Shiny blogs, over here; Happy blogs...over there

I have one precious hour before my new bedtime, and I could have spent it reading, but instead I spent it trying to screen-capture the shot of Jane Pratt in the Shiny Happy People video.  I would write that I did that for you, but you know better.  That kind of rabid focus is never in the service of others.

You know, in her giant close-up, her head is cut off.  Did Michael Stipe cut that out deliberately?  Incidentally, do you think Michael Stipe should play the lead role in The John Malcovich story?  I'll work out the treatment.  "You are neither.... shiny... nor....happy...." {freeze.  purse lips.}

Recently, me blog-mate Charlene bestowed on the DrawingIn Room another honor by naming us one of the 11 best, shiniest, happiest blogs she knows.  Cool indeed.  I'm not Jane Pratt, but I play her on the Internet. 

This was a very nice gesture.  I hope to live up to shiny and happy.  I know I often stomp around like Lucy van Pelt, but I am 10 Raves ahead of the Rants, and most of what I complain about is what I bring on myself.   Over at the Finishing School, we tried to kick off the year with an equally positive goal.  It is easy to jawjawjaw about the workplace, and we know it is what most of you tune in for, but what we want you to take away is something you can grow on -- some tools you can use.   So we tried to set Positive Change as the theme of this first quarter.

So here is tonight's Norman Vincent Peale moment, then we all have to go to bed.  Or maybe you don't have to.  Maybe you live close to where you work and/or don't live on the congested 300 year-old roadways of the northeast.  See, that sounded like snark, didn't it?  It's all in how you read it.  We lllooove the congested 300-year old roadways, that are even now icing over to a fantastic glaze just in time for the morning drive...

The reason I have a new bedtime is that I now leave my home at 7am to be at work at 8.  I don't have to be at work at 8, but if I am I enjoy a pleasant early morning drive at a leisurely pace, through the beautiful fields of the Minuteman National Park.

(another guy with a pretty rough commute, carrying both rifle and plow...)

Radio, podcast, or audio book, the occasional school bus or stop light, and a final stretch of highway that is still light before 8.

But it means getting up at 6.  And if I am going to get up at 6, there had better be 7 hours of sleep underneath that at least.  Or there is no shiny, and no happy.

And it should also mean pre-bed ironing and lunch making and charging up of phones and iPods.  Get me, I'm a working mom!  But when, you ask, would I blather on, just to entertain YOU on your lunch hour?

Now you know.

My list of recommended Shiny, Happy, Blogs are to the left in my Blogroll. 

To name 10 that put the emphasis on what you CAN do and not what you CAN'T, I call out

Business Woman's Finishing School & Social Club

this is not an nod to myself and my partner Miss Minchin, but to the many contributors who so generously share their stories

the treadmill diaries 

Charlene's Balance Beam 

From the Garden Bench 

Karen's Adventures 

The Dyer Family 

Desert of My Real Life 

VIDEO PANCAKES 

HRCleanUp 

Unobstruct Your View

 

 

 find your positive power this week.