A Little Bit of Everything!

I've been trying to upload pics on here for two days and have finally given up and decided to post this without pictures (or with just the one that did upload yesterday morning!) So most of this was written yesterday and might post yesterday but that shouldn't be a problem ...

*Update* I posted it, but as often happens when I include a picture, Blogger removed all the line spacing! It was a lot to read all squashed up like that, so I am praticising patience and perseverance (through gritted teeth) and trying to re-post it as two posts.

Hope this works ...

Oh dear! Can't believe it's been a week since I've been on here!

No Woman and Moon post today ... but I'm working on it. Sorting through an ocean of research to make individual posts. Having missed a Creativity/Productivity day and a Feelgood day last week, I thought I'd do a catch-up post, with a little bit of everything:

The Moon

The Full Pink Moon

(Just imagine a picture of a beautiful pink moon!)

April's full moon (yesterday) is known as the Pink Moon, not because it is pink, but because it occurs at a time when one of the earliest Spring flowers appears. The Farmer's Almanac explains:

"This name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month's celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn."

April's Full Moon

Other names for April's full moon include:

The Planter's Moon (Colonial American)
Peony Moon (Chinese)
Flower Moon (Cherokee)
Wildcat Moon (Choctaw)
Growing Moon (Celtic)
Seed Moon (English Medieval)
Awakening Moon (Neo Pagan)

Some great names, hey? Lots of names referring to new growth (more fresh starts!) The Seed Moon is a good time to sew your seeds of intention or desire, perhaps by sewing a real seed and making a wish! (Okay, I know ... but it can't do any harm and I think small gestures like this consolidate our intentions, make them tangible and certainly make us focus a little more on them. Nurturing a plant reminds us to nurture our goal!)

Harnessing the Seed Moon

For ideas to harness the energies of the Seed Moon using gemstones and aromatherapy oils, or simply writing a To Do List, have a look at Trish Hoskin's article about celebrating the Season of Spring. It seems now would be a great time to work on creating a Life List.

The Moon of Geese

But I think my favourite name is that used by the Dakota Sioux:

Moon When Geese Return in Scattered Formation

I adore geese! I have always felt a strange connection to them, the sight or sound of them flying overhead gives me butterflies and always makes me stop to look, or listen if it's dark. They make me smile! But I wonder why "scattered?" Geese are usually so regimental in formation.

Full Moon in Scorpio: a time for letting go

The full Moon this month was in Scorpio, a time for releasing harmful attachments (to people, behaviours or thoughts):

"You are being given one more ritual chance this year to release attachment to old pain and arise like a phoenix from the ashes of burned off karma; freed from narcissistic self-obsession and ready to help others heal their own pain. You have the power to change! Visualize yourself as a snake, shedding its dead skin to reveal gleaming new colors."

Creativity and Productivity

Gmail as a productivity tool

I have been busy being productive for the past week. Well, I suppose it was more a case of building the foundations of productivity.

I have followed the excellent advice of Dave Navarro and am getting to grips with a far-too-long list of email newsletters by gradually transferring them to a new gmail account. I've read a lot about how gmail is a good productivity tool recently so decided to try it for myself. There's a post about my first steps on Freelance Writing Curve and I'll post an update later this week when I've had time to play.

Twitter for creativity and productivity

I've also been a busy bee checking out *other* types of social networking. (People often talk about social networking as something distinct from blogging, but surely the blogging community is exactly that? And that's exactly why I love it so much!) I have joined Facebook and set up a profile on LinkedIn but have especially enjoyed Twitter. The possibilities for having a positive effect in the world are amazing! People share thoughts and ideas, ask questions, swap interesting links and have fun. Connections are formed between all sorts of people and conversations are held that span continents!

It's not for everyone, I guess, but I honestly think it's worth checking out. It takes two seconds to sign up for a Twitter account and works just like blogging, but posts are just 140 characters long and you "follow" people rather than add them to your sidebar links. Try it, say hello to me and ask me if there's any way I can help. I may well not know myself as am such a newbie, but the thing about Twitter is that you can find someone who does know very easily!

New people and places I have found and some random thoughts:

These are just a few of the people I have met and the links they have shared. I will do another post about it with some more links, maybe this week's Feelgood Friday post!

1. Joanna Young (on Twitter) and her blog Confident Writing, full of excellent writing tips and virtual coaching from Joanna and some great guest posts.

2. Liz Strauss (on Twitter) and her lovely blog Successful and Outstanding Bloggers, on which there is a great conversation about the power of words.

Another example of a great comments discussion about powerful writing was passed on (via Twitter) by Joanna this morning (thank you, Joanna!)

3. Denise Willms (on Twitter) and the inspiring WAHM Articles, full of articles on a wide range of topics and very useful resources.

4. Maki (on Twitter) and his DoshDosh blog, full of really useful tips about internet marketing and social media (including blogging.)

DoshDosh shared these fab feelgood links on Twitter last week:

The amazing story of Moon (love that name!), a Syberian Husky who travelled home almost 80 miles across desert and mountains.

The inspiring Maria Ruiz and her work with impoverished children in Mexico.

All of which brings me to ...

Feelgoods and Wellbeing

Reasons to celebrate:

1. It's Spring! Why not try starting a Nature Journal to celebrate?

2. It's Earth Day!

3. The lovely Maddie Moon sent me a meme!

I have to choose six words to describe myself:

Honest, optimistic, stubborn, enthusiastic, feminist, writer!

I put feminist and writer because it made me smile, but if I had to choose two more personality trait words, they would probably be 'compassionate' and 'disorganised.'

(Or maybe 'easily distracted!')

Thank you, Maddie, this was fun! As it's taken me while to post this, I expect most of you have already had a go. But anyone who hasn't, is very welcome to!

A final thought ...

See post below (I hope this works, I get very confused when editing in Blogger!)

:o)

All of a-Twitter!

I am Twitterer. (Possibly a twit!)

I have finally entered the "Twitterverse" and sent my first couple of "tweets" (one of which was to promote the new communal blog, Towards 2011, though I think I need some more "followers" to do that really.)

I've been meaning to check out the whole social networking thing for ages and have just joined Facebook this week too. I think I may be the last person to discover it all, but for anyone else who has been thinking, "Must try that!" but hasn't got round to it because they are also thinking, "Don't know how to start, far too complicated, got enough to do already!" ...

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

How does Twitter work?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, allowing people to stay in touch by short posts, known as "tweets." These can be posted by instant messenger from your computer, or SMS from your mobile phone, and are delivered by email, IM or RSS. Messages on Twitter can also be exchanged via a third-party application, such as Facebook.

What are you doing?

Twitter is built around the question, "What are you doing?" Answers vary from the personal to the professional, but everything on Twitter is very short and sweet; posts are only up to 140 characters long and profiles are only one line of text, but you can add a picture and your website/blog URL.

Who are you following?

Like Facebook, you can limit the people who see your profile and posts to your own circle of friends (or "followers") and you choose who to follow yourself. You can choose to follow friends and family, or professional contacts, or people who have the same interests as you, or people who say really useful stuff ... like the first person I chose to follow, SallyQ! Sally is definitely a woman worth following and posts on Twitter about all sorts of writerly things.

How do you start Twittering?

Setting up a profile on Twitter is REALLY easy and includes the option to add any friends who are already on there, then when you log in, your home page includes all the recent posts from the people you are following.

Links for Twitterers

Mark Glaser's excellent 'Guide to Micro-Blogging and Twitter' (dated 15th of May, 2007, but still very relevant and very helpful) includes a beginner's guide, useful tips and advice, a glossary and a great list of resources.

ReadWriteWeb has a list of various articles about Twitter, including Sarah Perez's 'Five Ways to Find More Friends on Twitter' in which she explains five useful web apps to help you find the best people to follow on Twitter.

Kathy Sierra, of Creating Passionate Users, has posted some interesting thoughts on the the problem of interuption (and the disruption to creativity and productivity) provided by Twitter and other social networking such as email, IM, blogs, Facebook et al. In her post, 'The Asymptotic Twitter Curve' Kathy provides lots of links to other musings about Twitter and to some possibly much-needed productivity resources. Along with a warning about how addictive Twitter is! Oh dear ...

Twitter is a form of live commentary and as such, even bearing in mind the possible creativity/productivity challenges, it has huge (and very exciting) possibilities. Consider the following comment from Patrick Ruffini, quoted by Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine, in his tribute to Twitter:

"Traditional news operated on a 24-hour cycle. Blogs shortened this to minutes and hours. Twitter shortens it further to seconds. It’s not right for every piece of information. But when it comes to instantly assembling raw data from several sources that then go into fully baked news stories, nothing beats it."

Jason Kottke has written another interesting review of Twitter, which I found very helpful as a beginner. Again, it's dated last year (I'm always sooo behind the times!) but he makes some useful observations and discusses (and provides links to) some of the applications. Here's what Jason said a year ago:

"Twitter is the first thing on the web that I've been excited about in ages. Like years. The last thing was probably Flickr. (Talk about burying the lede.) It's just so damn simple but useful. Again, reminds me of weblogs in that way."

I wonder what he thinks now?

Twitterer or Twit?

Well, I'm off to see if I can figure out how to link my Twitter profile to my Facebook profile ... but that's it! No more social networking for me. While I can see the advantages and am excited about the possibilities, I also recognise the possible pitfalls. And when it comes to time limitations, blogging and article writing are the priorities at the moment. So I'm sticking to Blogger, Facebook and Twitterer (in that order!)

Are you on Twitter?

Who do you follow, who follows you?

What are you doing?

:o)