No worries. If you are new to Blogstream and you want to interact with people, come on in! Have a look around!
There are 1,000 ways to find new people ... from comments on other people's blogs ... from other people's favorites lists ... from the rolling update box or the featured box on Blogstream's front page ... or from the lists. Blogstream has several ways of organizing all the blogs ... if you click more at the bottom of the box that says POPULAR BLOGS, it will open to a page of a bunch more. At the top of that page, there are two box choices. Play with them and find something that interests you. This is YOUR GAME. There are NO RULES. Do what you want. Read whoever you want. Comment if you have something to say.
There are some blogs that will inspire you. Whether it's graphics, someone's story, poetry, a recipe, a political debate, a book review, photographs, a cartoon, a joke, a prayer, a rant or a rave ... there really is something for everyone.
The more you surf, the more people you will meet. You will LOVE some of them. You might not care for others. It's like channel surfing on TV ... click past the stuff you don't care for and stop at the things that interest you.
The "lists" just record activity ... Most of the people on the MOST POPULAR LIST have JUST been here longer. That's all. Stay a while. You could be there too!
If you reduce your experience to making some list, you are really missing out on the JOY that can come from the friends you make along the way. Most of the people you run into are really good people, but not all of them are good. This IS the Internet. Have you watched Dateline? You are in an environment where you don't really know who you are talking to. You don't know their real names, you can't see their faces. You don't know where they live or work or play. None of the qualifiers from the REAL world are here. You don't know WHO you are talking to. I'm not saying that to scare you. I'm just reminding you to be careful.
Have fun but set limits.
You don't have to tell your real name or share your personal information with anyone. You do not have to show your picture. You don't have to give anyone your phone number. You don't have to listen to anyone who is being negative or abusive unless you want to. If someone does something out of line, you can delete their comment, block them from commenting and go on to the other 20,000 plus bloggers that are out there.
I try to avoid the bloggers that are always waging war against other bloggers ... It BORES me silly.
In almost two years on Blogstream, I have only been involved in those "fusses" twice. This weekend was one of them. I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I'm pretty sure no one else meant to hurt anyone either. I think it's ironic that a bunch of people who have been friends ended up hurting someone to protect someone else! RIDICULOUS DRAMA!
I do not think that it is anyone's job to protect any other blogger. We are all adults. I believe that adversity or controversy comes to all our lives for a reason. It is an opportunity for all of us to learn how to work our own way through our own problems.
You got yourself into it! Get yourself out. You can do it. I believe that what brought you to it will bring you through it.
You don't need anyone else to help you stand on your own two feet!
Try it.
See?
Doesn't that feel good?!!!
This past weekend was a perfect example that people can and will disagree from time to time. It happens. Feathers get ruffled. EVERYONE always thinks they have a good reason to do the thing they do or they wouldn't do it. I didn't say any of us were right. I said we believed we had good reasons.
When people get upset, why not give them a break?
Maybe, they don't know see things from your point of view? Maybe, they aren't meant to have that point of view?
Maybe, they have another garden to tend? Maybe, someone isn't feeling well? Maybe, someone is worried and they are taking it out on you? Maybe, it's just the Summer Heat?
UPDATE:
I got an email that made me smile. Because this was a "computer mess", this seemed the perfect metaphor ... Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just INSTALL LOVE?
Technical Support: Yes, ... how can I help you?
Customer: Well, after much consideration, I've decided to install Love. Can you guide me through the process?
Tech Support: Yes. I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?
Customer: Well, I'm not very technical, but I think I'm ready. What do I do first?
Tech Support: The first step is to open your Heart. Have you located your Heart?
Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs running now. Is it okay to install Love while they are running?
Tech Support: What programs are running ?
Customer: Let's see, I have Past Hurt, Low Self-Esteem, Grudge and Resentment running right now.
Tech Support: No problem, Love will gradually erase Past Hurt from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory but it will no longer disrupt other programs. Love will eventually override Low Self-Esteem with a module of its own called High Self-Esteem. However, you have to completely turn off Grudge and Resentment. Those programs prevent Love from being properly installed. Can you turn those off?
Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?
Tech Support: With pleasure. Go to your start menu and invoke Forgiveness. Do this as many times as necessary until Grudge and Resentment have been completely erased.
Customer: Okay, done! Love has started installing itself. Is that normal?
Tech Support: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other Hearts in order to get the upgrades.
Customer: Oops! I have an error message already. It says, "Error - Program not run on external components." What should I do?
Tech Support: Don't worry. It means that the Love program is set up to run on Internal Hearts, but has not yet been run on your Heart. In non-technical terms, it simply means you have to Love yourself before you can Love others.
Customer: So, what should I do?
Tech Support: Pull down Self-Acceptance; then click on the following files: Forgive-Self; Realize Your Worth; and Acknowledge your Limitations.
Customer: Okay, done.
Tech Support: Now, copy them to the "My Heart" directory. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching faulty programming. Also, you need to delete Verbose Self-Criticism from all directories and empty your Recycle Bin to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back.
Customer: Got it. Hey! My heart is filling up with new files. Smile is playing on my monitor and Peace and Contentment are copying themselves all over My Heart. Is this normal?
Tech Support: Sometimes. For others it takes awhile, but eventually everything gets it at the proper time. So Love is installed and running. One more thing before we hang up. Love is Freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everyone you meet. They will in turn share it with others and return some cool modules back to you.
Customer: Thank you, God.
I wish you all the BEST and hope that your days here are MOSTLY good ones.
Although the idea of all things being connected is not a new idea, it is a wondrous idea to discover and rediscover over and over again.
Those connections can be in big ways.
After centuries of creating medical specialists, modern medical techniques are beginning to adopt the holistic idea of treating our bodies, minds and spirits as one. For example, an eye, ears, nose and throat guy might consider that the symptoms he/she is treating just might have roots somewhere else. Oncologists are seeing a greater survival rate in those patients who take a spiritual approach to their cancer as well as altering their diets, exercising and taking their medicine.
Those connections can happen in small ways too.
Our minds process thousands of images every day, recording them and storing them, saving them for our dreams or our designs. It might be easy to see how our dreams, if we remember them, use some of those images, and the meanings we assign to them, to send messages to our conscious world. But what do I mean by designs? Whether it's decorating a room, designing a piece of jewelry, composing a photograph, arranging a buffet table, planting flowers, or organizing our work files, unrelated patterns like buildings in a row, colors in a piece of fabric, shapes in a garden, cars parked around a fountain, a store window, a painting, or children playing ... the things we see find a way of influencing the things we do and most of it happens without our even knowing it.
I am finding greater intrigue in the amazing way our minds work. No matter how disconnected and unrelated images are, if we were to see five images in a row ... our minds can't help but try to connect them in a way that makes sense for us.
Let me show you what I mean. Let's say we are standing in front of a blank wall. On that wall are five different pictures:
As far as I know, at this very moment, there is no connection at all between these five objects. I chose them randomly, and yet, even as we look at them, our minds are making some sort of connection between them.
We can't help it.
Every time our minds say, "WHAT?!!", we start processing the images, chewing on them, rolling them over in our minds, tasting the possibilities.
I love those things in life that jump out at me and make me say, "WHAT?!!" They stop the daily routine and force me to look at them. I can almost feel my imagination stretch, my mind broadening to include a set of images that have no connection with the rest of my experience.
It is in those tiny moments that we grow! It is in those tiny moments that we find inspiration. It is in those tiny moments that answers come to us.
How many times have you been thinking about a big decision or worrying about an assignment and you seek out a park bench or a big rock in the middle of the woods or a quiet chair in a coffee house? Your mind finds your answer by watching life go by, whether it's bees in a flower garden, two rabbits stepping out from a grove of trees that are in the shape of a company logo or the lady across from you passing out rolls to her children and all of the sudden the pattern of her dress clicks open a place in your brain where the perfect answer comes tumbling out?
You see, right along side the "WHAT?!!"s are the "AH-HAH!!!"s ... my other favorite ... those tiny moments where the curtain pulls back, the fog lifts and our hearts jump ... where we know that we know that we know.
"AH-HAHH!!!"
While I have been writing about connections, I have looked at those five pictures and my mind has connected them.
The connection, for me, is Lucerne, Switzerland. We didn't fly a Geebee, of course, but we flew a plane to Europe, and took an evening train to Lucerne. Behind the sign-in desk at the hotel were beautiful oil paintings that included the colors in these images. We woke up early, and had a wonderful continental breakfast that included breads, meats, eggs and fresh fruit. We took two pears with us for a snack later on and walked through the city, among the shops, where I chose a silk scarf among a beautiful display of hats and scarves. We walked to the statue of the Lion of Lucerne which, in itself, is a story I'd like to share:
The Swiss have a long tradition of supplying mercenaries to foreign governments (the Swiss Guard has been assigned to guard the pope for centuries and still do today). Because the Swiss have been politically neutral for centuries and have long enjoyed a reputation for honoring their agreements, a pope or emperor could be confident that his Swiss Guards wouldn't turn on him when the political winds shifted direction.
The Swiss Guards' honor was put to the test in 1792, when--after trying to escape the French Revolution--King Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and their children were hauled back to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. A mob of working-class Parisians stormed the palace in search of aristocratic blood. More than 700 Swiss officers and soldiers died while defending the palace, without knowing that their royal employers--like Elvis--had left the building.
In the early 1800s, the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen was hired to sculpt a monument to the fallen Swiss Guards. The sculpture was carved in a sandstone cliff above the city center, near Lucerne's Glacier Garden and the Panorama, and it has attracted countless visitors since its dedication in 1821.
The statue is one of the saddest statues I have ever seen. We couldn't help but walk away quietly, thinking of those brave men, giving their education, their courage, their valor, their military prowess, their principles ... their EVERYTHING for nothing. What a tragedy. What a noble lesson and such a price to pay that we might all learn from it. We left there and walked through the streets another way to where we stopped and ordered hot tea with sandwiches at a sidewalk cafe. It was the most thoughtful day.
For me those images connected to form a memory, but for someone else, they might inspire a story or a dream, a poem or a speech ...
I'm wondering ... What inspires you?
What images do you feed your mind and what connections does your mind make? How do you process them? What inspires you?
WHOOPS! Mia Culpa!
JULY BIRTHDAYS !!!
Please follow the links to MAKE SOMEONE'S DAY! (Belated Birthday Greetings Are Okay Too!)
Please follow the links to MAKE SOMEONE'S DAY! (Belated Birthday Greetings Are Okay Too!)
P.S.
Friends laugh.
Friends cry.
Friends share the good times and weather the bad. Friends make life better by being exactly who they are. I would rather learn a lesson at the hand of a friend because the lessons come tied up in heart strings. The reason we learn is because of how much we care.
We all think we have good reasons and purpose for the things we do ... even blogging has motivations as varied as fingerprints. Not everyone blogs for a reason! Our motivations change, as we grow and learn more about ourselves and our place in the world, real world or this blogstream world ...
I have spent some time trying to show you the ropes, take the mystery out of this blogging stuff. I am not a programmer, but I have learned a few tricks while surfing the net and they aren't secrets!
You might think or even hope (like I did) that your posts are what people will remember, but that isn't what search engines record.
It might be fun for you to go to google.com and enter your screen name and see what you find!
(If your screen name is something like Madonna, Prince or Elvis ... chances are you won't even show up ... but if your name is more unique and most of us are ... your screen name will show up all sorts of things ...)
Your comments to others get logged.
Times that you are mentioned or linked at other people's places are logged.
It's not those posts you slave over where you choose your words so carefully that are recorded, but the goofy things you say off the top of your head that live on and on and on ...
Are you playing nice?
Hope so! It makes it easier to look in the mirror!
Blogstream has a similar search function, powered by Google in the upper right hand corner of their main page.
You can type in anything ...
If you search for "nice people", this is what Blogstream says today:
I forgot to mention that I did receive a message from the "very nice customer service people" to say that what i thought was happening now is not and very ...
Baby Ruth Candy Bar wrappers wadded up in their pants pockets, etc.... Generally very opinionated.... especially about Nation League Baseball. Nice people. ...
Title:, Night lights place (7 people monitoring this blog) ... I have met many nice people in my life; I spend alot of time with my sister; I love animals ...
Through it all, I was always safe and met some really nice people. I could have called people collect and asked for money, but my pride wouldn't let me. ...
The late Andy Kaufman used to say that he didn't have to be nice to people because he wouldn't need them on the way down because he was never coming down. ...
... old. but i enjoy talking about it because i am older than a lot of people. but i dont care. ... meet really nice people; bring laughter to peoples days ...
People who go to plays that say nothing, but are very “meaningful”. Individually they are all probably very nice people. But as a group, I find them quite ...
I want to reiterate the fact that we are talking about ILLEGAL immigrants here, and I think it would be really nice if people would stop trying to paint a ...
If you search for "healing", this is what Blogstream says today:
If you want to know more, quickly, turn to Susun Weed's lengthy discussion of this alleged plant pest in her book "Healing Wise." What you will learn may ...
Firstly, all are welcome here...this is a place where everyone belongs... whether you are aware of it or not, you are a part of The Healing Connection...all ...
Blogstream blog about I ve learned thru the years how important vitamins nutrition and herbs seeds vegetables fruits nuts and all God put on this earth for ...
Interests:, oil, water colors amd Acrylics painting , REIKI Healing and Quantuam ... Interests: This blog is about Women, Breastfeeding and Natural Healing ...
Yes, I went to visit him this weekend, and even though I never believed it could happen, I fell even more in love with him. He is still the most amazing ...
Blogstream blog about My wife s father lived to be 100 years of age I wonder why some live longer than others Oh I know we hear lot s of reasons Most seem to ...
Fasten your seat belts for a roller coaster tale of Doctor Loves thoughts, through my eyes and ears I'll tell some boring babble, using my mind and fingers ...
If you search for "light", this is what Blogstream says today:
There are some whose minds God has turned to the inward light and power. ... But it is otherwise with those who are turned to the light and power of our ...
Blogstream blog about Light Bright. ... Blogstream > Anything > Blog. Light Bright. Wednesday December 6, 2006. 12-7-06. I guess the most useless thing in ...
Blogstream blog about A light side. ... Blogstream > Life > Blog. A light side. Wednesday May 9, 2007. hey. hey. Posted by In a Zone at 3:17 PM - No ...
Most orchids require plenty of light, preferably at least six hours a day. ... Conversely, inadequate light prevents orchids from flowering, although they ...
Blogstream blog about I write about HEALING Life isn t always easy You can be sailing along on a perfectly calm sea on the prettiest day and suddenly ...
If you type in (any word) you are interested in, you will be amazed at the things you find and the things you won't find too ...
You see as much as I think I write about Healing, Love and Light, I don't even show up until the very last! I might not be as full of healing, love and light as I'd like to be! I am just a drop in this great big stream, and a pretty insignificant drop at that! I don't imagine I make all that much difference to all
that many people and I'm okay with that.
One day, when I was feeling a little too full of myself, I heard this
song and it reminded me ... WHO AM I?
Here are the lyrics, if you'd like a closer look!
Who am I? That the Lord of all the earth, Would care to know my name, Would care to feel my hurt. Who am I? That the bright and morning star, Would choose to light the way, For my ever wandering heart.
Not because of who I am, But because of what you've done. Not because of what I've done, But because of who you are.
I am a flower quickly fading, Here today and gone tomorrow, A wave tossed in the ocean, A vapor in the wind. Still you hear me when I'm calling, Lord, you catch me when I'm falling, And you've told me who I am. I am yours. I am yours.
Who am I? That the eyes that see my sin Would look on me with love And watch me rise again. Who am I? That the voice that calmed the sea, Would call out through the rain, And calm the storm in me.
I am yours.
Whom shall I fear? Whom shall I fear? 'Cause I am yours. I am yours.
DISCLAIMER: By the way, on the links above, I never checked the blogs. I am not endorcing them ...I just wanted to show you what a few search pages look like. I see that some of thoseare advertising blogs ... I never knew how many of them there are! Wow!
Many Blogstream members are there
already! Quotes from members: "It's like blog lite!" -- "I like the instant
gratification!" -- "Stop spectating, get in the game!"
If you have not joined in, you are really missing out!
