LaurieWrites

It's all around me.

Gwen Bell is inspiring. I haven't read her for some reason but I went from link to link and finally settled in to find out that I love her writing.

It is the lovely Jen Lemen's birthday today. She wrote this post about turning 40 and all she plans to do to commemorate it this year. I read it this morning and my heart sang for her and for me because I'm totally stealing this idea.

I've been sitting in the bookstore today reading and writing, trying to step outside the lines that have been drawing themselves in tighter and tighter around me. It's been a good mental and physical break from a life that's moving too fast all of a sudden and still presenting me with some challenges.Two-and-a-half months to graduation and there are so many questions I have that have no answer and yet I find myself gravitating more and more towards trust where in recent months there has been such uncertainty.

Lunch with an old friend today restored something in me that I didn't know was in need of it, really. It helped me write something I needed to get out, which was good - so often lately I've felt blocked. It helped me see my way clear to forgiveness, to putting something positive and of actual value into the universe. Actually I'm rediscovering all of these people from all along the path of my life - from high school and other times where maybe we needed a break or didn't really need one but it happened anyway. Add that to some tremendous new people who have come into my life in the past year and I feel that for all the things I'm afraid I lack, I have an embarrassment of riches in friends, which is so wonderful to know. I really can't overstate it.

My dear old friend K and I sat down over beers this weekend after three years of a fractured relationship and it's so great to know that with some people you can just pick up wherever you - for whatever reason - left off.

Then today I looked at a woman I last knew as a 16 year old girl and even though it had been 20 years there was so much that we still inherently knew about each other and there was so little back story that needed to be explained. Turns out we've lived really close to each other for years and it just needed this kind of time to reconnect, I guess. Last night someone I never thought would own anything in common with me at all set up some dinner plans and that was really nice too.

I don't know what the confluence of all of this means at this point - and I don't think I'm going to think about it too deeply for awhile. I'm just going to enjoy it since there's so much of life not to enjoy and what I'm focusing on is connection with good people.

I'll just add that it might not be useful to knock the good stuff that Facebook can do for you until you've tried it - you know, if you want to.

The fall light and colors are inside of me as they are every year. It's an amazing time to be alive - somewhere on the edge of melancholy, but not quite there. I'm not dreading winter as I usually do so much. It'll just happen and I'll move through it as usual. If I didn't have to drive in bad weather I really don't think I'll care. My mother asked if I was going anywhere for graduation and the truth is probably not but maybe I ought to. 

Now I'm listening to Hem, and to a little bit of Wilco. I'm checking the totals and hoping people donate to the Life Through a Lens project. I figure if I had kids by now I'd have hit my family up for thousands of dollars in wrapping paper and school candy bars so maybe we can just cobble together this $800 for these kids and call it even. At least I hope so.

I feel good today. I feel inspired today. I feel like maybe things can sometimes be good and I feel slightly more capable of letting go of things that weight me down than usual, which is to say that I actually do feel capable. And that does feel good, I have to say.

I loved this today.

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." - Thoreau

I think I'm going to tape this to my monitor - it's a much better way to say "get off your ass and do something so you'll have something to say." Or maybe I'll make one of those kicky Mac sticky notes that I can never find once I make them, because my desktop is such a wreckkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

Never read Walden. I think this is the season. (PS: This place looks so lovely.)

Hoping for more good ideas, and people who have them.

"You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea."

Bhutto, Benazir Prime minister of Pakistan (1953–2007)

From Learning to Give, via Lisa at BlogHer.

The blogging, it is live

I liveblogged the closing keynote at Blogher Business today. Talk about multitasking, what with the listening and the typing and the editing all at once. It's like creative court reporting, and I'm just obsessive-compulsive enough to really get a rush from it. I just got home and re-read the post, alarmed to note after four hours in the car that I hadn't proofread as well on the fly as I'd been congratulating myself for before I left NYC. Hubris'll getcha every time. Every. Time.

I really enjoyed this panel in particular. First of all, I am so impressed with Caroline Little, aka Power Washingtonpost.com woman. She is so well-spoken and makes so much sense. I just love being around people who I think I can learn so much from - even if it's just how to carry yourself, and the energy you project. The other ladies on the panel - Marissa Mayer from Google, Debi Fine from iVillage, and Stacy Morrison from Redbook, were interesting as well. It's so weird to see media transforming so extensively and so rapidly in front of our eyes. What I've taken away from both SXSW and Blogher is that you definitely can't sit around and wait to be invited. You just have to show up, and the chances are quite good that someone will listen at some point.

In the Borders Cafe

A man (VERY early 20s), reading a book about Christianity, to his wife:

"Dammit woman, you're thick! You're thick as poop."

Unbeige

Quote of the day: "You make something off-white or beige because you are afraid to use any other color, because you don't want to offend anybody. But by definition, when you make something no one hates, no one loves it. So I am interested in imperfections, quirkiness, insanity, unpredictability. That's what we really pay attention to anyway." tibor kalman

Can't leave these things alone, it seems

Flannery O'Connor wrote your book. Not much escapes
your notice.

Which Author's Fiction are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is, alas, quite so. Oh, for an occasional filter. And earplugs. Otherwise, it's all good.

quotable

"I privately say to you, old friend
(unto you, really, I'm afraid),
please accept from me
this bouquet of very
early-blooming parentheses:
(((())))."

        - J.D. Salinger

Just seems appropriate for today

Albert Einstein said: “Strange is our situation here upon Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. However, there is one thing that we do know, that we are here for the sake of others. Above all, for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy.”