NEW CASTLE —
What have you read online recently that has inspired you?
This is sort of an odd question, one that doesn't quite seem to fit with our goal of asking questions of ourselves to work things through and better ourselves.
It certainly fits with the venue, though, in that I'm posting these blogs in an effort to inspire people in some way.
I'd love your answer to be "this one, of course!" but I'm not kidding myself here. I'm a mediocre writer at best, and if I manage to come up with one inspiring blog in a hundred, I consider it a lucky day. I do my best, though, which is apparently good enough that you're here reading again. (As always, I'm grateful!)
I'm going to tell you a little secret, though: I get most of my inspiration from surfing the Internet. Yeah, yeah, I know — the Internet is the devil and time on the computer is time wasted ... blah blah blah. But here's the real truth — just like the real world, the world wide web is exactly what you make of it.
Just because your ex spent all day looking at the online Victoria's Secret catalog or your teenager loses entire weeks fighting zombies doesn't mean the Internet is evil. It's just a channel for whatever you MAKE it a channel for. Just as you can make it the passage to entertainment or education, you can also make it the path to enlightenment.
I'm a huge fan of the website Stumble Upon. If you haven't tried it yet, take a couple of minutes and check it out. A little orange button on the top left of your screen "stumbles" you to random websites, and it can be further customized by taking a minute to plug in your own personal interests. The stumble button will then take you to websites you would have never stumbled upon (ahem!) otherwise.
Oh, and best of all, it's free.
Honest to goodness, if it hadn't been for this site, I never would have taught myself how to fix a leaky faucet, nor would I know that the words facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious (which means containing arsenic, just in case you wondered.)
Anyhow, my point is that I find dozens of inspiring things on the web each week, and the questions I post for this blog are usually borne from one of them.
So don't wait for inspiration to strike. Go out and get it wherever you can find it!
Lisa Madras
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About Lisa Madras: Lisa is the advertising dispatch at The News. She has agreed to blog about her personal pain in an effort to inspire others going through similar circumstances. She’ll share her thoughts each Monday.
Discussion
Lisa Madras: I don’t always Stumble Upon answers, but I get plenty of questions
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