Brain Pickings

The magnificent Maria Popova describes herself as an interestingness hunter-gatherer and, in words that I relate to oh so well to, a Sherpa of curiosities. Her website Brainpickings is one of the highlights of my reading week! It is one of the few I actually subscribe to and the newsletter that comes each Sunday provides a week worth of interesting reading and links.  She says,The core ethos behind Brain Pickings is that creativity is a combinatorial force: It’s our ability to tap into the mental pool of resources — ideas, insights, knowledge, inspiration — that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extraordinary new ways. In order for us to truly create and contribute to culture, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these ideas and build new ideas — like LEGOs. The more of these building blocks we have, and the more diverse their shapes and colors, the more interesting our creations will be.I loved reading about the seven lessons Maria has learnt in the seven years of reading, writing and living Brain Pickings.She constantly turns up interesting writings, thoughts and observations on living the creative life and an absolute cracker is here.She didn't get me onto Brene but loves her too and that's a good endorsement in my eyes. Read here where she introduces one of the books that has had a truly profound effect on every single day of my life and how I live it.She finds fabulous writing about living a meaningful life, the kind of stuff that makes you want to stop reading and go out and live it. So...stop reading, go!