I spent most of the month suffering from one ailment or another. The joys of working with children in winter. It was great for slogging through my reading list, though.

• Little Green Book of Getting Your Way- I took a few notes out of it, but the layout made it very hard to stare at the book for any length of time.
• The Effective Executive- Mostly, I had already read this information. I found it far more useful to just read the introduction and last chapter.
• On Writing Well- I thought I had read this last year, but I definitely hadn’t. The chapters on humor and voice (my two weakest points) alone made the entire book worth it!
• The Art of Project Management- Had I read it years ago, it would have been a great resource, but as this point it was just an enjoyable read.
• Bit Literacy- It’s a great book for people new to technology, but it was familiar (and a bit out of date) for me.
• Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got- This book also felt out of touch with the Web 2.0 world. It’s far easier and more entertaining to just subscribe to Teaching Sells.
• A Whole New Mind- An interesting look at how those who can work in the right side of their brain will actually lead the way into the future.
• Math Doesn’t Suck- This book is a must-have for every girl you know! It covers math tips for factors, fractions, decimals, percents, ratios, and simple algebra, all the time reminding girls why it’s important to never let anyone convince them to act dumb.
• The Design of Everyday Things- An interesting look at the psychology and usability of design. Some of the things he talks about should seem obvious, but it’s interesting how what’s obvious goes over well with the people who will actually use something, but not with those assigning awards for design.

I’ve given up on reading the Personal MBA books because most of them felt either too familiar or too outdated. We’ll see what books I come up with next!

It’s kind of funny, too. I love reading books. There’s a thrill in letting the words play in your mind to create a picture, a movie of the book.

But I’ve realized as I’ve read more and more manga (Japanese graphic novels) over the past couple of years that I enjoy the effect of words and pictures together. I still enjoy exercising my imagination with a textual book, but I’m just as likely to reach for a manga as a novel. My feed aggregator is slowly filling with more and more webcomics for this same reason. And I reach for the manga, the webcomics, and the novels that are able to fully utilize their media to draw me in to a sustained story.
As a child, I studied ballet. I can remember rehearsals as a young adult where the artistic director and the choreographer continually nagged us to tell the story. The story of the ballet, the story of the individual dance we were doing. If our movements weren’t contributing to building the story, then we weren’t doing it correctly. And this applied to dances that weren’t part of a story ballet, too. Our recital pieces were mini-stories, danced by each class.

This comes back to me every time I watch figure skating competitions. I’ve noticed the more successful skaters find the story in their music and bring it out in their choreography. Amazingly, these tend to be the skaters who turn professional and take over my weekend afternoons as their exhibitions are run over and over again on the television.

Even my favorite musicians are the ones who can consistently provide a story in their work. In their lyrics. In the music if there are no lyrics. I love the story. My favorite band at the moment is my favorite band, simply because their lyricist is a fantastic storyteller.

Thinking about it, I’ve come to realize that the medium has little to do with a good story. The story is the story on its own merit, and the medium is the vehicle delivering the story. I don’t know if that will help me at all, but someone else might find it interesting.

The universe also thinks i need several neon signs screaming at me to give writing a real try (as in something other than just narrowly missing freelance jobs). It doesn’t seem to care what I write professionally, just as long as I do. Thankfully, I’ve been working on Dead Bunny’s first book for the past three weeks or so, and the first draft is coming along quite nicely, even if it’s pointing out huge gaping holes in the blog! (Yikes!)

This update isn’t what actually what brings me by today, though. I thought I’d try out a new feature, and you guys can tell me what you think of it. I used to try to review every book I read in its appropriate Niche, but my time just isn’t conducive to that anymore, so I thought I’d share the list of what I’ve read in the past month.

• Seeing What’s Next- It impressed me so much that I put it down nearly halfway through. I read it because it was on the Personal MBA list, but I really felt it was one of the weaker books in its section.
• The Dip- Who doesn’t love a good Seth Godin book? Also a Personal MBA recommendation (that’s been recommended by everybody and their Uncle Phil)
• The Simplicity Survival Handbook-Another Personal MBA recommendation that I believe simply everybody must read! If you can’t find something in it that will make your life just a hair simpler, I’ll eat my Mariners cap!
• Ready for Anything- Personal MBA recommendation that probably would have done more for me if I’d read it several years ago. Still a good book, though.
• The Path of Least Resistance for Managers- I was supposed to read a different version of this book for the Personal MBA, but I found this one rather redundant for me so I didn’t feel compelled to track down the correct version. It’s another one that would have benefitted me if I’d read it much earlier.
• Competitive Strategy- Much like the first book in this list, it’s a Personal MBA book that I put down fairly quickly. I found it very dense and had a hard time getting into it.

Toward the end of each month, I’ll try to post what I read that month wit a brief bit on what I thought. I think a book or two might get skipped, but I’ll try my best to not let any fall through the cracks.

I really need to take this one to heart. The problem is: I’m a natural problem solver. I see a problem. I try to solve it.

It’s a disease, I tell you!

And it really doesn’t matter where I am. A problem shows up in front of me, I try to handle it. One of these days it’s going to get me into serious trouble.

I’d settle for it just landing me a better job.

My current employer keeps me around because they call me “The Unkinker”. No, honestly, one of my directors has called me that. To my face, no less. A normal day at work for me involves being met at the door by a director saying, “So…we have a problem.” Great. They’re the director. I’m just the lead instructor.

And I’m the one who thinks of the solutions they either haven’t considered or have forgotten. Or I’m the one who has the technical ability to resolve the problem.

At work, my problem isn’t really that I’m solving problems for no pay. I’m solving a ton of problems for low pay. (And we wonder why the economy is so scary right now…)

Maybe I should consider being more restrictive about who I help? Sadly, I know I don’t have the will power to draw that line.

Anybody have a suggestion to solve my problem?

Please go forth and have a wonderful holiday, regardless of what you celebrate. Take time to be with the people you care about and to reach out to those you can’t be with.

Happy holidays! See you in January!

I feel a bit guilty, but I kind of laugh at that. We each decide what blog feeds we’re going to subscribe to, what newsletters we’re going to invite into our inboxes. We also have the ability to disinvite both at any time.

Personally, every couple of months, I like to throw a bunch of feeds I think I’m not reading or that I’m not getting anything new or useful from into a folder that I mark as “read” at the beginning of every time I sit down with my aggregator. If I find myself missing a blog, I look in the folder. (It hasn’t happened that often.) At the end of the month, I delete every feed in the folder.

So far, I’ve rid myself of nearly 100 feeds I wasn’t reading, keeping only one that I wasn’t quite done with yet. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything because in many cases, the blogs either covered a topic I was no longer following or the good posts are referenced by far smarter bloggers than me (and I happen to follow those far smarter bloggers).

The nice thing about the way the internet currently works is that we can control what information comes to us when. It’s a series of personal choices, and we have to do what we can to keep it relevant and useful to us.

That’s not to say I’m not a thoughtful person, but my friends can tell you often I sit there with my foot in my mouth because I’ve said something completely innocent that came out not so innocently. I’m an intelligent person, who spends her fair share of time rewinding and trying to say something again because she either flips the words around, or she realizes she just explained something backwards. (My students find this fairly amusing.)

I’ve been told I’m a fairly funny person. The problem is that most of my humor comes out in a sarcastic wit. Did you know I have a sarcastic wit? Probably not, because nearly every post I’ve written anywhere in the past nearly six years (even in my personal blogs) has had a dry sense of someone who forgot to leave the academic behind when she left school several years ago.

I’m not sure how I’m going to approach this problem, to try to inject more of myself into my writing. I’m willing to try, though.

Please be patient with me. This could get a lot worse before it gets better. (I have that habit.)

A couple of weeks ago, I read some newbie guides to Twitter and realized I could actually have some fun with it. While I definitely drop random thoughts and complaints into my Twitter stream (Is that actually a word?), I’m also realizing I can use it for so much more.

I can leave a note to myself. I can take note of what I’ve done and what I’ve learned. I can share my current status on a project. I can let people know what class projects are coming up and if class has been canceled. I’ve even shared when I’ve posted a new article to eHow.

I’m thinking I can use it to show off what books I’ve just read, when I add jewelry to my Etsy shop or new designs to my CafePress shops. The possibilities are almost endless.

Most of them center around the fact that beginners are learners first and foremost, and they exhibit strong learning traits like curiosity and a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them. really, these are traits experts should be cultivating within themselves anyway. It’s part of keeping up with your industry or niche. It’s also how trends and new discoveries are identified. Who wouldn’t want to do those things?

For my part, I just like playing “What if” games with my work, and then experimenting to see if my ideas will work. It sounds like a mad scientist in her lab, but it’s those same traits at play that beginners use to help themselves grow. It’s how I, established in the fields I feel comfortable with, find new ideas to chase.

I’m starting small, just posting one article a week. My first series will be the constellation finders I wrote back in grad school. I don’t know where I’m going to go from there, but I figure I have a couple of weeks to sort that out.

You can keep up with my articles here, and feel free to suggest article ideas to me.

Next on the agenda, trying to be more brave about submitting my short stories. If people think I ought to give my writing a chance, I guess it can’t hurt.

It gives me something to do in between being rejected from jobs, if nothing else.