Today is the (not national) Publish All Your Languishing Drafts Day!

(not neccesarily an annual event)

My freinds said I hadn't written much since I got my job. 'Tis true! So, I thought I'd release a bunch of posts saved as drafts that I wouldn't otherwise get around to publishing.

Be free! (Throws her arms out to the sky.)

Be Bold

Written for me, by me, on this day

Go out and meet people. Be yourself. Be radiant! Radiate who you really are! Accept yourself! Wear clothes you like! Be ye not afraid. Don't go if you don't want to go! Forget should! Go forth boldly pursuing your goals. You do not have to give someone a chance! Make friends with who you please. Don't apologize for yourself- whatever it is. Do what you want. Look out after your own best interest. Be wildly, exuberantly responsive when you can, with clear boundaries. You deserve to have boundaries. Just be clear and NO pressure to make promises that you don't want to keep... go forth boldly to fulfill your dreams.

I read that a good way to solve your problems is to write a question at the top of the page and then write and write and write until you get something brilliant and usable. I must be a genius, because this is what I got in the first paragraph ;) Well, at least it is bold like William Blake says to be.

The Social Music Revolution

Written January 19th while I was looking for a new place to live.

Ummm... I need to move out in about 10 days and no one I'm writing to is writing back to me? Is it time to really kick this search into high gear, or is it time to aimlessly surf the internet? Ummm.. yeah. Check out Last.fm

You get your own online music profile that you can fill up with the music you like. This information is used to create a personal radio station and to find users who are similar to you. Last.fm can even play you new artists and songs you might like. It's addictive, it's growing, it's free, it's music.

Face transformer image upload

Random link from January 19th

Face transformer image upload

more stuff about the womens

Written October 30th, 2005 after a great women's retreat with my church. Censored, I'm sure, because I used the word "naked."

I also sat naked in a hottub for the first and second time. :) Woohoo! If you ever get the chance to sit naked in crisp Autumn weather, in a non-threatening situation, in a bubbling hot tub, under very bright stars, in a very DARK night, I highly recommend you do it. :)

Blog Wish List: Create "Related Posts"

Does anyone know how to automatically create "related posts" on blogger? That would be so cool. I wonder if I could do it with delicious? I was looking up ways to implement GTD using gmail and came across a blog that has related posts beneath the article.

Is your bucket half full or half empty? or How I used a bookstore and some onion rings to feel better

Written December 22, 2005

There is an interesting study in the book How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton. It talks about POW's becoming hopeless just because they lose a sense of camaraderie. So, to prevent curling up in a corner and dying (POW fate) this book is exhorting people to fill each other's buckets, to uplift, and encourage each other.

I read the entire book in Borders last night. I left my house when everyone in it was having dinner together but me. I walked out, said a cheery "Ciao!" and pretended I had somewhere to go. It was late, I started driving, and wondered where I should go. I was crying so it had to be somewhere dark. I stopped by the movies but it would be over an hour until the next one started. I had gotten a slightly manic email from my mom earlier in the day saying we had 6 Christmas parties to go to and that you never know when you will meet a man! Umm.. am I in the middle of Bridgit Jones's Diary? Suddenly the vacation I was looking forward to didn't sound so cheery. Then my best friend went off and went skating without me, and, to top it off, there was the cheery Christmas scene at my house that I was left out of. So, I went to Borders.

I bought one book and read another. I felt immensely better after hiding in the craft section and reading How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life. I highly recommend this very simple book and might get a copy for everyone I know. I also made an interesting sociological discovery: Business books are just self-help books that use the word "business" in them and are in the business section!! They are self-help books for men! I just discovered a whole new place to browse. Then I went and got me some onion rings.

My roommate's parents are here. They look at me and speak to me. They are sweet and it feels really good. Like my roommates, they eat my food. Unlike my roommates, they also share. I finished school today. I am now a "master." I gave my 30 days notice to my roommate/landlord. I'm going to the movies tonight with friends. Yesterday my bucket was drained. Today it is filling up again. Goodnight! I hope someone is loving you and filling your bucket. If not, I hope you can do something extra sweet for yourself. Sometimes onion rings help.

Fowl

Written Feb 17th, unfinished, but I think you get my drift. :)

AHh! I just went to a comedy club that was soo foul that I've got to watch Sex in the City to clear it out of my mind. Seriously. My friends who were with me have this sweet but of course incomplete idea of me as a delicate and sweet. They said, "Oh, B. you don't like this, do you. It's too explicit for you." Listen, people, I know how to translate. I grew up as a little humanist in a Mormon town and I liked church. I can understand someone even if they speak in a very different language than me. I liked Hustle and Flow. What I don't like is meaness. In the sense of small mindedness and especially in the sen

A Page of Apologies

Written on May 7th

Today I listened to part of a show on NPR about a radio show that people use to tell things to people they know in prison. It was strangely moving listening to the mostly mundane things that people want to say to another human being; voice after voice coming on the air and adding their bit of humanness with their personal particluars.

This theme of general humanity through particular personal communicatipons must be one of my themes today, because I also found a page of public apologies online. It was sort of awful reading through all the things that people had to say. I did read all the way through them though. Wow, people getting really angry and then regretting their actions was the main theme of the letters. Even though many of the letters were extreme, I could relate, and I ended up feeling a lot of compassion for us humans.

That is how postsecret, another place to get a sense of humanity from very particular particulars feels to me.

The fun thing about digital art

Written April 30th

You can revisit it again and again and again.



Here's my jazz at night girl revisited in Art Rage.

Mother Earth?

Written earlier in May

Interesting article about "primitive spirituality" from this reading list.

Every human life

A little snippet of what might have become a whole post, written April 9th

Every human life speaks to every other human life if expressed well enough.

Mother's Day Sermon

"I just called to say hi," I told my mom this morning.
"And to wish me a Happy Mother's Day?" She prompted.
"Oh yeah, and to wish you a Happy Mother's Day!"
We talked for a few minutes, but being in a time zone three hours later than mine, she had to get to church. First she wanted to tell me about her dream last night, and then, of course, she wanted to hear my dream.

I dreamt that I had plans with someone, but right before he came over, I fell to the floor with exhaustion. This is only a slightly dramatized version of my real life. Last night my friend never came over, I called her, and fell to my bed with exhaustion at 7:30. I knew this would mean I would wake up way too early, but I just couldn't hold out until 9. That's why I called my mom at 5:30 this morning, an hour and a half after I woke up. And how I had time to read poetry before I called, which came in handy as my mom missed the first hour of church while talking to me. In acknowledgment of her lost hour of church, I decided to give her a mother's day sermon. I got it from The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart which I was reading this morning.

I was worried because when I read it earlier in the morning, I started crying at the first sentence, having read it before and knowing what was coming. I tend to cry when I read things to my mom, even if it didn't make me cry on my own. "Don't worry," I told my mom before I started reading it, "I cried earlier, but I'm fine now."

What Happened During the Ice Storm

One winter there was a freezing rain. How beautiful! people said when things outside started to shine with ice. But the freezing rain kept coming. Tree branches glistened like glass. Then broke like glass. Ice thickened on the windows until everything outside blurred. Farmers moved their livestock into the barns, and most animals were safe. But not the pheasants. Their eyes froze shut.

Some farmers went ice-skating down the gravel roads with clubs to harvest the pheasants that sat helplessly in the roadside ditches. The boys went out into the freezing rain to find pheasants too. They saw dark spots along a fence. Pheasants, all right. Five or six of them. The boys slid their feet along slowly, trying not to break the ice that covered the snow. They slid up close to the pheasants. The pheasants pulled their heads down between their wings. They couldn't tell how easy it was to see them huddled there.

The boys stood still in the icy rain. Their breath came out in slow puffs of steam. The pheasants' breath came out in quick little white puffs. Some of them lifted their heads and turned them from side to side, but they were blind folded with ice and didn't flush. The boys had not brought clubs, or sacks, or anything but themselves. They stood over the pheasants, turning their own heads, looking at each other, each expecting the other to do something. To pounce on a pheasant, or to yell Bang! Things around them were shining and dripping with icy rain. The barbed-wire fence. The fence posts. The broken stems of grass. Even the grass seeds. The grass seeds looked like little yolks inside gelatin whites. And the pheasants looked like unborn birds glazed in egg white. Ice was hardening on the boys' caps and coats. Soon they would be covered with ice too.

Then one of the boys said, Shh. He was taking off his coat, the thin layer of ice splintering in flakes as he pulled his arms from the sleeves. But the inside of the coat was dry and warm. He covered two of the crouching pheasants with his coat, rounding the back of it over them like a shell. The other boys did the same. They covered all the helpless pheasants. The small gray hens and the larger brown cocks. Now the boys felt the rain soaking through their shirts and freezing. They ran across the slippery fields, unsure of their footing, the ice clinging to their skin as they made their way toward the blurry lights of the house.

This mother's day sermon was brought you you by Braidwood's mom's daughter Braidwood.

Happy Mother's Day!