Kicks to the head

    I know it might not seem like it but my time on the internet is blissfully limited now that I'm no longer working outside the home. I have a small person that I'd rather spend time with, and I might be online looking, researching, writing, and communicating but it's dotted time, not really focused. I'm constantly up playing games, have long times in between where I'm cooking, cleaning, organizing, teaching Xander, taking walks, riding bikes, giving time outs, creating forts, making art, doling out clay and paint, etc. etc. etc. Just as I'm writing this I'm holding an intense conversation about the dreams we had last night, and we're also discussing whether Yoda can swim or not. 
    Late, late, late in the evening I have more focused time, but by then my contacts begin peeling off my eyes and I'd rather turn to my more ethereal writing and haiku. I also work on a project that my husband and I are working on during the wee small hours. So my point is (though this is a wavering point because I'm still fielding questions about Yoda and am a bit distracted) that I squeeze a lot into a little bit of time. 
     Like all of us I need reassurance and guidance in my professional (ha) life, in my case writing. I hunt and gather different sweet smelling books, magazines, and websites to boost up morale and siphon advice and tips that I might not have known about. And of course, I'm fixing to share some of them here. 


Zen Habits: I have a blog crush on Leo Babuta. He's taken his personal life changing journey and turned it into an empire of simplicity. His articles are peacefully written and helpful. His Simple Links hop over to interesting places, people, writings, tips. His other blog Mnmlist hearkens back to the original blogs of yesteryear: simple and straightforward. His Zen Family Habits  offers practical and reassuring articles from someone who's really a parent, and is totally non-judgmental. You'll like it. 


Margaret Atwood's blog: Now I know that this might not do something for everyone. It just so happens that she's my favorite writer and it just so happens that she has a blog. It also just so happens that she offers tips and helpful advice from time to time and I love her even more for it. The Queen of Introspective Science Fiction (and regular fiction), the Poet Laureate of the Smirking People of the World is also an approachable, amicable, tweeting person. Check out her Ten Tips for Writer's Block. 
(Image Courtesy CBC)


Brainchild Magazine: If you're a mom or dad or caregiver who's ever felt a little bit preached to from all sides of the spectrum (Holy hell the scare tactics of Last Child in the Woods  and the Focus on the Family - how's that for two ends of the spectrum - and everyone else who blathers on and on about how we should be raising our children or the world will implode). Brainchild is smart. Funny. Subversive. Love. It. I need balance and slaps on the wrist back to reality daily and this magazine offers it all. 


Deepak Chopra - Chopra Center blog: I really love the "Laws of the Day". You don't have to be a spiritual person or anything to use these words of wisdom. Here's an example, The Law Of Attachment: "Today I will commit myself to detachment. I will allow myself and those around me the freedom to be as they are. I will not rigidly impose my idea of how things should be. I will not force solutions on problems, thereby creating new problems. I will participate in everything with detached involvement."
Of course we all KNOW this and it's not anything NEW but sometimes we need reminders and blows to the head to bring us back to balanced living. 


That's unfortunately all I can share today, as I have a particularly high strung kid today and it's taken me an hour to write a paragraph. Every 30 seconds some small disaster strikes and I am being called to active duty. 

Why.

Taking a bit of a break from my usual introspective and highly angsty and metaphysical writing, as well as a sexy blog (no, you can't see - it's a secret), and some children's literature thrown in, I've decided to create a bit of a database of sorts. I find interesting things online. I have a knack for the gathering of information. I used to work in a library, and it was a perfect fit. Like a good pair of black tights that never, ever get holes in them. Tights that you tell your friends about and they grab your arm conspiratorially and beg in a hiss to share where you got them. I share. I am a generous oracle. 

This vehicle is new. It is rough around its metaphorical edges. The goodness and gold will be categorized, maybe in the order you see to your left, and maybe not. I'm a fickle, ever-changing oracle. There's simply too much in my head and too much I'd love to share to keep it to myself. 

I'm not ashamed in my love of the internet, like others might profess. I could wax whimsical and nostalgic for hours about my first experience online (no, not like that), playing Doom in a dorm basement during theatre camp in 1996. We talked in a chat room with FOUR other people, a VIDEO chatroom that was for some sort of fancy Linux people. Our camp counselor was a fancy techy engineery major and knew the inside of what we had barely heard about - most of us still typed our papers onto dot matrix printers from DOS systems. Clack.clack.clack. Bzzzzzzz. Tsst. Tsst. Tsst. That was the sound of a dot matrix printer - deafening and harkening back to the days of beige plastic everywhere. 

A bit about me? I'm currently living in Alaska. But watch! I move around a lot. In a few months I might be somewhere completely different. I write. I make. I have a brilliant photographer husband and a beautiful, bright, brave little boy (he doesn't have a website yet). I try to see the beauty and the luster and the patina in everything. Sometimes it makes me frown, being like that. 

But mostly I like to find the wonderful, beautiful, recreational, pointless, pointed, meaningful, helpful, meaningless, silent-laughing shoulders shaking, and informative on the internet. Like I said, I have a brain like a reference library (or did I say that?) and I retain an awful lot of trivial bits up there. 

And please do share. 

Soon and thanks.