Brad Isaac posted an excellent article on his Achieve It! blog about getting answers to life's toughest questions.

What really struck me about the post was that I could see myself (a lot in the last few weeks) making a mess of things in my life by asking the wrong question and getting frustrated by the answer that I got back. I'd suggest reading the post for yourself, but I'll briefly go over what stuck in my head - I know I'm not doing the article justice, but bear with me.

• When you need an answer to a question, be direct and actually ask the question. Don't over-generalize what you're asking, because the answer you get will reflect that.
• Be prepared to take in the answer that you get. Make sure you remember it.. write it down. Getting the perfect answer doesn't matter if you just forget it.
• But most importantly, use your new information wisely. If you're looking for advice, and you get it, you need to act on it. You need to be ready to act on it right away. Once again, the best answer is meaningless if you don't do anything with it.

It's simple. It makes sense. But for some reason I haven't been doing it, and looking at the way I've handled things before, it might actually be a change that I need to actively work at.

Tip Monkies has posted some quick keyboard shortcuts for the WordPress post editor.

I was unaware of them.. and figure they might shave a few seconds of posting here and there. I'm sure there are more beyond those few, I'll look into it later and either update this post, or include them in a new post.

I hate to say it, but this little guy might be cuter than many tree kangaroos

by takenzen

See more at the Flickr Red Panda Group
And check out this video of a couple of red pandas.. it's worth it.

No good blogs (or bad ones for that matter) are created without some sort of reason… some underlying goal that the soon-to-be blogger may not even realize. Without a good foundation, I think it's only obvious as to whether or not the project will be able to succeed. I hope my foundation is strong.

I find that many of the blogs that I read are, for the most part, simply rehashing articles or linking to posts from other blogs. If I see something interesting on one, I'm bound to see it 2-3 more times within the next few days. It's a bit frustrating, but it's an easy way to build up the content and bring in more readers. I think I'll probably end up doing quite a bit of that. Hopefully my selections of things to post about will be helpful or entertaining for a few of you out there, but if not, at least I have a centralized "journal" to keep track of things that I find interesting.

I have a strong interest in personal development articles. Most of them seem to point out things that are common sense, or things that we've been told all our lives, but reading through those ones can still give a different perspective on a situation and help to sort out any thoughts that need sorting. Every once-in-awhile you read something that changes the way you think, not always for the better, but something that helps or will help get further down the path of life and hopefully closer to the ultimate goal of happiness. Those are what I look for.. they're not easy to find. Having just removed myself from a messy and unhealthy relationship, I wish I had kept track of what I read that helped me through it. I went from being a mess to realizing that I was holding on to something that wouldn't make me happy and wasn't where I really wanted to be - a conclusion that I don't think I would have come to by just sitting around and being depressed.

My second major area of focus, right now, is on being a responsible part of this planet. Doing things like finding ways to use less energy, to create less waste, and to just decrease my overall footprint. This is an important one to me. There's a lot more that I can do, and a lot more that others can do to help. We need to do what we can to keep the environment safe and healthy for ourselves, and for the future generations.. if we don't, then we've failed.. it's that simple.

Now that I'm pretty strapped for cash, money saving ideas, cheap/easy/fast/healthy meals, and stuff like that are probably going to surface on a regular basis. And then there are the articles about boosting productivity - those are sometimes helpful.

That's it for now. If you're reading this, then you're probably not finding whatever it is you were trying to search for.. but if you want to drop a comment anyway, any suggestions for content, or just interesting comments, are always appreciated.