Thinking Blogger

Red Garnier gave me the thinking blogger award. I received the notification Saturday morning just moments before my laptop got unplugged in preparation for the big room reorganizing project I blogged about last Friday. Ed was hovering as I checked my email one last time.

I couldn't do anything about it until our room was in semi-livable condition again. I wasn't even sure what it was but it sure sounded good and the compliment from Red energized me at least as well as an energy drink well into Saturday afternoon.

Besides being a compliment and an honor, it was also reassuring because sometimes I do start to feel like I am talking to myself. Both on Joystory and in my un-virtual world. As stated in my subtitle and profile, thinking is one of my passions along with writing, reading and story. It is encouraging to know that my words are having an impact on another thinker's minds for that is after all the purpose of story and rhetoric and even thinking itself. For I can't think of a better definition of hell (or if you prefer: insanity) than to be alone inside my own head (or anywhere else for that matter) with nothing but my own thoughts to anchor me.

Human minds and hearts were not made for being alone. In fact if I understand correctly the research in consciousness, human minds cannot be made at all without the interaction between them and their environment, including, most importantly, the other minds interacting with them.

The meme is the brain child of ilker yoldas at the thinking blog. (O.K. I took his name and title straight off his page so the no caps are his. Just wanted to clarify that as I am notorious for lazy shift-key fingers that decap properly capitalized words)

Anyway. Also straight off ilker's blog are the simple rules for participation:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,

3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

Here is the hard part for me, the list of 5 blogs that make me think. I wish it could be 25. But even that would probably force me to leave out somebody:

1. Kim Antieau of Furious Spinner. Kim awes me. Her posts, like her thoughts, are all over the map of ideas. Her curiosity is unbounded. Her creativity is dazzling whether her medium is story, photography, food, plants, found objects.... Her courage is jaw dropping and contagious. Hers was one of the first blogs I ever stumbled upon. I barely knew what a blog was when I discovered her in early 2004. Several months of reading and browsing her pages, inspired and encouraged me to consider starting a blog myself. So Joystory owes its very existence to my encounter with Furious Spinner.

2. Candyminx. I never know what I am going to encounter when I visit Candyminx. She ranges over the map of ideas like a humming bird over a field of flowers, drawing unlikely connections that sometimes leave me shaking my head in bewilderment but just as often give me that little shivery aha. She is fascinated with culture in all its manifest forms and most of her posts are a sharing of her encounters with one or another of them: movies, books, paintings, celebrities, museums, city streets, shopping malls.... Her sidebar is a goldmine of thought provoking blogs and resources. Just don't expect her to draw all the lines to connect the dots for you. But that is part of the joy of visiting her blog. It is like being handed a box with the pieces of half a dozen jigsaw puzzles jumbled together.

3. L^2. aka L squared aka A Dog's Eye View. She blogs about her guide dog, Willow and pet dog, Stella, and photography. Yes, I said guide dog and photography. She is extremely visually impaired and has a passion for photography, hopes to make her living at it some day. She also has a degree(s?) in physics. She makes me think on many levels. Especially about the way I allowed the narrowing of my visual field to narrow down the horizons of my world. Thinking about this both scares me and gives me hope as I wonder if someday I might be able to regain my physical independence to the same degree I regained my independence of thought and conscience.

4. Written Wyrdd is all about speculative fiction--fantasy and science fiction. The posts are full of advice on technique: world building, plot, character, theme, and so forth. Links to resources that expand on the topics are often provided. Occasional musing on the writing life in general and this writer's personal work habits and WIP add to the fascination. Speculative fiction can be very thought provoking when done right. But a lot of thought has to be put into it for it to make you say aha! instead of ha ha ha! Written Wyrdd can point you in the right direction.

5. Lexicon Indigo's interest span writing, philosophy and all things internet, including site design and promotion. She has tips and resources for writers and bloggers. Her site(s) are so inter-woven, it is hard to tell if they are one or many. As useful and interesting as all the rest is, the aspect that most makes me think is when she contemplates how to reach her ambitious goals while managing a mood disorder. Something we have in common (though not the same one).