Saturday Six #105

I don’t know about you, but with the holiday falling on a Wednesday, this was a really quiet week. I got a lot of blogging reading done, but not a lot of blog writing.

I have a mental block going on.  It has to do with that damn 10-day road trip.  I can’t seem to get motivated to start writing the posts. I think it is due to the more than 2000 pictures that I sort of need to go through to help formulate the post.  Every time I sit down to do it, the task seems unsurmountable. I know I just need to get started, do a little piece at a time, but my inner five-year-old keeps throwing herself on the ground and yelling, “I don’t wanna!”

I made this mistake before on a two-week trip to Brittany two years ago.  I didn’t write notes as I went along so when I returned, it was a lot of work to write my posts.  I learned the lesson the hard way then and said I wouldn’t repeat it, but darn it if I didn’t make the mistake again! I am going to give myself a kick in the ass and start working on the posts, otherwise I am never going to get out of this funk!

I’ve got more than six this week, sorry I just couldn’t whittle them down any further! And when I look over my selections for Saturday Six this week I realize that some of them lean a bit on the serious side, so I decided to start with a few “lighter” picks before jumping into the heavy stuff.

[1] There were two posts I failed to mention last week.  They got stuck in another draft which I didn’t realize until after I published last week’s post.  One of the posts belonged to Matt of Landlopers which discussed whether or not you can recapture travel magic when you revisit a place. As I mentioned in my comment on Matt’s post, Mr. Misadventures and I usually consider the first trip to anywhere as a scouting mission.  We have found that our second (and sometimes third) trips are usually better.  I get it though, that when you have a magical trip or magical day, when everything comes together, that sometimes when you try to replicate it, it doesn’t work.  It makes for great dinner party conversation when all the invitees are travelers!

The post I wanted to highlight this week from Landlopers involves an experience that Matt had in Spain with one of the most talented chefs in the world, Ferran Adrià. Matt spent a magical day in the presence of this food genius and lived out one of my personal fantasies. What I like about the post is that Matt admittedly didn’t even know who Ferran Adrià was, which I think makes it all the more magical.

[2] If you haven’t signed up to get David Lebovitz‘s newsletter, you should. There is extra content that David writes and he always reminds you of great older posts that he has written that you may have missed previously.  That is exactly what happened this week when I got his newsletter and discovered this great post on Starbucks bringing coffee culture to America, which is why he doesn’t hate them. I couldn’t agree more.

[3] You have to love any man who would state that butter is a vegetable and declare the month of July to celebrate that “fact.”  That’s exactly what Michael Ruhlman did and I love it!  I did not grow up in household that ate butter.  It was margarine, Parkay, butter substitutes, etc.  People were told that butter is bad.  Then people were told margarine is bad.  It is a vicious cycle.  But when you think about it, it is only logic that natural food (a.k.a. butter) is good for you, it is simply a matter of moderation, like everything else in life! I discovered butter when I lived in France and there is nothing better (from time to time) than a nice pat of butter on a piece of toast, baguette, etc.  I would never consider making scrambled eggs without butter ever again.  Butter is just to damn good!  So I am totally on board for National Butter is a Vegetable month!

[4] The other post I forgot from last week was an exceptional essay about a restaurant review.  The restaurant is Septime in Paris which many of my pals have written about (like Lindsey here and here) and and one that is very much on my list of places to get to. What I like about Amy Glaze‘s post on Septime is that not everything went right.  The inner dialoge; thought-process and observations are interesting to “observe” and there are many I have shared at one point in time.  I enjoyed the review and the fact that the folks at Septime seems to understand how to make thing right. (Thanks to Meg of Paris by Mouth for sharing this on Facebook)

[5] Kristen Alana is a traveler who is a very talented photographer.  On her newest blog, Aviators and a Camera (which, if I am not mistaken, is close to its one-year anniversary) did a post this week on iPhoneography with lots of great tips and tricks that I really appreciated. She takes amazing photos, so who better to get advice from?

Now on to the more serious note:

[6] This blog is very important to me.  It is my creative outlet, but sometimes it also feels like a needy child (I guess, as I don’t have kids!). I love it to death but sometimes it is easy to lose sight of why I love it.  I vacillate between caring about the numbers (although not too often, as I know it is not a numbers game) and not caring; of going through writing funks and having huge bursts of inspiration and ideas.  One thing I have never cared about is fitting in with the cool kids.  I just can’t. That is not how I am offline and that translates online as well.  Which is why I loved this post (spotted on Ramble Ramble’s blog) from Hooey Critic (love that name) called “fitting in,” as she seems to express the same sentiment.

[7] If you have been around here any length of time you will know that I am an introvert. However social media has allowed me to express myself in an very extroverted way, it is a form of fake extroversion, I can control my interactions and the amount of time I spend being social.  I love it! I do read from time to time about how digital media is having an impact on younger generations and their ability to communicate or be social with others. It is hard to judge, but for me I know it has made my social life better.  Seems that is the case for Zoot as well who wrote a great post about the topic called, ” The Social Disconnect of the Digital Age Makes Some of Us More Social.”

[8] I moved to France in 2003 right when the Iraqi war was breaking out and I remember being so relieved to be leaving the U.S., who was off fighting a war that I didn’t believe in.  I was not proud to be an American and I was happy to be escaping.  There are a lot of good things about being an expat and I think being able to love and critique your country objectively is a bonus you get when you have the opportunity to live outside of it. It certainly helped me.

I very often have discussions with friends who are the polar opposite of me politically and it always strikes me that those that are fanatics can very easily tell you all the crimes and moral outrages that “my” party has committed but have complete amnesia when it comes to anything “their” party has done.  I always say that I have little faith in any politician because most of them have had to compromise or sell themselves to get to their positions, no matter how much of an angel they are.  There just aren’t any angels in politics, no matter what the party.  I love what Julochka of Moments of Perfect Clarity said in her post this week:

“it’s problematic in general that the people who might be the very best for a job like president of the united states or even prime minister of denmark aren’t the ones running. it’s problematic that we seldom have access to the real person behind the power – they are so spun and fluffed and polished that i don’t think we have any idea who they really are and what they stand for, other than remaining in power. but, we’ve got to keep cool heads and draw logical conclusions and then vote accordingly.”

[9] I adore Jennifer of JenX67‘s Blue Plate Special.  It is chock full of great content. I don’t know where to begin with her latest edition, there are so many things I could mention.  Shocking commencement speeches that definitely don’t inspire Gen Y and Z; posts on Gen Z heading to work and what the consequences of that will likely be; Gen Xers who are sick of Millenials at work; and a heart-string-pulling photography blog that will have you in tears.  Go check it out there is that and more in Jennifer’s post!

That’s it for this week!

How about you? Have any good posts you discovered in your blogosphere journeys that you want to share? How do you discover new blogs?