Creativity with a Capital "C" - Or, Emerging from the Void

I found a book on Creativity (yes, with a capital "C") that I think is absolutely brilliant.  I went to the library to pick up my holds, lots of books about blogging, careers, new media - all the stuff I'm into now.  It's sort of professional development and life development all at once.  I discovered this book in the same aisle and sat down on the floor to look it over.  It's a small library, so I was basically taking up the whole aisle cuz there was no way anyone was stepping over me and my giant hot pink and lime paisley reusable grocery bag filled with books.  Not happening.  I did not care.

This book is by a guy who has essentially crafted a career from the humble beginnings of drawing cartoons on the backs of business cards in a bar - out of boredom.  I love him.  He runs a blog called gapingvoid.com and his book is inspiring in a way not many can master.  Short and sweet bits about fostering your ideas, going the lonely road of supporting them while others scoff and then climb aboard when they pick up...insights that help when you feel like you're doing too much for money and not enough to satisfy the creative monster inside. 

Check it out: Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity. 

Authentic Life Management for Type A's who wish they were Type B's

I am diving into a pile of books to continue my quest for fulfillment, including the Life Organizer - a sweet little organizational self-help book that speaks to getting in touch with your authentic self and creativity and not trying to force schedules and datebooks onto your life instead. It's more focused on flow, and listening, and desire at the soul level to access something more and better. While it may sound hokey to some, the idea appeals to me because I've tried all the manic stuff about superimposing organizational strategies on my life.  There must be a better method.

The last few months, I have been trying to come up with a way to make life a little more intuitive. How can people be happy and healthy, living the way we want to and being part of a community?  I'm determined to find out.  Stay tuned. 

Library Thing

Library Thing. This is a stellar tool for keeping up with your growing literary collection. And I had no idea how easy it would be to add books. It does all the searching for you. You can even have partial titles. I only added 7 books for now, but I'll be back to it.

I love the idea of finding others who share my interests--more community building from Web 2.0.

One caveat, though. I wish as an additional feature that it had a way to catalogue books you've read but don't own. When you're an avid reader, you lose track. I think this would be a brilliant feature, especially for those trying to read the 1000 books you should read before you die.

Image Generators - How's that for literacy?

NOt related to books, but to culture and literacy in general, so it fits.  Besides, I had to have a reason for putting this very real photo of my growing popularity up on the Web. 

Letterjames' ecard service. It's supremely easy to make a picture and add your own words to it. Some of the other generators were a little juvenile. Not that putting your name on a sign and saying you're a genius isn't juvenile, but...

Here's the link to Letterjames: http://www.letterjames.com/start.php?mod=image-personalization

Social Bookmarking

I love the idea of social bookmarking. It's brilliant. It's a nod to the part serendipity plays in our lives. The research one can do using social bookmarks and tags is nearly unlimited. Yes, there's an issue with the multiple ways a thing can be tagged, but having one standard tag isn't the best either. What if you can't figure out what that one subject heading is? Then you'll never find it. So your search isn't exhaustive with folksonomy. It wouldn't be anyway, would it? The web has so many resources you will never read them all.

Filter Your World - and Connect

Web 2.0 may finally be the democratic revolution that the World Wide Web originally claimed to be, even if it is still commercial, because users are interacting with and co-creating content, and there are so many groups in cyberspace making communities that share information for free, just because.

I’m not anti-commerce. I like to shop, but I don’t want an entirely pre-manufactured existence. Web 2.0 merges my love of the handmade, the personal, creation in general, with technology—a marriage I never thought would happen. I used to think quite the opposite—that technology could never be personal. That it had no heart.

From feeds with news bytes to recommendations about books (products, sites, etc.) that I may never have found on my own, if I can have my world filtered to my liking so I don’t have to sift through the global information overload to find what I want (or just give up entirely), then so much the better.