Linden's Pensieve

This guest post is from my little brother, Daniel, who has always surpassed me in computer skillz.

When I read How to go from Computer Confused to Software Savvy in 5 Easy Steps, I wanted to share some more tips to help all “computer confused” people of the world. I am one of those people who never pays for software if I don’t have to. I’m also a power user who will not tolerate crud getting on my computer. Today I’m going to share with you my suite of 100% legal and free software that keeps my computer running like a top.

When I committed to 30 days of blogging, I did it with optimism* and a healthy dose of skepticism. I am pretty busy with teaching, The Diss, and running; I can barely keep up with all my emails, how was I supposed to blog every day for a month?

5+1Things I Have Learned (or Relearned) During NaBloPoMo

1. When an idea popped into my head, I wrote it down. I get blog post ideas all the time, but rarely do I write them down. Because I knew I would need to be posting every day, those ideas became more valuable, and when I needed them, they helped me come up with a post. I’m going to make this a habit.

Today, I’ve done my blogging over at Blogger’s Guide—you can read my article, “Five More WordPress Plugins to Simplify Your Blogging,” by clicking here. Since you, my faithful readers, came here first, I’m going to give you two extra WordPress plug-ins that I love, but couldn’t justify including in my guest post.

Inbox Zero–Have you heard of it? If you read 43folders or Lifehacker, you probably have. Inbox Zero is Merlin Mann‘s philosophy on handling email, and in short, it means that you keep your email inbox at 0 messages by managing the inflow, behind-the-scenes filtering, and dash responding. It is a New Year’s Revoluation of mine, which I added to the list between January 1st and the end of March.

This week, I’ve shared with you my favorite quotes on happiness, food, friendship, writing, productivity, and success. Today, life. It happens to us whether we’re living it or letting it live us. I think the important thing is to remember to live it and “end up with the right regrets.”

5+ Quotes on Life

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. [link]

Life, if well lived, is long enough. [link]
Seneca

I think one of the great misconceptions of my generation is, “I can, just like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs*, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, or Shawn Fanning, make a quick million young and just live easy for the rest of my life. Hey, it’s the American Dream!”

Now, this is my own opinion, but I think many of us forget that success is no more than hard work. All of these people, now rich and famous, livin’ in the lap of luxury, they worked hard, long hours to achieve what they did. And once they were made, the work did not stop.

I do not believe that most of us will “make it.” We will work hard our entire lives, but not become millionaires like Bill Gates. We might

I have been trying to become more productive and organized for quite a while now, but one of the things that has helped me is 4 quotes. They are taped to the side of the monitor in my office (and before this job, they were taped to the side of my monitor at home). I’ll probably bring that exact same, slightly wrinkled paper back to Missouri with me when the time comes.

Here are the quotes, along with my thoughts.

Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I’m doing. Phil Jackson

Ever since I started teaching, I have taught writing every semester. It was an interesting and scary thing: I had always earned good grades in writing, but never really understood why I was so good at it. On August 22, 2005, I stood in front of 22 freshman who were probably as scared of and anxious about college as I was about teaching (I hadn’t had a single “how to teach” class!). But the really cool thing that I learned that late summer day was that I am a born teacher. Thanks to the mentoring of the Composition Director and the leadership of the “second years,” my latent writing skills bubbled to the surface during that semester through activities and lessons. I realized that somewhere deep down, I did know what I was doing right in my writing, and I was able to convey it to my students.

I just wrote last week about the importance of friendship, so now I want to share some of my favorite quotes on friendship. I like these because they make me think about how we make friends, what they know about us, and the huge impact friendship has on our lives.

5+ Quotes on Friendship

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Dale Carnegie

Ah, food. I love food. And I’ve been struggling with it for the last few years of my life.

I’ve never been “fat,” but I was almost always the “big girl” in my group. Maybe it’s because I’ve been blessed with what we* always joked were “birthing hips,” but then again, I’ve always had a little more to love. And don’t get me wrong: I do not I have a serious eating, self-image, or obesity problem, but I’m a woman, and I notice how I look, I notice how clothes fit me, and I like to eat!