“It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.”
–Bertrand Russell
This is sometime a struggle for me, so an excellent reminder to have for myself, and maybe you too.
Hat tip, Gretchen
Sometimes I think the best blogs are blogs (unlike mine) that take a narrow area of focus and really do it right. My new favorite of these types is Daily Routines, which pulls together all recorded evidence of the daily routines of “writers, artists and other interesting figures”. They’ve featured a great many so far, from Benjamin Franklin to Simone de Beauvoir to Stephen King, and I’m looking forward to seeing what turns up next.
I found this blog by way of Short Stack, a multi-group blog of Book World editors at the Washington Post. I recently put together a Powerpoint slide show on the decline of print media for my college course this semester, and the numbers are staggering. Everyone seems to agree that if there’s not a revolution, many print versions of the newspaper are going to die off. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that I read the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun daily, and the Postfrequently, but the only one I pay for is the weekend edition where I get my coupons. I also read Short Stack, and Paper Cuts, the blog done by the book people at the NYT, and over there in my sidebar is Dining at Large, written by the restaurant reviewer at the Sun. I enjoy all three papers and all three blogs, and it doesn’t cost me a cent, so I guess I’m part of the problem, but I can’t help but think the papers themselves jumped into the world of free content without looking first. I maintain subscriptions to magazines still, because I’ve always thought they offer a better tactile and aesthetic experience than newspapers, but there are even more magazines and articles I only read online. As a freelancer who blogs for free, I’m even more part of the problem– some writers believe that writers like me who produce free content are devaluing the content-for-pay out there. I don’t think so, because my blogging is distinctly different from my paid writing, and for me, they all feed on each other in a crucial symbiosis.
In short, I love blogs, I love magazines, I love newspapers, and I don’t want any of them to disappear– but I don’t have the answers for making them all profitable, either. In the meantime, I’ll continue to read for free and produce (some) content for free, and enjoy myself as much as I can along the way.
I’ve been reading The Happiness Project for at least a year now, and it’s definitely one of my favorite daily reads. Gretchen Rubin is the author of the blog, and the book by the same name comes out late next year. Rubin posts regularly, with quotations, lists of tips, links to other websites and books along the same lines, but also includes anecdotes from her own life that are not just her successes, but also her failures or struggles along the road to happiness. Her engaging voice and grounded approach are right up my alley, but since her entries are all rather short, they are easy to absorb in a few stolen minutes during your day. I also think THP is a really effective example of how authors can use blogs to build interest for their books, but that’s not really why I read it.
Sometimes with my college students, I ask them to think about whether the ever-increasing flow of information in the digital age is more beneficial or detrimental. How do we benefit from hearing about the terrible tragedies that happen in this world, like the man in Austria who kept his daughter captive for decades, or the desperate mother in Florida who appears to have killed her three-year-old? What good does this bring to our lives? I bring up “mean world syndrome,” a theory I read first in Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television, & the First Amendment
From the linked article:
The programming reinforces the worst fears and apprehensions and paranoia of people…. Our surveys tell us that the more television people watch, the more they are likely to be afraid to go out on the street in their own community, especially at night. They are afraid of strangers and meeting other people.
Books, music, poetry, and good friends are pretty fail-safe antidotes to mean-world syndrome, but what about when you just need a small jolt, a dose of positive, constructive thinking in the middle of a tough or discouraging day? That’s when I turn to resources like The Happiness Project, to spend at least a little time each day thinking about how to be a happier person and how to help my children and my family be happier, and not about all the potential obstacles to happiness there are out there in the world. I think it’s an important frame of mind to work towards, and I need all the tools I can get.
My new favorite happiness-related resource, found through the Happiness Project, is the Authentic Happiness site at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s full of psychological questionnaires on all different aspects of personal happiness, and if you register, the site will store all your responses for you. Once you’ve taken a few, interesting patterns start to emerge, which should leave you with much food for thought.
Ree Drummond is the author of The Pioneer Woman, and her site has become a must-stop for me over the 18 months or so that I’ve been reading her updates.
She’s definitely a blogger with a great sense of humor and distinctive voice, but what makes Ree’s site different from lots of other personal websites is that she is also an incredibly talented photographer, and so her site is rich with beautiful photography of her family, friends, and the cattle her family maintains on their Oklahoma cattle ranch. I love looking at photos but have no interest in picking up photography as a hobby, so I like to just skim through her photography section and admire the results. I also don’t expect to homeschool, but have found a lot of great educational resources for my own family in her homeschooling section, and love the interviews and guest posts there from homeschool moms and children.
Of course, Ree is also known for her frequent and generous giveaways, paid for with ad revenue from the site, that have included Le Creuset dutch ovens and $500 gift cards to stores from Wal-Mart to Anthropologie, and I’ve entered more than a few in the hopes of winning (though comments on the giveaway posts often number in the multiple thousands).
Her lifestyle is also completely foreign to me– she homeschools her four kids, goes to rodeos, wakes up with sunrise and has watched calf nut removals with aplomb– and I really enjoy the window into another world, rendered in descriptive prose and incredible photos. Her cooking philosophy has been incredibly helpful to me– she doesn’t heap scorn onto canned or processed ingredients, but does introduce me to new techniques or vocabulary pretty often. The majority of her recipes that I have tried have been big hits at my house, and the step-by-step photos she includes are a big part of why I can try them with confidence.
Since I’ve been reading PW, her popularity has skyrocketed, with appearances on CNN, paid blogging gigs, and higher and higher comment tallies on each entry. I’m not surprised at all, and am looking forward to the cookbook she has coming out later this year.
I’m going to do a continuing series of posts here, highlighting blogs on my blogroll and explaining why I like that site enough to feature it on my site, in an effort to build more community in the true blogging spirit. I will try to link to all the posts in the series at the end of each one.
This first post is about a blog I started reading relatively recently: The Simple Dollar, a single-author blog written by an Iowan named Trent, who’s married with a kid and has chosen to make personal finance and frugality his guiding passion as a writer. And I’m really glad he did, because I thoroughly enjoy his blog.
Even before the current financial crisis, my thoughts on finance had been turning towards how to build and maintain a more frugal lifestyle. There are several personal reasons for this switch, but none of them are a lack of money– we are in the best financial shape we’ve ever been in, a fact for which I am truly thankful. But as my girls get older, I’m more and more cautious about how to model the kinds of choices we want them to make, and the kinds of ideals we want them to see us putting into action. I also want to instill good financial habits in them, and want to be able to afford some of the dreams on our wishlist, like traveling, finishing our basement, and whatever other great experiences we all want to have.
I’m interested enough in frugality to clip coupons, but not enough to sign up for a coupon clipping service. I’m interested enough in personal finance to comparison-shop for banks, but don’t need sophisticated investment information (yet). Also, I’ve made enough choices already to need tips and advice past, “Give up lattes and manicures”. If you are me too, The Simple Dollar may be for you.
Trent’s also a great blogger for anyone to model. His voice is straightforward without being simplistic, direct and honest without being blunt, and his writing is just the right mix of philosophical and practical. He posts at least once a day, and his posts are well-written, concise and engaging. He also does a good mix of topics, from DIY posts, interviews, book reviews, tip lists or posts spurred by his own experiences or conversations. I don’t always agree with everything he says, of course, but I’m always intrigued enough to keep reading (except for his book reviews, because I never read personal finance or investing books).
