sunday roundup

The inside of a refrigerator.
Things that are cold?
A full bathtub.
Things that are white?
The dishwasher door.
Things that are appliances?
Inside a tumbling pile of cables and speakers.
Things that could electrify you?
Under the covers in the middle of the night.
Places you didn’t expect to find a small cat!

Running, tae kwon do, yoga.
Writing, current clients, new clients.
Business trips, fun trips, having friends over.
Things that have kept you from blogging!

The landscapers blowing out the underground sprinkler lines.
Signs that you live in the suburbs?
The highways full of winterized boats going home.
Signs that you live near the coast?
Neighbors jumping in the leaf piles.
An extra hour of sleep on Saturday night.
Signs that it’s officially fall!

Happy. Peaceful. Relaxing. Productive.
What you’re hoping fall will be!

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If religion’s not your thing, please pass on. If it is, here’s a rare post on it from me. I tend not to because I consider it highly personal – both for me and for you. But it means a lot to me.

Mostly I’m giving you Cliffs Notes for a recent article by Cathleen Falsani on the intersection of social media and prayer:

• Judaism: @thekotel will tuck your Tweets into the Western Wall
• Christianity: @prayforgod and holylandprayer.com let you pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There’s also prayerontwitter.net . And fatima.org helps you pray the rosary, and lourdes-france.org transmits prayers to the grotto.
• Buddhism iPhone apps include Mani Wheel, OmWheel and iPrayerwheel, and manikorlo.org spins a prayer wheel in Budapest.
• Islam: iPhone apps include Salaat Time 2.0, Prayer Times and iPray.
• Hinduism: shivshaktipeeth.org.
• None of the above:  gratefulness.org.
• All of the above and more: beliefnet.com (enormous and fascinating even for the non-religious).

And if I can add a couple that mean a lot to me,

• pray-as-you-go.org is a ten-minute weekday British Jesuit podcast
• Do It Now! is an iGoogle app with a yoga-based spiritual bent

Some things need to happen in person. But a little extra can help you along the way too, and if any of these do that for you, it can only be good.

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I am wading slowly back into the social media realm, after being out of it for a month and a half, and so today’s update is brief. Two links; two suggestions. Plus one.

Link One. Feedly. Dear sweet baby Jesus, is this beautiful. It’s a reader, but it’s a completely elegant, friendly, perfect one. It is so lovely when things just WORK. Everything about this it is perfect.

Link Two. What Companies Should Know About Digital Natives. If you’re not one, read this. If you don’t know what a digital native is, definitely read this.

Suggestion One. Drop out. It was fascinating to be gone from social media, deliberately, for a month and a half. I used it occasionally, but I was away from the navel-gazing industry side, and that’s been so useful. It’s clarified what I care about, what I think is important, and made it so easy to pare off all the rest which, it turns out, I didn’t miss much. What can you take a break from, and how would that help you see what means the most to you?

Suggestion Two. Draft things. This blog has, at any point in time, between three and twelve draft posts saved. I’ll drop an idea in there when I don’t have time to write a full post about it. But what I’ve discovered is that, instead of a stopgap solution, it’s really a wonderful step. So many things end up being not worth it, not relevant, not interesting enough, not timely. I like to think this step spares you some of the junk. So before you knock something out this week, give it a little time and go back to it. You’ll probably see a new way to make it more concise or interesting.

Plus. The obvious suggestion. What are you doing reading this on a beautiful summer Sunday? Go get your bare toes in the grass.

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