Bring 'em Home

Today's song title is Bring 'Em Home (Edward Sharpe Vs. T.I. Vs. Lady Gaga Vs. Beyonce) by D.veloped. I am a big fan of these mash-ups, if you couldn't tell.  I strongly recommend this one.  Also, I'm going to put random puppy photos in this entry to break the text up, and to showcase that Beans has finally figured out that there's an "outside of the car." 

What is this tomfoolery.

 She isn't very amused by it, though.

Zzz

You know, the internet is really a wonderful thing.  You can learn almost anything if you google and search around.  Yes, the downside is that retentive memory skills don't do as well when you can look something up on your smartphone, but I think that the sheer potential of learning counterbalances that.  Or, more succinctly, the world before google.

The reason this is on my mind is because I've been spending the last few weeks researching.  Researching my new company, researching furnishing an apartment and buying a car, researching organizational tools, and researching light gardens.  And My Little Pony, but we won't be talking about that.  Anyway, it boggles my mind that with just a couple of books and the internet I now know so much more than I did before, and I'd like to pass that on to the lovely people stopping by my blog.

Tell me more!

First of all, here is the Aerogarden.

It's a hydroponic garden, so no dirt beyond those little plug things in the seed planter.  It runs on water, oxygen, and light, is completely automated, and you can grow anything in it.  Aerogarden has pre-made seed kits, but you can also make your own.  I'm enjoying it a lot, and it's super easy.  Right now I'm growing various types of lettuce and cherry tomatoes.  If you like gardening but you don't have the time or space to do anything more ambitious then the Aerogarden may be a good alternative.  It's a chunk of money to plunk down at first, but keep an eye out for the sales that run on the website fairly regularly.  Also, the lettuce at least can supposedly be harvested for 4-6 months, so think of the money you'll save on not buying supermarket salads anymore!

In the other corner we've got Mindbloom, a handy little site I found on LifeHacker.  Basically you've got your tree, and each leaf represents a part of your daily life, i.e. finance, creativity, health, relationships, etc.  Your tree needs water and light to grow, and you have to charge your sun and raincloud before you can tend to your tree.  You charge the sun by finding inspiration (either uploading your own or accessing Mindbloom's database) through pictures, quotes, and music.  You charge your raincloud, and this is the cool part, by setting up activities and completing them.  Mindbloom has a set of possible activities, such as "add a contact on LinkedIn" for the career section or "read for pleasure" in the creativity section, but the really useful part is you can add in your own activities!  Plus, you can schedule them ahead of time and have the reminder repeat daily, weekly, or whatever you like.  So, for example, I could have under my career heading "finish one chapter of Excel 2010 Step by Step" and have it repeat every day.  Then I get a handy little reminder every day, a reward when I complete it, and a visual log of all that work I'm doing for my career.

I think that visual aspect is the best part of Mindbloom.  You can look at how you're dividing your time through what you're accomplishing and adjust accordingly.  Maybe your health leaf is looking a little puny but your creative leaf is humongous.  Maybe you'll put of that reading for pleasure or listening to music activity and take a walk instead.  Maybe your career leaf is thriving nicely, but your spirituality leaf is looking a little sad.  You can take some time to meditate and alleviate stress before it kicks you in the behind.

If you join Mindbloom let me know, because you can help inspire and support your friends as well, and we all need a little helping hand sometimes to get us out of our four hour Project Runway marathon of anti-productivity.