girlfriend or two reading this will remember that a few years back I said I wasn't going to buy any new books until I'd read everything in my current bookshelf. Ha ha ha ha. (That laughter could go on for some time...) Alas, that lasted, oh, a month or two. E-books are one downfall, and the discount bookstore is another. Sigh. But all the books on this list are the "real" kind, with paper and spines and ink!
The list includes a couple of re-reads, as well as number of books that have languished for years with my full intention to read them, like, soon. Whatever. The time has arrived.
1. Born to Run, Christopher McDougall. This one has been on the nightstand for far too long... and given my ongoing desire to run (currently lacking motivation, but the desire is still there, for sure), I hope this gives me a wee kick in the butt.
2. Bird by Bird (reread), Anne Lamott. It's been a good five or six years since I first read this book, and so it's faded from my memory a bit but the vague recollections I have are that it was inspiring and motivating in the writing realm. I am hopeful it is a needed boost in that direction for me...
3. Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri. I can't say enough good things about everything I've read of Jhumpa Lahiri's (The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies are also great). I read this a few years ago and am looking forward to the reread--it's three stories in one, and should be a quick read too, from what I remember.
4. Floor Sample, Julia Cameron. I first found Julia Cameron via Faith and Will, just last year at the discount bookstore down at the Oregon coast. I very much appreciated her perspective on "spirituality though the storms of our lives" and so am interested in her actual memoir. She was married to Martin Scorsese (who knew? not me) and has had some ups and downs with her professional career--she wanted to be an artist but has known far more success as a writer about the artistic process.
5. The Wishing Year, Noelle Oxenhandler. Another memoir... must be a theme for me right now!
6. Tribal Leadership, Dave Hogan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright. This book came my way via dear friend Sara, who picked up copies at a conference she was at this fall. I like the general concept and am looking forward to what I can learn from it.
8. The Power of Less, Leo Babauta. A slim volume (or purpose, I imagine!), I think I'll be able to glean good stuff from this book on "limiting yourself to the essential, in business and life."
9. Stones from the River (reread), Ursula Hegi. I had a big Ursula Hegi crush in the 1990s, and this was the first one I read. I have many others on the shelf, but I'm going back to the beginning, and hope it lives up to my sweet memory of it.
10. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini. I think this is actually a borrowed, some three years later (horrors!) book from my sister-in-law, Kim. (Sorry, Kim, I will get it back to you!) I have been meaning to read it, and meaning to read it... and now I will!
11. Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce (reread), Elizabeth Marquardt. I read this a few years ago, and sent it to a good friends whose parents divorced when she was a child, to get "an insider's perspective." She said it rang true, and I know I appreciated some of the perspective it gave me relative to Seth and his upbringing post-divorce. I hope it does that again, some five years after I first read it. Sometimes I do need a refresher on perspective...
12. Lit: A Memoir, Mary Karr. Memoir! Agan! Apparently quite smartly written, I've been looking forward to this one for a bit.
13. Second Honeymoon, Joanna Trollope. This novel is about mothering and letting go and things coming back around again. Sounds up my alley. We'll see how it goes...
I'm hoping that there's something very immediate and present about having these books on my nightstand and available; in fact, since I started writing this post, I've cracked a couple to see which reaches out and grabs me first/most. Sometimes with books tucked away on my iPad, I actually forget they are there and can spend quite a bit of time downloading new samples rather than reading the ones that I have... maybe those can be Q2 reading!
What's on your reading list for the new year? Let me know (you know I always like new reading ideas!)...
owntime on the weekend makes for a little information super-highway sharing... these links have been hanging out in my drafts folder for a bit, so here they are for your viewing pleasure!
Want to get inspired? Check out these four runners who are each running 100 miles for sponsored kids in Africa. Pretty cool.
I love the idea of publishing a book, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that one! Here's a great place to make them: Blurb.com. I'm full of ideas on this one...
Speaking of publishing, here's a funny list of buzzwords being decoded by various literary types... so you know if someone calls your book "wildly imaginative," well, they mean you were probably on drugs when you wrote it!
As you know, I've been on the hunt for great ways to keep track of lists and things to do, etc. Here are some savvy ideas from Lifehacker on using multiple calendar views (he uses Yahoo as his example, but I'm pretty sure I can finagle something similar in Google...).
Remember Flashdance? Well, these people do too, and decided to do a Flash-dance-mob in Chicago this summer. Pretty funny. I like the little girls who want to join in...
This is a bit of a startling story about blocking people on Facebook... this woman blocked her former adoptive (abusive) mother, for good reason. The startling thing is that the mother actually thought they could be friends.
Found a really cool site to create your own jewelry... with out those fiddly little pliers and my really bad hand-eye coordination! Looks like fun.
Jacob, keep your shirt on! (This has been billed as "Twilight in 4 seconds." Not having seen/read anything Twilight, I just find it amusing...) (Apologies to my Twilight-ish friends for diminishing Jacob's true impact, whatever that might be... I mean, other than just taking his shirt off!)
Sleeveface is a pretty self-explanatory phenomenon. Here are a couple of funny examples:
More publishing: a pretty online magazine called Styled.
Jessica Hische, she of the fabulous drop caps I use religiously, writes a design blog as well, and her piece on pricing design work is really good reading for any creative type thinking about assigning a dollar value to their work. As usual with these kinds of pieces, the comments make for almost as interesting reading as the piece itself.
I could just repost kottke all day, but that would just defeat the idea of YOU going over and signing up for the updates yourself, which I highly recommend. There's always something worth reading/viewing over there. The piece about sending kids through the postal service is no exception.
Don Miller's writing is always thought provoking and his blog is no exception. His latest post on leading others through fear is a good one--and actually led me to the very first piece I tagged in this post on the running team. See, full circle, this blog post is. Don't say I'm too scattered. Scattered, yes, but not TOO scattered!
And because I really care about you, I leave you with this bit of wisdom: Tom Selleck's moustache makes every movie better.
I hope there's a piece or two there that piques your interest. Happy weekending! I feel better just knowing I've shared.
've called this kind of post "reading roundup" in the past, which, frankly, as I think about it, is a somewhat annoying name. Sounds like a cross between kindergartener's reading circle and some sort of activity at the OK Corral... so I'm just calling it what it is: link sharing.
And since I have a handy pile tucked away, I thought I'd pull them out on this lovely Thursday and share them with you...
1. This blog: More Joy, Less Oy, has been in my reader for some time. I enjoy her writing style and thoughtfulness, and this post about staying pliable through tough times (Be the Bamboo), really resonated with me.
2. I thought this article from CNN seemed especially timely, what with the natural disaster uptick... even if the Pacific Northwest hasn't been in this round of wild weather, it *could* happen, and if you know our family, we like to be prepared. (Well, OK, husband is the prepared one. Seth and I are just happy to ride on his prepared coattails!) I especially found interesting the tips on storing your information online for easy access in an emergency, and an internal link to Lifehacker (an excellent resource for general info anyway) on preserving your cell phone battery life.
3. Brown-Eyed Baker is one of my favorite go-to food blogs, and in this post she chronicles her journey to full-time food blogging. Whew. What a great goal and how fabulous for her that she did it!
4. I enjoyed reading Timothy Keller's piece on Wisdom and Sabbath Rest, especially as I have not always been someone who has set a day aside in this manner. It reminded me of the days when I went full-bore seven days a week, and how much I enjoy the peace and separate-ness I feel in celebrating a Sabbath.
Also on this site (Q: ideas for the common good), I found a piece on Motherhood as Vocation. I've been on both sides of this particular topic--working mom and not--so I am always interested in what slant a writer will take... are all SAHMs just golden? Can there be balance between being a woman with passions, interests and (gasp, horror) ambition, and being there for your children? I thought the article did a good job of bridging the gap thoughtfully. I'd be curious if you do too...
5. Seth's breakfast has been a egg-muffin sandwich for a couple of years now. Sometimes two. Sometimes one and a bit of cereal. But he does love his egg muffins. I saw a take on one recently that made me think I could get into THAT; there's avocado and tzatziki in there! (Also, if you don't follow Joy Cho on Pinterest, you really should. Her style blog and her postings on Pinterest are especially hip and fashionable...)
6. If you don't get updates from this site daily, you MUST: Design Seeds. I really can't say it any more emphatically than that. Oh, it's helpful if you like color palettes and pretty pictures, but really, you MUST. It's the bomb. Or the boss, as Seth would say. See below.
7. At Mashable, I read an article on why browsing is an important aspect of information gathering, one that is lost in the more direct approach used online: searching. Something I had not really given a lot of thought to, but quite interesting when you consider how very much information exists online that you never ever know about (and truthfully, how good THAT fact is. Can you imagine? Yikes.). Not sure I really want to browse online, but I get the concept...
9. How did I miss this? I love Jimmy Fallon. Here he is as Charlie Sheen: Winning. Tell me you don't look twice a couple of times to see who it really is.
If that doesn't have you believing in his talent, take a look at this video below from America's Got Talent. Or better, put it on and then look away and see if he really is able to do the impressions. I did, and I think he's pretty good.
10. Toss Productivity Out, by Leo Babauta. Mr. Babauta is known for his zen schtick, and I can usually find a couple of nuggets in his posts that apply to what I'm trying to learn and grow towards. This post was no exception.
11. Mark Twain's love note to his wife. Precious, even if he did use the non-word gratefuler. (Click the link for the transcript).
OK, so we covered food, popular culture, religion, productivity, love, reading and online this-and-that. Whew. Hope there was a link or two there that piqued your interest!
What was your favorite link?
Happy Thursday. For more Thursday 13s, go here. And play along too, if you've got a blog. It's kinda fun.
haven't posted a reading round-up lately, maybe because I've been quite abysmal about actually doing any in-depth reading... (I have been pinning on Pinterest, don't get me wrong--I DO have my priorities in order after all! Can you imagine my husband's eye roll as he reads that? Count on it.)
But in cleaning out my Google feeds over the weekend, I did stumble across a few goodies to share:
Letters of Note: The link goes to a letter from Phil Hartman to an aspiring comedian; it really shows how nice/genuine a guy (Canadian, of course!) Phil was. Which also prompted me to go and look up the circumstances of his passing. I had forgotten how very sad that was... There are also some other interesting letters on the site, so be sure to click on over.
Effervescence: A post about flexing your extrovert muscles. Even though I am technically an extrovert, and when I get out and about I do enjoy it... there are times when that takes effort, and when the size of the crowd is more than I want... I really enjoyed her thoughts on this, especially when she equates it to running. That, especially, I get.
Ken Jennings: Remember this guy, that amazing run he had on Jeopardy? He posts quirky trivia on his blog and this piece about mental_floss magazine I wanted to be sure and bookmark for Seth, as he really enjoys that magazine. It's been purchased by the publishers of Maxim (yes, go ahead and snort now), but the founders still have a big say on the content... hmmm. We'll be keeping an eye on that!
Food52: Oh, this one I need to try soon... green chile country gravy (above). That sounds pretty much up our collective alley. Yup.
Robert Lee Brewer's blog, My Name Is Not Bob, focuses mostly on his writing and the writing process... this specific post spoke to me in it's reminder of the fragility of life and the absolute need to let your loved ones know that they are loved. So much. Every day. At least twice this past weekend I heard news of loss, and each time, it broke my heart for the individuals involved.
This post about What Your Favorite '80s Band Says About You made me laugh out loud. You must read through and tell me who yours is. (The closest I would say I came to having a favorite band in the '80s would be Air Supply... go ahead, mock it. OK, maybe Chicago too... my music tastes have improved a bit since then, I like to think...)
That does it for this roundup! If you know of a fabulous blog or site I need to be viewing, please let me know! I'm trying to keep it pared down around here, and if a new one goes onto the reading list, I try and weed out a few that have me less-enthralled...
Obviously this is not a Ten Word Tuesday for me! But I hope you have a marvelous Tuesday anyway.
t's been awhile since I've posted one of these weekend ready roundups... And while I didn't spend a great deal of time reading online this weekend, but what I did find, I enjoyed!
I got inspired to maybe join in an online painting class... but then I decided that painting isn't probably one of my main areas of focus this year, so I'll just pass this idea along. (Sure looks like fun, parents of mine!)
Loved this post and graphic about TED. If you don't know about TED, do check it out. A whole lot of information, well done. You could completely lose a weekend or two to TED (and be the better for it, too.) (Or at the very least, your brain would be FULL.)
I am always on the hunt for new and fun fonts. Check out these ones, billed the "top 10 innovative fonts of 2010." How hard would it be to have to come up with an "innovative" font, given all that currently exist. Hard, I'm thinking.
I found a small collection of downloadable poems by a new-to-me author, Tara Mohr, called The Real Life. Check it out. Now THIS kind of thing might fit in more with my focus...
Also in the design sphere, I found an inspiring group of logos (word marks, more like) on a design site where I would like to spend more time, definitely.
In the vein of photography, I saw a number of bloggers who are participating in 365 Project. Shutter Sisters is one such blog, and the Digital Photography School site had some great ideas for making themes of the project. (Nope, not in my focus. Trying to stay focused!)
And what weekend would be complete with out at least looking at a few recipes? Doesn't this picture and recipe just scream "Spring!"? Why, yes, yes it does. And I can't wait for spring, but I'm pretty sure I don't have to wait to make this yummy pasta!
Hope you had a lovely weekend! Now off to the week... working on my focus. Mindful focus. Om.
I'm late with my round up, but didn't want to let all my fun reading go "to waste." Here's some of what I ran across in my spare time this weekend--and there wasn't too much of that! (I'm efficient, what can I say? Twitter, newsfeeds and RSS... all the best friends of the busy gal.)
Here are a couple of funny videos, completely related to all things interwebnets:
A couple of great infographics matching states with their respective appropriate media (TV or movie). I thought most of them to be pretty spot on.
Fitness magazine published a list of 20 vegetable side dishes... quite a few of them looked quite yummy, but I was most drawn to the brussels sprouts with sherry-asiago cream sauce and the cauliflower with gruyere sauce (can we say fondue?). Might have to give those a whirl, soon.
And in all my ramblings around, I saw a quote I hadn't read in a bit, but one that I always enjoy:
In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer. -Albert Camus
on't you just love the optimism with which that title is stated? Yes, there are BOOKS on my reading list. And yes, 13 of them. For. The. First. Quarter. So there, silly internet feeds, blogs and Facebook. Take that. I'm claiming reading back, for me. Books, in paper form (yes you) I've missed you. Let's fall in love again.
've called this kind of post "reading roundup" in the past, which, frankly, as I think about it, is a somewhat annoying name. Sounds like a cross between kindergartener's reading circle and some sort of activity at the OK Corral... so I'm just calling it what it is: link sharing.
haven't posted a reading round-up lately, maybe because I've been quite abysmal about actually doing any in-depth reading... (I have been pinning on Pinterest, don't get me wrong--I DO have my priorities in order after all! Can you imagine my husband's eye roll as he reads that? Count on it.)
t's been awhile since I've posted one of these weekend ready roundups... And while I didn't spend a great deal of time reading online this weekend, but what I did find, I enjoyed!
Posts
