Wet and strange

It has been a very wet and strange July month. Really hoping August brings some sun and relaxed moments with it!

The rain insists on pouring every now and then, and it has been three weeks since I put my feet on my suspended garden. As a miracle, on a Wednesday evening, the sun decided to shine for a nice barbecue with my in-laws. They are a source of inspiration and happiness. Lots of laugh!

And this brings me to the reason of this post. Inspiration.

I find it very difficult to find my "muse" on my daily life. Its so much stress, and run... the only thing I want to do when I get on silence is to arrange a baby-sitter to my mind (= TV) and let everything go.

Luckily the world is full of people that somehow, leave their ideas around to inspire others. They make me move my ass and write a post. The media is not always the same. It can be a book, a podcast, a blog or a website.

I am listing here a couple of "inspiration sources". Maybe you can also enjoy them?

• For the spiritual matters the winner is Eckhart Tolle. His teachings and ideas have answered my spiritual questions. When I feel overwhelmed by the matter questions, I listen to him. I feel safe.

• For the emotional matters, I have learned a lot with Michael Brown and his emotional cleansing method. It takes a while but it goes deep and cleans your mind of all clutter you have put in there during the years.

• David duChemin is also an inspiration source, in the photographic realm. I am quite sure David doesn't know anything about Eckhart or Michael, but David teaches the same lessons, and he uses a camera to be present. 

• And her name is Jasmine Star, and she is  someone I read every day. Her images are stunning and her thoughts about photography absurdly simple and direct to the point. She doesn't mystify, she doesn't make any "clube of the photographers". She is open, honest and direct. My style.

• Another inspiring woman on my blog life is The Pioneer Woman.  She balances a hundred and seventy plates on a stick and can write as I wish I could! (I will never do it by the way. English is far from being my native speaking language, as if I had one). Visit her culinary blog and delight yourself. The recipes are pretty American and can bring a lot of variety to our daily North-European kitchen (= potatoes, vegetables, meat).

• Jamie Oliver is another inspiration. When I get back home and I think that I need to cook and I have NO IDEA of what to do, I page his "Jamie in 30 minutes" and I am ready for the start, even if it takes one hour. 

• Now space for a website. 1x is something I look at every single day just to glimpse what are the big guys in the photography world doing. The photographs are so beautiful. Sometimes too manipulated for my taste but yet, well manipulated. 

• A good Oracle book. I am reading the Oracle Data Guard 11g. Tomorrow I will be instantiating my first Data Guard 11g database for testing purposes and this is something I am really looking forward to to. I wonder if I would be able to sleep at night.

I am being unfair on my list. It is much bigger than that. I did not mention all my girlfriends, here and back in Brasil, from who I learn so much every day. They mirror me so well.

I didn't mention my three boys, a reason to float back to Haarlem every day with a big smile on my face, being sure I am the most happy woman on face of earth. But don't tell them... they will think they don't need to be nice to me anymore.

But this is a subject to another post right? So much to say!