Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

(Photo credit: Ross McGregor)

Hi and welcome to the Readers’ Café – a place to gather and to share. Tonight we’re at a café situated on Lake Maggiore on the border of Switzerland and Italy.

Come on in and help yourself to a beverage of your choice. Then sit back, enjoy the summer evening and join in the conversation by posting comments below. Hit your vacation browser’s REFRESH button to see new comments as others join in the conversation. All that I ask is that you respect others and keep it relatively family-friendly. Also, keep in mind that this is a public space, so share what you feel comfortable sharing publicly.

Nothing goes with summer better than reading a good book, whether it is while sitting on the beach, slathered in sunscreen, or sitting under a shady tree with a cool drink close at hand, or, my favourite, propped up in bed with a cool breeze gently blowing in the window. What could be more lazy and luxurious?

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
~ Joseph Addison

Today’s question is:

What are you reading this summer? (Or, if you prefer your books as moving pictures, what movie did you see this summer that particularly touched you?) Why would you recommend it to someone else?

Darrell and I recently joined the millions who have watched The Secret and The Pursuit of Happyness. I would highly recommend both movies if you’re seeking motivation to take your life to the next level. However, although The Secret was intriguing, we both felt it was missing or glossing over the details. Parts were a little too good to believe (at the moment).

The Pursuit of Happyness showed the dirt and grit along the journey that The Secret lacked. Here are some of life’s rules when pursuing your happiness:

1. Surround yourself with positive people and influences. Not surprisingly, Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith) sold the remaining portable bone density scanners once his negative, unsupportive wife left.
2. Do whatever it takes to reach your dream. How Chris juggled his parental duties with his studying, while never quite sure where he and his young son would sleep that night, was inspiring.
3. Don’t dwell on you’re the negative of your situation. Never once did Chris openly bemoan being homeless or broke. Instead, he focused on what needed to be done to get ahead. (Although, a supportive network may have eased his load.)
4. Don’t listen to others when they tell you that you can’t do something. Of gosh, don’t I know this one! The countless times I proven people wrong when they said I couldn’t accomplish a task. Had my parents taken a professional’s advice and institutionalized me because I wouldn’t amount to any thing, I would have ended up at this dreadful place. What a waste of human potential that would have been.
5. Work smarter, not harder. During his broker internship, Chris found that by not hanging up the phone between calls, he saved eight minutes per day. He also found other ways to work most efficiently and productively, which, eventually, landed him the job.

What lessons have you learned along the road while pursuing your happiness?

(Photo credit: Janet Burgess)

Hello and welcome to the Readers’ Café – a place to gather and to share. Because it is another beautiful summer evening, the patio is also open. Make the most of summer while it lasts!

Thank you for coming. I invite you to help yourself to a beverage of choice, get comfy and join in the conversation by posting comments below. Hit your vacation browser’s REFRESH button to see new comments as others join in the conversation. All that I ask is that you respect others and keep it relatively family-friendly. Also, keep in mind that this is a public space, so share what you feel comfortable sharing publicly.

If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.
~Walt Disney

Today’s question is:

What are your dreams for your future?

Following the successful opening of Readers’ Café two weeks ago, its doors will open again tomorrow, Wednesday, August 1st, 7-10pm Eastern Daylight Time. Readers’ Café is a place to gather and to share. Who knows who will show up or where the conversation will lead us. So, please join us for either the whole evening or pop in amidst your other duties. Hope to see you right here tomorrow.

Readers’ Café will be held the first and third Wednesdays of each month. Mark it on your calendar.

Until the café’s doors open on Wednesday evening, please vote for me so I may win the opportunity to be paid to blog for a year. Being paid to blog would enable me to focus more on blogging, rather than needing to find other ways to pay the bills.

I would like to request your support with these three small steps:

1. Go vote!
2. Remind yourself to vote daily until January 1st, 2008 (ie a daily appointment in Outlook or a Post-It note near your computer screen)
3. Spread the word by telling your friends and, if you use social bookmarks, using the icons below to bookmark this post.

Thanks so much! I’m currently #4. With your help, I can reach #1!

(Photo credit: Richard Styles)

Now that I’m wearing my butterfly AFO (ankle-foot orthotic) daily, I had to buy knee high socks. I haven’t worn knee highs since high school, when I had to wear my metal braces. My cute ankle socks are now shoved to the back of the drawer.

Between the clumsy plastic AFO, the knee highs, the black, men’s size 7 chunky shoes (needed to accommodate the AFO), and my baggy jeans (try finding fitted jeans with elasticized waists!), my bottom half is rather gorpy-looking. I’m now on the hunt for ultra feminine tops to counterbalance the gorpy bottom. And, I am hoping that we don’t get another hot spell this summer because I’m not yet confident enough to wear this ensemble with shorts! AFO surely stands for Anti-Fashion Objects.

In July’s O Magazine, Martha Beck shares research on the “spotlight effect”: the feeling that all eyes are upon us and, hence, to avoid embarrassment, we don’t live our lives to the fullest. Research found that “the spotlight effect makes most of assume we’re getting about twice as much attention as we actually are.” (Being in a wheelchair with a significant physical disability, am I imagining twice as many stares and whispers than I am actually receiving?)

Martha advises that we double everything – raising both hands to ask a question, pausing twice as long for dramatic effect, eating two servings of a delicious dessert – to feel liberated and to live life large. I wonder: would I become more confident if I had balanced gorpiness? If I wore two braces, would I be more apt to wearing shorts? Would the AFO then become an Almost Fashionable Object?