I am a dreamer at heart. There is nothing that gets me more excited that when I start moving towards a dream. On the same note, watching others live their dreams is addictive. It is my drug of choice. Consider me your pusher and watch all your dreams come true.

Believe Your Dream Is Possible

How do you convince yourself? Look around at the world and know that every physical thing around you (including the clothes on your back) was once nothing but a dream. Absolutely everything. Let that inspire you.

» Read More or Leave a Comment

Have you always loved to read and wished you could write? Want to say something but have no idea where to start? Here are five surprising tips to get you thinking like a writer.

Listen

Record a conversation, then type it word for word. Audio re-play lets you hear patterns of speech and catch nuances of meaning you may not hear in the moment. Before you know it, you may have the voice of your next character in your head.

Copy

Imitation is more than the highest form of flattery. It is how we learn. Read what you love…novels, articles, poems. Then practice writing in the very same way. How? Paraphrase: Start with a paragraph. Re-write it in your own words—not great big flowery words or fierce competitive diction, just write what you think it means. Repeat. This will get you thinking like the authors you read, and get you noticing their styles and techniques.

» Read More or Leave a Comment

Do you ever find yourself wandering the aisles at a craft store, looking at all those different shaped boxes and mini shelves made of wood and cardboard and wondering, what on earth would I do with that when I finished it? Here is one idea, which makes a personal and useful gift for a loved one.

A Birthday Box

It’s like a recipe box, but instead of dividers for salads, mains and desserts, you have tabs for each of the 12 months. There are index cards in the box, filed under the appropriate month and ordered by date (I put mine in the top right hand corner). For example, my birthday is December 7th, and so if you wanted to remember my birthday you would write up a card for me with a number seven on it and file it under December. You can also include gift ideas for me that I might mention during the year, or even keep track of what you have done for me in the past. You can jot down anything you’d like, because you can always start another index card for me once this one gets old or full.

How a Birthday Box Makes Life Easier

Just before December comes along, you can look it up in your birthday box and count how many people you know are having birthdays that month. That means only one trip to the card shop, which saves you time. Or, perhaps you’d like to set aside a craft night for yourself and make a bunch of cards for the month. No more birthdays sneaking up on you, which is nice.

» Read More or Leave a Comment

I worked in the radio industry for seven years. That’s seven years of forming some of the best working relationships I’ve ever had. I can effortlessly recall specific conversations and events with people who felt more like family members than co-workers. When I left to start a business, it was understood that we’d keep in touch. Yet, I haven’t spoken with any of them since.

The truth is that after a transition in life, we’re likely to lose contact with many of our friends. Whether a co-worker changes jobs or a friend moves out-of-state, the scenario is the same for most of us. The promise to keep in touch is whispered into the air and carried off on the breeze of good intentions.

» Read More or Leave a Comment

As some of you have noticed, we changed email delivery services for those of you who receive our Daily Q&A by email. It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing, and a few people have contacted us to say that they didn’t receive this morning’s email.

If you aren’t getting the Daily email and would like to, simply enter your email address and name in the sign-up box you’ll see on every page (or visit our sign-up page for more information). We will only use your email address to deliver the Daily Q&A; you won’t receive any emails from anyone else and we won’t disclose your email address to any third parties.

While we’re on the topic of subscriptions…

You can get our content as an RSS feed, using Google Reader, Bloglines or any other RSS software.

RSS is a great way of “pulling” content to you that you know you’re interested in but want to read on your own schedule. RSS readers typically show you a list of headlines from your favorite websites, and let you read full-length articles without visiting the website itself. If you want to leave a comment you still have to click through, but for me RSS is the best way to read the content I want, when I want it, without spending a lot of time surfing from site to site.

Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger has a great introduction to RSS, which covers everything you could possibly want to know.

Subscribing to Our RSS Feeds

You can subscribe to feeds for virtually any “slice” of our content, from every article on our site, to feeds for individual categories (for example, our Relationships Category) or authors, to the feed for the Daily Q&A.

Our advice? Start with the main RSS feed, and then narrow down your interests as you get to know the content on our site.

Questions? Feel free to ask away in the comments, below.

Photo by luisvilla.