Thursday Thirteen, I'm Not Quite Sure What Edition

Today's Thursday Thirteen doesn't seem to have a focus. I just don't have an inspiration for it, but I really want to do it because I love the comments and the connections I make with these. As I free-write this, I think I've come up with a topic. Thirteen ways I get inspiration for blog posts.

Here we go.

1. The Wall Street Journal. It's the one paper I will never be without, even if it is just the online edition. Every morning I log on and see what's going on. I can usually find something to blog about for those days like Mondays and Tuesdays where I don't have a themed blog post I usually do.

2. No Pasaran. Their posts are typically short and pithy and make me think about longer responses. I find myself leaving the gang over there long comments that I come back and turn into blog posts here.

3. YouTube. If I'm sick or way behind schedule or just totally uninspired, I drift over to YouTube and root around for something fun. I consider this cheating, but there you have it. :-)

4. More coffee. I look forward to that brief, chemical rush in the morning where all my synapses are firing and the creative juices are flowing. The kids aren't up yet and I can just sit down and start typing. Sometimes, like right now, I'm surprised at what comes out of the keyboard.

5. Uh oh. I'm only on number 5 and I'm running out of ideas. Well, I also go and see what Hugh Hewitt has to say. There's usually something good over there to add to and work with.

6. I get some inspirations from work. I am in corporate marketing, so I get to see the genesis and development of corporate strategies up close. Like sausage, it's best not to watch how they're made. Most of it seems to be forced on us by people who don't really understand what it is we do. The result is like living in a Dilbert cartoon. The lessons learned are fun to blog about especially when combined with snarky analysis.

7. My digital camera can provide inspiration. I am truly blessed to live where I do. I get great sunsets almost every day looking out over Mission Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Snap a few photos and come up with a caption or two and you're done.

8. This is getting much harder now. Hmmm. I'm blaming low blood sugar. Maybe I just don't have that diverse of a set of inspirational sources. OK, Here's one. My garden. I'm struggling to landscape an entire yard that is nothing but dirt on the narrowest shoestring imaginable. I'm growing a lot of my plants from seed. I've used this blog as a comic relief from that effort.

9. Five to go. Travel. I get some of my inspiration from travel. I fly a lot for business, typically back to Virginia. Sometimes I get odd bits of time here and there to explore parts of wherever I am and end up with a nice blog post and some photos.

10. Blog carnivals are another source of inspiration. In addition to doing Thursday Thirteens, I like to encourage links and traffic by participating in the Friday Ark, the Carnival of the Cats, the Carnival of the Capitalists, the Catholic Carnival and the Virginia Blog Carnival.

11. Current events. I've tried to keep the political posts to about 50% or less on this blog, but there are times when I just can't resist it.

12. The news media. With a few exceptions, I think they're dreadful. I do a weekly World of Good post and in the process I've found just how commonplace good deeds are. If you watch the mainstream media, you see nothing but evil. They spread the evil by over-reporting it.

13. Last one! I made it! Or did I? Hmm. I'm just not inspired to do the last one...

:-)