April 1: Get Your Internet Game Face On

If you're internet savvy (or if you're not and getting there), you know already that not everything you read online is valid. You need to check sources, hoaxes, and any other reason to tear silliness to ribbons.

Get your internet game face on.

Today is April Fool's Day.

While you should always check backgrounds and sources, April 1 is notorious for being a source of bedlam for the internet world: anyone who has a computer can post anything on the internet. And while most of these April Fool's bits of humor are not remotely malicious, they will make you look like a fool if you read something and say OMG! I have to pass this on to everyone I know!

Credible sources - including Google - have been party to such tomfoolery.

The lesson on April 1 is: Do your research and wait until tomorrow. Then, if still credible, do your email forwarding then.

Save the servers! No April 1st email forwards!

Inspiration: Life!

It's been a while since I've been able to push some serious inspiration your way, and I was outside this weekend doing some yardwork and I just had to pause. Focused on mowing and stripping my deck and my tunnel vision on those aspects of "get it done," something told me to listen.

At first I heard the neighborhood: kids playing, laughing, cars moving, airplanes overhead. Then the insects and birds and squirrels: chirping, humming, running. And then the wind through the trees, blowing the leaves; in a way, they were speaking.

I opened my other senses and saw the squirrels and the clouds and the trees swaying in the breeze. I smelled barbeque on the grill, wood burning in someone's outside pit, the freshness of cut grass. And I wanted to touch it all.

It was a rare lesson - but more, a reminder - to keep it all open. And I never want to forget.

So if you're stuck in the box of a cube or your office all day, if you've got your eye on the prize of goal fulfillment: STOP.

All around you there is life. All around you, something else is happening. Take a moment to appreciate that wonder that exists all the time, that wonder we often block out because it's not the focus of our day or our task. Never forget that there is "awesome" all around us and we need only to pause to appreciate it, take it in, and see the magic of which we're all a part.

Take joy in life!