Previously that day I found the  puppy cam site about the shiba inu puppies that 3-4 million people watch daily and downloaded it to my PC. I minimized it and promptly forgot about it. I use my PC infrequently throughout the day as I get carpal tunnel in the craziest places because I use a computer 8-12 hours most days. My laptop I use on a portable, adjustable table. The adjustable table is great plus I got a new comfortable chair. The table, the chair, and my handy carpal tunnel brace make carpal tunnel disappear.

But back to the puppies—in the middle of the night, I awoke to some animals in our house. But I couldn’t locate them. Lou got up and went outside and said that they were in the wall. But we don’t have real walls in these homes. I thought they were down in the heat vents. But I still couldn’t find them. So I decided to come out with a flashlight and “trap” them. When I came out to the kitchen with a flashlight, I noticed the light from my computer speakers. It was the puppies—apparently; they love to play at night.

In finding sites like the puppy cam, many of the blogs I read daily for writing ideas have a RSS link—that little orange button you see everywhere. With RSS, I can keep a check on all the blogs I like and only have to read 5 headlines from each to see if I am interested or not.

The 2 RSS readers I use are Google Reader (the most popular) and Pageflakes. I am so obsessive I use two so that I can skim Pageflakes when I like and read Google reader closer daily. I follow about 100 blogs—many of the more prolilic bloggers follow 500-600 daily. But many of the the large blogs also have 5-10 writers to cover a wider field of daily information.

The following list are places you may look for new blogs. Never forget to check the blogs listed on the blogs that you like.

1. Google Blog Search–returns links from machine-made blogs sometimes which is disheartening when they ban bloggers for the same practice.

2.  About.com has a blog search engine page that lists several search engines for blogs.

3.  Webcrawler has links to find blogs. This link page also has good articles for the blog newcomer.

4.  Resource Shelf has links for finding blogs by location.

5.  Blog Catalog lists itself as the blogger social network but also has a good directory. It also has a “rate my blog design” until Jan. 9, 2009.

6.  I use delicious a lot and it has a blog that has a lot of tips for using delicious on your cellphone if you are going mobile. Here is my delicious tags/bookmark list.

However, I started this blog six months ago (Thanksgiving, 2004), and I love blogging. For the 28 years that I have been in recovery, I have studied and researched about all aspects of personal growth. The main
aspect about blogging that suits me is that although I have 5 file cabinets full of material, with blogging i only have to write a “post” which is generally 3-10 paragraphs for me.

As all who have blogs that they update regularly know, a blog that has a general direction and particular messages takes a lot of work. I have been astonished to find myself working on my blog 10-12
hour days. I don’t work outside the home now so I can devote the time to it. Of course, organizing material collected over a 28 year period takes a lot of time. The rewriting and reorganizing are also time-consuming.

But it truly has been a labor of love. I am grateful that my husband has given me this opportunity and am doing what I have wanted to do for years–expressing myself about ways that we can help each other grow
emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

My model for the self-discovery groups I hope will happen from the information, materials and direction that I have available from this blog comes from the following quotation that I have used on another
post.

“We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.”

Luciano de Crescenzo