I started this little blog because of a New Year's Resolution in January 2007. Since then one of my resolutions has always been to continue/improve my activity both in quantity and quality of postings. This year was the slowest on record, so much though that I started considering closing shop. But I do not want to do that. I don't like the idea of being a quitter.
So onward and upward! As is frequently the case, I am inspired by my colleague and one of my heroes, Dr. Teri Lesesne. She reads at least one book a day and blogs about them. Well I am NOT gonna try to match that! First, it is not in my job description since I teach technology rather than literature classes in our program and also toil on as department chair. Thus I have not the time or the reason, much less the chutzpah to try to compete with Professor Nana, whose blog you can find here: http://professornana.livejournal.com/
However I have another way to try to inspire myself on a regular basis, by sharing websites. I am still using Delicious despite the exaggerated reports of its death about a month ago. I just went over to my page where my hodgepodge of sites can be found: http://www.delicious.com/drmaryannbell
They are a wild and unruly bunch with a total number of over 1200. Two of my tags are there to help me and/or my students: SHARE and REVISIT. These tags are reserved for really interesting/nifty/fun/useful sites that I want to be sure I don't forget. Obviously these are to remind me to do as directed but I must confess that I cannot recall every revisiting a single one of the sites bearing that tag. Surely I have.......?
Anyway here's my plan: I am going to share a link with a brief description as many days as I can. Will it be every day? I would like to think so and I certainly have enough bookmarks, but I am not too interested in installing a Sword of Damocles over my head by vowing to do ANYTHING daily. I have enough things hanging by a thread in my life as it is.
To kick things off, I am sharing a site that I have used for several years as a reminder service. 43 Things exists to help people succeed with goal-setting. A user can post a goal or resolution, report progress, and send messages to himself and to others. For the past several years I had a weekly email reminder that was called "Get it right with Dad." The reason for this was because I recognized I had a unique opportunity to be there with and for my dad in his last years. Because I tend to get immersed in daily obligations, many of which are relatively trivial, I wanted a way to keep Dad in the forefront of my mind. Seeing the message was a prompt for me to give him a call or send him a card. I take a great deal of comfort in knowing I WAS there for Dad a respectable amount and that I could say good-bye without the regrets. Here is the URL for this site: http://www.43things.com/
HERE IS SOMETHING SUPER COOL: I just went over to 43 Things. I want to set up a goal and reminder to blog more as described above. Guess whose picture and goal are featured today? NANCY PEARL! Her New Year's Resolution posted there is (not surprisingly) TAKE TIME TO READ! Others can adopt any resolution as their own and I intend to do so with this one. I don't know how long her goal will be featured, but if you go there today it will show as the top item. Since Nancy Pearl is another hero of mine, and her action figure is my constant running buddy, I take this as a positive omen. You can subscribe to any goal that is posted and join others with that same target. The temptation is great to subscribe to goals right and left, because there are lots of good ones there, but I am resisting. That sounds like a recipe for failure for me.
In closing, give 43 Things a try if you have something to which you want to remain dedicated for any amount of time. It helped me!
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