Links Less Ordinary

I’ve decided to start a new regular weekend feature, in which I’ll share some of my favourite posts from the past week by bloggers who are consciously embracing less ordinary living. I hope you enjoy what you find!

• Karen Wallace over at The Clearing Space celebrated her blog’s 3rd anniversary with a really lovely post called A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Step.

I will stay on this path I have chosen, wandering the trails and hidden lanes, the open paddocks and the mossy streams. And I reserve the right at all times to change my path – to decide a detour has become the route. To change direction and to move with the seasons and the ebb and flow of life.

• Diane Cordell who blogs at Journeys wrote a post entitled Both Sides Now, which is just beautiful in its brevity. She takes a look at her Tweetcloud, an application I’ve never really understood, but which generates a ‘cloud’ of the words you use most often on Twitter, and she provides such a poetic perspective on it. She also references one of my favourite Joni Mitchell songs!

When we speak, I use words like “new,” “time,” “school,” “know,” “love.”

• Another Twitter related post, Joanna Young from Confident Writing has been requesting powerful writing tweets as contributions to her monthly theme of ‘Power’. She’s had some great responses, as you can see here, in this, the 3rd installment of Powerful Writing in 30 Words or Less: Part 3: Twitter Contributions.

Powerful writing is what makes ME want to write! rich, multilayered, evocative, beautifully arranged words make me want to do the same Captainstardust

Powerful writing is the kind of prose which come from inspired intent. tldtim

• Liz Strauss from Successful Blog has written a couple of posts this week that have really resonated with me. The first is Tunnels, Flying and Where You Belong, which includes this wonderful gem:

The world needs your song, your determination, and your laughter. The world needs you to “Build and Become.” No one else brings your version of clever.

• The second is called Find the Extraordinary In You! where Liz looks at what it means to ‘do the work of a master’. She says:

We change the world just by being. Imagine what happens when we do what we’re meant to do.

• Karen Swim has had a great week over at Words For Hire where she’s written a series of blog posts comparing the setting and achieving of goals to marathon running. Here’s a link and a snippet from the first one, The Long Hot Race, posted on Monday, but I urge you to check out the rest too!

You can run a few marathons of your own (and if you’re up for it, I totally recommend it!) or stay with me this week as I share from my own successes and failures. You may not run the same way, distance or speed but I hope that I can spare you a few blisters on your own run.

• Robert Hruzek from Middle Zone Musings had a great two-part post up on Getting A Handle On Big, Honkin’, Life Changing Decisions (Part 1 and Part 2). Here’s a taster from Part 1:

Go ahead; ask anybody! Making big, life-changing decisions (flash of lightning; crash of thunder; sound of terrified scream) ain’t easy. We’ve all had to make our share of ‘em. What’s even more irritating is, they keep on comin’, getting bigger and more dramatic as time goes by. In fact, you may be facing, or be in the middle of one, right this minute. Hey, it’s all part of the adventure we call life.

• Lastly for this inaugural edition, is Shelly Tucker’s launch of a new group writing project, Gentle Rebellion – Finding Balance over at her blog, This Eclectic Life. The project’s description, in Shelly’s own words, reads as follows:

I’d like to know how you define “balance.” Do you believe there is there such a thing, and how do you achieve it? Have you joined the “Gentle Rebellion” of which Beck speaks? Do you cling to the expectations that our society has upon you, or do you make up your own rules?

Well those are some of my favourite posts from this week. Care to share your own favourite online read from the week?