BlogCatalog

Charlene knows about balance. She blogs about it at The Balance Beam — Life Balance Strategy, humor & Random Overshare.

A Life Spent Hanging From The Edge

I know nothing of balance, which means that for me, her blog possesses a mysterious, unfamiliar, and exotic draw. My life has been a long series of the extreme. I've been in the top 10% of income earners, and I've been homeless. I've lived in downtown San Diego and in Rural Missouri. Even my chosen professions are adventures in extremety; Soldier, Salesman and Writer.

I've killed two marriages by never being there. Both relationships failed because I have never known anything close to balance. But since leaving my last job because the imbalance in my life had finally caught up with me, the idea of introducing some sense of balance has been on my mind.

Enter Charlene

"Just like in business, we have to think about our life in terms of the strategic big picture. This is why I call it 'Personal Strategic Management.'

"We have to prioritize and invest. We have to get past our own lazy objections. Especially when things aren't easy."

Charlene has this stuff down. She attends conferences on the subject. Not just as an attendee but she attends as an expert. And she shares her expertise on the blog.

The Slippery Slope, reminiscent to the sharpening the saw concept familiar to Ziglar readers, expands on the idea of planning time to refocus and re-energize. She offers some simple, practical action steps for avoiding the slippery slope of imbalance, that actually robs you of the productivity you are seeking to gain as you begin the slide.

There is a lot of personal exploration on the blog, including some Potty Talk, that being an example of here parenting discussions. She has some pictures of herself on the blog, and as is often the case, I don't see what she apparently sees, since she sees someone who struggles with all three culprits that prevent weight loss at some point in her life. Could be I'm just not sensitive enough, but I don't see the problem. Could just be scale too, since I'm 73" and 310# as of Fridays visit to the VA.

The content on this blog is great. I really enjoyed the read, took away some advice I will apply to my life in my own pursuit of balance, and found my self exposed to ideas previously unconsidered.

There are a couple of things I mention with some reserve, given the quality of the message. I don't care overmuch for the yellow post background. I'd love to see her change it to a title background and post outline, leaving the body of the post on a nice white screen.

I'd also like to see the BC widget on the blog so I could have seen who else has been reading her. But that's just me. She does have the Google Friends widget, and if she made the decision that she could only have one, Google has a huge audience that is difficult to ignore.

In all the content and ideas far outwheigh my little niggling complaints and she earns five stars from me.

What do you think? Five stars from you too? Why or why not?

In life there are some things that seem self evident, but only once they've been pointed out in a way that locks them into our minds.

One mark of intelligence is the ability to consider an idea without embracing it. One mark of genius is the ability to express an idea in a way that forces us to embrace it.

Mark Twain (possibly*) once apologized for the length of a letter, adding that he would have written a shorter letter, had he more time. Short, succinct communication is powerful. The fewer words we can use to transmit a thought, the more powerful the communication becomes.

Take a subjective truth and strip away the layers of it until you are left with the the choicest, most essential part of the idea and you have an aphorism.

Marty Rubin posts just such masterpieces of thought monthly (and sometimes more frequently) at Out Of Context: pieces of a life. I highly recommend a slow, thoughtful read from time to time.

PS. My personal Favorite Aphorism is Hope is not a course of action. What's yours?

* -- the jury is still out on the source, but I'm a Mark Twain fanboy, so lacking evidence to the contrary, I give him credit.

Before we get started I would just like to point out that if you don't go read this blog you may never understand Why Women Talk To Cats.

Absurdistry is one of those rare, well written plunges into voyeurism that let us know we are still human after all. We really can't not look at a train wreck, a parade or a cute baby in a sunny little bonnet. This artistic self exposure bares the spirit and satisfies that primal drive to observe the triumphs, pains, joys and sorrows of our fellow travelers on this absurdly provincial planet at the outer edges of the galactic proper.

Randall suffers from the desire to write. This affliction, among legion others, has plagued him for most of his life. This to the chagrin of his wealthy family, has all but consumed his life. As he searches for meaning and the Great American Novel, that must surely produce itself from the far recesses of his mind, he often finds that he must contend with the mundane matters of life. And he is shocked by the deep meaning these activities seem to reveal at every turn.

We have all heard the phrase "ants in your pants", but i do not believe I have ever read a first hand account of some one actually having Ants In His Pants. And I know with certainty I've never heard of anyone having ants in their pants during a job interview by "The Board" for an unknown company that very well may have been the spear head of an alien invasion force.

If physical ailments, the curse of the desire to write and an occupation army of ants weren't enough, The Magnetic Mattress would surely have long since sent any woman not so strong as Randall's wife running to the arms of an attorney. But despite her sometimes disappointment with the way things seem to have come down, she is a humor-full woman who seems to be genuinely in love with the self admitted, six-foot-five mess that is Randall.

While the general practice of the peeping tom is to stand outside some other persons window and peep in, Randall has perfected his own technique of sitting inside his own window and peeping out.

If you find yourself, some sunny day, in the vicinity of the corner of Oak and 14th, check to see if a man in a black suit sits behind a coffee table in his driveway and if you should spot him, be sure to stop and Meet The Author.

Humanized is an interesting company. Their core philosophy and focus do not conform to a specific kind of software, but to a specific way of software. I know that sentence doesn't seem to make much sense, but it really does. Humanized makes software, unfortunately so far, not much software, that is humane in it's user interface.

I know, I promised you a Blogger's tool you'll love, and I will fulfill that promise, but I need to lay some groundwork first on why you'll love it.

Quasimodal interfaces are Humane

The thing that really sets this tool apart is the use of quasimodes, which are modes that require you to take constant action to keep open. When you hold down your shift key and type a few letters, for instance, RSS you have just utilized a quasimode, because the text would only continue to be in uppercase letters as long as you hold down the shift key.

Modal Interfaces Aren't

On the other hand a modal function is something that is "sticky" like the caps lock key. You press it and it stays in uppercase text mode until you press it again, whiCH CAN SOMETIMES MAKE THINGS COME OUT NOT QUITE RIGHT, if you know what I mean. How many times have you typed a whole sentence or even a whole paragraph, only to discover that you were in the wrong mode, and then had to retype it in the correct mode?

That sucks, right?

Two Birds With One App

Well, what if you could eliminate that problem completely and at the same time gain access to a neat little piece of software that can spell check in any window on your computer that you can type text into? What if it could count the words on any window on your computer, period? How about if it also did nearly a dozen other neat little everyday things that right now require you to switch modes from what you are currently doing, then switch back again? And if you could do those things as easily as you can hold down your shift key and type RSS?

Enso Words does just that.

Enso Words is a quasimodal, universal spell checker that also does a bunch of other nifty things like word counts, cutting, pasting, copying, changing case, solving math problems, and, with an add on, several search launches as well.

To engage Enso Words you hold down your caps lock key with your left pinky finger and type a command. Not some cryptic command either. The command for spell checking is [ [capslock] spellcheck ], though typing [ [capslock] s ] also activates it in the default configuration. You only have to type as many letters as bring the command you want up. As soon as you release the caps lock key, the commend currently selected is executed and you are returned to where you came from. if no command was selected, you simply return to where you were and it's like nothing ever happened.

Imagine, you'll never tyPE A CRAZY ALL CAPS SENTENCE AGAIN. And you can count words and check their spelling anywhere you can read or type them. That's a useful little tool for a Blogger!

Try it out, it's free. Drop a comment and let me know what you think when you've given it a try. I love it over here.

Where did the jobs go?

Ever since the banker's shell game came apart and the economy tanked out across much of the world, many people have been forced to seek new employment. Jobs are gone and as some politicians have pointed out some of them just aren't coming back.

Some people, too, get crazy ideas about dumping their day jobs and working for themselves even when the signs of the times would seem to indicate that this might not be the most reasonable course of action.

Enter the Digital Worker

Amazon's Mechanical Turk website calls them "Artificial artificial intelligence". Most other people call them freelancers. I've always been peripherally aware of these denizens of the digital workforce, but they were never right there in front of me until just recently.

After spending some time looking for a new job, I realized that it would probably be more fruitful to just create my own job and changed course to that goal. That's when I discovered that there is a huge economy out there for freelance workers.

And they have their own blogosphere too.

As I got into looking at this opportunity I began seeking information about it. Not the information provided by the freelance job sites, though there is some good information there. What I really wanted was the information provided by these workers themselves.

Can you think of anyplace better to find this kind of information than in the BlogCatalog Blog Search Tool? No? me either, so of course, that's where I went. And I telly you I was not disappointed in the least.

There are many good of blogs in the catalog that offer up information on freelance working from a number of perspectives. I'm going to focus here on those that are written by people who actually do freelance work and blog about that work. They offer tips on finding jobs, productivity advice, writing ideas and much more. The Freelance blogs in the catalog are essentially a decentralized academy of the freelance arts.

I have become their devoted student.

Ariana R. Cherry blogs about her recent entry into freelancing at her blog, The Rural Freelance Writer. She's just started working as a freelancer, and still maintains a day job that she hopes to reduce to part time and then eventually eliminate. She's working her way into freelancing slowly. I hope she meets great success and I hope she continues blogging here experiences along the way.

Allison blogs about her freelance career at her blog, My Online Freelance Writing Career (BC Listing). She offers great advice about finding and maximizing online freelance jobs. With articles on how to find the jobs, how to get the best pay from the jobs and how to organize your job search. She also just completed the grueling 100 articles in 100 days challenge at ezinearticles.com. Talk about padding your portfolio. She detailed the process and posted regular updates about her progress though the challenge.

Katie blogs about working as a freelancer at her blog, Real Freelance Life (BC Listing). She offers up hard nosed, practical advice on how to get the job done as a freelancer that you can read, digest and immediately put to work in your own freelance efforts. Great stuff in there.

Jon Phillips and a crew of three other bloggers blog about everything to do with being a successful freelancer at his blog, Freelance Folder (BC Listing). This team of seasoned freelancers write well researched, informative articles designed to help any freelancer, novice and pro alike learn and develop a freelance career. They are currently looking for writers to join the team, and in the interest of full disclosure, I applied to write for them.

That's just four of the blogs in the catalog that write about freelancing. There are many many more there too. So if you've been left out in the cold by the old economy, or if you've just been tempted by the new economy, all I can say is, hit the freelance blogs in the BC Catalog and start reading. There seems to be a big, bold, bright future for the digital workforce. One thing any of the bloggers I introduced to you today will tell you that the number one thing to do is take action. Find jobs and put your name out there as a writer. Go seize your own career today.

I have to make two admissions up front before we talk about this blog.

First, I've never been a real big fan of blogger blogs for a "real" blog. You know I've always viewed them as traffic devices and splog spots. I've owned thousands of them at one time and another, but they were where I put the stuff I didn't really care that much about.

Second, I've never been a real fan of photoblogs. I mean, you know, it's pictures. I'm a words guy. I like words. I love the language. Pictures are nice to compliment your storie with, but as the focal point of the work? I just didn't ever really get that.

Bernie Krausse's Northwest Natural Moments Photoblog is a blog that has moved me from that position some small measure.

Now, I'm not ready to load down my Google reader with photoblogs, by any stretch, But I did create a special folder in it and subscribe to Bern's blog. I may add some more to it from time to time.

I just found these photos of nature from in and around Bern's stomping grounds up in the North West so relaxing and peaceful, and yet at the same time so energetic and wondrous.

I particularly enjoyed the flight category. I simply can't imagine how he captures these images, but I swear I almost expected the finches to hop out of the screen and finish their quarrel on my keyboard. The Eagle in Flight; I can only say I would probably be willing to pay good money to have a print mounted in my study.

I loved the reed with the snow on it's head. These are very candid shots of nature. They aren't what I'm used to seeing. And the sheer volume of action contained in some of these still shots makes me marvel that such a thing is possible.

I may not know much about photography, but I know what I like. And Bern has captured it in these pages.

Well, I went and did it. I snapped. I just couldn't take it any more.

I quit my job. I've been the shipping manager for a top manufacturer of industrial electrical enclosures for the past four years. We had been in growth before the recession hit, and things have always been less than optimal as far as the hours and the work environment. But they've been getting worse as time goes, not better.

We recently (2 weeks ago) moved the plant 30 miles further from my house than it already was. And I was already putting in way to many hours on a salary. I wasn't any better off than a divorced dad, seeing my kids only on the weekends.

So I don't work there any more.

Needless to say, I suddenly have an active and passionate interest in all things finding a job related.

Being a BC Advocate, I naturally headed to the BC Directory to see what I could find to help me in my new... erm... interest.

Before I get to a couple of blogs to highlight I want to take a minute to say just how cool and helpful the BC Directory Search features are. You can search for blogs, blog posts, tags discussion and more, get a birds eye overview, and learn about how the discussion is framed on a topic you are less familiar with, all from the BC Search page.

Chuck's Stories of the Unemployed has some great articles about life while unemployed. I really enjoyed his take on various aspects of life while job challenged.

State of the Job offered a cool post on how to use Facebook to help find a job

Konrad talks about all kinds of neat things like branding yourself for your job search, writing better resumes and using social media to land a new job at Job Tips and News.

And Freelance Folder has lots of information for getting a freelance job. I really liked their latest post (at the time of this writing) about setting up iGoogle as a job search portal.

I think I'm going to be looking for a part time job and focusing a lot more of my time on landing freelancing gigs. I'll be using the BC directory to help me figure this whole thing out and I think I'll be converting Don't Call Me Sir into a journal of this process. And I'll be sure to share any more cool job search / freelance blogs with you as i encounter them. In this economy, I'm sure there are at least three people interested in the topic. ;)

PS. If you're looking for a freelance writer, I might know of one you could try out.

Image courtesy of Flickr

Alexandria Davis is an Honor Guard Bugler with the Air Force Auxiliary.

She provides a service to the families of our fallen service men and women by playing the single most recognizable solo brass song in the world. The Taps Call.

She plays this plaintive song live for these fallen heroes, with the commitment "to ensure that no recording or digital bugle is ever used for the service member's last ceremony", and I want to thank her for her service.

There are two things that can pry open my wallet every time when charitable donations are sought. The first is assistance provided to children and the second, service provided to our Military Veterans. On of the greatest services we can render to these brave men and women is an expression of our gratitude for their service and a recognition of the honor they bring to our country in that service.

I've heard this call too many times already, and yet every time I hear it, it stirs me on a deep primal level that is only partly owing to the connection it has to the final service of a fallen warrior. It has a real power in and of itself as well and played by a professional bugler is just as sweet as it is sad.

Alexandria's blog is a journal of her service as a professional Bugler in the Honor Guard. Some posts are pretty mundane, offering little more than an observation of the weather at a service, while others offer insight into her deep passion for music and still others a glimpse into the rich meaning and symbolism of the ceremonies for our service men. but that's cool. It's real and not contrived as so many blogs are these days. Alexandria is a real person with a real story and she's sharing a bit of it with us through this powerful medium.

Written by Dane Morgan, a BlogCatalog Blogger Advocate
http://DaneMorgan.com
Find Dane Morgan on Facebook

This is my first post to the BlogCatalog Blog as a Blogger's Advocate. I just want to quickly thank the BC Staff for extending this opportunity to me and commend them on having taken this step forward in the evolution of the community. I am excited by the possibilities this brings to the table.

Now, one thing I decided, as I went through the catalog looking for the blog that would be the first I highlight, was that it wouldn't be something most people would expect from me. I'm sure most who know me would have expected me to head to the "Make Money Blogging", the "WordPress Tips and Tricks" or the "Blog Design" blogs and pull out a couple of my old favorites. I will get to those, have no doubt, but an inaugural should be something a little more special.

I basically spent a day and a half just strolling through the catalog looking at feeds from blogs with interesting titles. I clicked through to a number of them, and even posted ratings on a couple in the course of this journey.

When I got to Exchange of Realities, I knew I had found my first advocacy mission.

Exchange is both a gamer's blog about writing and a writer's blog about gaming. Erika mixes these two skills to create a whole that is so much greater than it's parts. She uses her abilities as a writer, and more as a story teller, to enhance the Role-Playing Games she leads with her friends; And she draws on her experiences with the results of these gaming sessions to hone her skills as a writer.

There are some who will say, "but, Dane, I don't write fiction. I write how to, or I write reviews, or I write ... ". Well, friend you are just who needs most to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon reading Erika's blog.

Pick up some of these skills the story teller would share with you and any kind of writing you apply them to will resonate more soundly with your reader. You will drive your points home more quickly and more surely when you drive them in a story.

The trick lies in learning to craft that story in an engaging, active and passionate way that captivates your reader and helps them to remember the underlying message far longer and to make it more fully their own than would ever be possible with a simple feature / benefit analysis.

What new technique can you take away from Exchange of Realities and apply to your writing? Try adding some of this splash to your next blog post and see what happens with your comment box and feed subscriptions.

Written by Dane Morgan, a BlogCatalog Blogger Advocate
http://DaneMorgan.com
Find Dane Morgan on Facebook

A common recurring theme in threads on the BlogCatalog Discussion Boards is traffic. Specifically traffic generated from BlogCatalog to member's blogs. The question, "Can/Do you get traffic from BlogCatalog has been asked and answered in many different ways, many different times.

The problem here is that, in most cases, people are asking the wrong question, or at least asking the question in the wrong way, and the answers that follow continue down the same path to the wrong place. The real question that we sould be asking is "Can/Do you get readers from blog catalog.

When I first came to the BlogCatalog discussion forums, at the invitation of Mark Stoneman, it was to a thread where several members were hotly debating whether it was good for the community to allow back scratching threads to be posted in the main discussion boards. You know, the "digg me and I'll digg you", "add me and I'll add you", "favorite me and I'll favorite you" type threads that really don't serve any one well, and actually hurt those participating in them the most.

I dove right in arguing for the banning of these types of threads from the boards, and I've been here ever since. During that time, TonyB contacted me through the shout box and said something that clued me in that BlogCatalog was a place I wanted to be. Tony said, "We don't want to send traffic to the blogs, we want to send readers". Not traffic, readers. That's such a simple thing to say, but it's also a very powerful thing.

Anyone can send traffic to your blog, for all the good that will do you. But readers, now there is something worth having sent to your blog. So don't ask yourself how much traffic BlogCatalog has sent to your blog. Look instead to the comments and the statistics for the readers that have found your blog through BlogCatalog. A single reader is worth more than thousands upon thousands of visitors to a blog.