Saturday Six #112

It seems like I say this every Saturday, but where did the week go?!  I don’t think I am alone this past week, as I know a large number of you started your back-to-school transition (or in French la rentrée) with new schedules and routines that put your life in turmoil (at least temporarily).  For those of us without kids, it means traffic is back and the commute sucked this week!

I was also busy taking Momcomm’s Content Brew Course. Despite blogging for four years, there is always things to pick up and I thought this course was well done, well delivered and provided some excellent tools. And while a lot of it wasn’t new (to me) it was delivered in a more organized way than I had packaged in my head if that makes sense!  It also provided a great networking opportunity where I met some great bloggers in our class’s Facebook group and had some really great conversation. I already own Melissa’s DIY Blog Critique e-book and am looking forward to an impending critique of my Media Kit.  All in all I have been extremely impressed with Melissa’s body of work and I think some of you might like it as well. Trust me, I have been subjected to some stinkers, this one is definitely a great group of products.

That’s enough of that, let’s move on to this week’s Saturday Six:

[1] I have written about this before, but it’s probably worth repeating.  I choose to be happy. Simple statement, but it is not as easy as it sounds.  I have been on this self-directed program for 10 years now and I have never been happier.  That doesn’t mean my life is all rainbows and puppy dogs, it just means that I approach problems differently. It’s important to me and it is an attribute I look for in the people I surround myself with. That’s why I really, really loved Chris Guillebeau’s post on The Art of Non-Conformity ”unhappy,” it was a wonderful reminder of how easy it might be to slip into unhappiness…arm yourself with this list and be happy!

[2] Further to the topic of being happy, once you start on that path you will find that you become more open, it is sort of a circular thing, being open feeds into happiness, happiness feeds into being more open.  I will say that with one caveat.  I am not as open to letting people into my life in any “real” way because I am so anti-drama.  The more people in my inner circle the more drama is likely to happen and for selfish (or maybe protectionist reasons) I don’t let that many people in to see the “real-me.”  But I am open, something I attribute to my childhood and traveling.  In any case, Leo Babauta had a great essay on Zen Habits on the subject of openness.

[3] People sometimes say to me “you are so lucky you get to travel all the time” and what they are referring to is some of the bigger trips that I make.  In reality, there are only a couple of those a year, but I am traveling all the time.  Why? Because I consider going to any place I don’t know, even if it is just an hour down the road, travel.  So everyone travels.  It’s a state a mind and an openness to learn about other peoples and places.  That is how I define travel.  There is also the question of tourist versus traveler, which is a topic that Brenna of This Battered Suitcase wrote about recently.

[4] And with travel there is always the question of “home.”  I am one of those people who doesn’t feel like I have one single place that is home.  Home is definitely here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it is also Paris and it is also the San Juan Islands.  Home to me is a concept and not a physical place.  I think home has an extremely personal and subjective definition which is why I love to read about other people’s thoughts on the topic.  Spencer of The Traveling Philosopher wrote some very deep thoughts on the his version of home.

[5] One of the bloggers I “met” in the Content Brew group is Lizz of Am I A Funny Girl?  She is a Bay Area gal with a great writing style and I am so glad that I was introduced to her blog.  Her post “This is someone’s Paris” piqued my interest (of course it did, it had “Paris ” in the title!) and I really appreciated the reminder that I am being to complacent about San Francisco.  When I moved back from France I promised myself to pay more attention to it and I haven’t.  It hasn’t been completely absent from my thoughts, I have a whole list of blog posts I want to do, but they have been just sitting in a list in my notebook, it is time to take action and Lizz’s posted pushed me into doing something about it!

[6] I am not super political. I, of course, have my own personal opinions, but like religion beliefs, I usually keep them to myself and respect that it is a very personal thing and that people have the right to have different opinions, it is what makes the world interesting, all that spice!  What I don’t like is that others don’t follow the same philosophy and get down right obnoxious, especially on Facebook.  I am not saying to not post on your political views (although I usually don’t) but like most things in life when you have human beings involved, some people just can’t play nice.  Ginger of Ramble Ramble wrote a fantastic post on the topic!

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?