ONLINE READING THE WRITE WAY

My online reading habit is a search for blog-worthy material.

Fortunately there’s a lot of scrolls between what’s blog-worthy and what’s not, and as every writer knows, that’s where the good stories hide, the little stories behind the biggies.

Those are the stories that bring focus on the larger picture.

Not everyone has reading goals like a book a week, a book a month, or one a year, so why not a story?

Reading is the goal?

Back in my fifties and sixties I was convinced going to the gym with a solid workout plan turned back time.

I had the same revelation training for Hood to Coast when I was forty-nine.

Sometimes an age-old activity like lifting things and moving around brings back the flower of youth.

I explained this to my Mom, a pep-talk to get her lifting and moving around.

It didn’t work. She thought I was kooky. Imagine that.

But I was right back then and I’m right now.

It’s an age-old story in itself, the youth imploring the elderly to pump the brakes on morality highway, or at least get in the slow lane.

Those are the moments I look for in online reading, and here’s why:

 

The Big Picture Story

Talking about movement and what pops up on my social scroll (twitter) but some guy who sleeps every night with cheetahs with a note to remind readers that cheetahs are the fastest land animals on earth.

Sleeping cheetahs were just above a post about The Cheetah.

Tyeek Hill’s environment is among the sharks and piranha that want a bite of him, but that’s the life of a celebrity athlete.

After that it’s a man feeding fish off a dock that goes all wrong.

If you see what I see it’s the classic man vs nature in the world they find themselves in.

What comes next is an aspirational slice of life for every college graduation across the nation.

 

Everyone has a picture of leadership and what it means based on personal experience.

If that sounds right then we can agree that leadership needs a goal?

It begins with setting an example, setting the bar of what is and what is not the right thing, the correct way, the best decision.

My dad had been a Marine combat veteran in the Korean War and even he knew when he’d met his match in my mom.

She grew up with two little brothers ten years younger than her, when it came time to handling her own hoys the old man stepped aside.

Their’s was a fluid leadership style.

After them came teachers and coaches and sergeants and bosses.

Now I’ve got a wife and kids and grandkids and friends leading the way. I look for them in my online reading.

Call it reflective reading.

I think of them in what I write every day.

You may not become a better person for the time spent reading BoomerPdx: The Blog, but there’s still a chance.

 

The Roots Of Knowledge

I asked my wife her definition of The Roots of Knowledge.

She said she’d have to think about it while she watched the U.S. Women’s Open.

I heard her yell, “Get in the hole,” so I know she’s on it.

I googled it up while I waited.

 

“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.

Doubt comes in the wake of knowledge as a state of vacillation between two contrary or contradictory views; … the business of doubt is one of auditing the mind’s accounts about reality … “

 

There’s a difference between wonder and doubt?

I wonder if the bridge is safe vs I doubt if the bridge is safe.

One you would cross sooner than the other.

Do you wonder if online reading is harming someone you know, getting them all twisted up?

Steer them to boomerpdx and we’ll help straightened them out.

If you click links and Harvard shows up, it’s on purpose.

I googled “free harvard classes online.”

This turned up when I did the same for Portland State.

One answers the question with free online classes, the other defines the process.

It’s a motherlode of blog-worthy material, which is good for everyone.