If not nature, nurture... and other inspiring things

I have been a little bit off the radar lately; things are just getting a bit too much at work and I'm feeling like there will never be enough hours in the day - for work, for my family, for friends, for anything. I'm way behind in my blogging, too, although I need to learn that sometimes you just have to do your real work and pay the bills first.

Anyway, I have been trying to catch up on my blog reading, and have a bunch of things I "starred" in my Google reader over the last few days I'd like to share. (I also have different "Shared Items" which apparently you could subscribe to by feed, if you were so inclined. There's a link in my sidebar for that. I "star" things I want to blog about at some point, but "share" items that I find interesting as standalone pieces but that might not find an appropriate place in the blog to write about them.)

The first is this lovely post by Darren Rowse of Problogger fame. Read it. It ties right in to the "revolution" discussion we've been having, in that it beautifully illustrates how we should recognize that we are all learning, like little kids, how to make sense of the world - in this case the new social media world. I have children, and I would like to think that I know (through some trial and error, and beta testing, natch) how to nurture them and encourage them to learn for themselves and to think differently and independently.

Here's another lovely thing. It's a Twitter novel (yes, 140 characters at a time) called Small Places, by NL Belardes. You have to start at the beginning, obviously, but Darryl Ohrt of brandflakesforbreakfast talked to the author and got some insight into it (check the comments) here.

Check out Desktoptopia. I am a visual person, and this has made me feel better when things just get too much. It's a really wonderful collection of desktop images that you can set to randomly change every 20 minutes (or whatever time increment you want).

One more, courtesy via the ReadWriteWeb: Twistori is "a Twitter Zeitgeist social experiment" which pulls tweets from Twitter containing the words "i love", "i hate", "i think", "i believe", "i feel", and "i wish". RWW says it "presents a stream of consciousness view of the Twitter emotional landscape" - I just think it's really really cool, when you need to escape the drudgery of your daily grind for a few minutes to watch the online world go by. Makes me feel like I do on a long city bus ride, or on the metro, just gazing out the window, watching but not really seeing.

Just a few inspiring things on a day when I did not feel very inspired. I hope you enjoy them.