This goes out to all the people who thought enough about me to stop by and leave a comment. It's a safe bet that you are someone I admire very much and/or you found something that I wrote interesting. Thank you for your thoughtfulness, but stop. Don't click that button yet. Now, read your comments again, to yourself. Read them again. Did you say something?
My mother has returned to the blogosphere after about seven weeks on the road with her hubby! On her blog (lovingly updated with 3 more of her favorite gospel tracks and upgraded to spammer-crushing Movable Type 2.661), I've brought her up to speed on some of the changes in our world since she's been gone (all except for our proposed Blog Family Reunion), but y'all can tell it probably better than I can, in your own way. Please, stop by and show your love.
Mr. Steven G. Fullwood celebrates a birthday today! Share in the celebration, check him out.
I've got a lot of love for Lynne d Johnson. Lately we've been working on moving her site (which now incorporates Cocotaso's fantastic new design) to Movable Type. Yes, the chickens have come home to roost! How long have we've been trying to pull Miss Thang into the fold? Well, assimilation complete! *LOL!* We braved the snow and single-digit deep freeze to celebrate last night ...
Lately, I've been getting comments from people who apparently want to share their opinions of my blog's content with me and the other people who visit this space. I really love to see conversations happen, but there is no space here for anyone who must render themselves anonymous and unreachable. I refuse to harbor that type of insidious cowardice here. If you have a critique about me or my blog and you wish to remain anonymous, you'll have to go somewhere else to litter.
If I allow the down low to exist in my own space, then I'm complicit. I'm not going to let that happen.
I'm one of many people poised at the beginning of the New Year to consider significant life changes, particularly the changes we'd like to make to our bodies. If Oprah sticks to her birthday wish to be photographed nude when she turns 50 later this month, I KNOW she is at this very moment getting every penny's worth of training and motivation from her trainer, Bob Greene. But what motivates regular people who can't afford a trainer much less a gym membership? Fitness magazines are inundated with ads for diets, bars, shakes, powders and pills that always feature people whose cockdiesel 'after' bodies are always better lit (and usually shaven) than their flabby ordinary-looking 'before' bodies. And Hollywood (whose job it is to suspend reality by making you believe that most people, regardless of who they are or what they have or haven't done, are rich, own homes, drive expensive cars, have fantastic bodies, live action-packed, romantic lives and always enjoy idyllic happy endings) does not help at all.
No, I don't mean to blame Hollywood for my fat, lethargy or for my general failure to look how I want - at least not completely. There are whole conglomerates of businesses that make money off of people's misery from their inadequacies and I accept that that's probably not going to change anytime soon. What I'm going to do, yet again, is look within.
Ever called someone whose answering machine message changed the way you look at some small aspect of your life? My friend Muadi ends her message with "Create a great day!" So, I'm going to apply that incredibly empowering motto all year - I can create a great year.
Here's to creating a wonderful 2004, filled with new discoveries, propelled by an abundance of prosperous opportunities and buoyed by the love of friends old and new, family and loved ones. One day down - 364 to go!
