To my Twitter friends that know me as CrochetBlogger from Crochet Concupiscence … this is my other blog. This project isn’t specifically crochet but is intended to serve as inspiration for crochet, for writing, for life …

I have been struggling this week, lacking inspiration and motivation, getting ideas and then feeling too tired to implement them. I’m not quite sure what is causing it. Maybe it’s because my sister was here for a great visit and then she left and now I’m a little lonely. Maybe it’s because I’m a third of the way through the draft of a book and that’s when I tend to hit a slump and every word becomes a struggle. Maybe it’s the weather or the season or the time of year … I’m not sure. But what I do know is that the usual tricks aren’t working and I am in dire need of a project that can re-inspire me and re-invigorate me and re-focus my attention. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years it’s that if my mind is going crazy reeling around on itself in unhappiness then what it needs is to be occupied with something.

I do have projects going on (like that book, of course) but I needed something new today, something immediate and different and yet easily do-able. Something that would get me out of the house but not require me to spend a lot of money or energy. So I decided to start a project I’d been planning on starting for awhile – the task of reading new books on topics that I normally ignore. I always get the same types of books (memoirs by women going through some type of major life experience, non-fiction about writing and crochet, selective fiction). While this is wonderful, it’s not really broadening my horizons or challenging my mind or inspiring my life to read the same types of things again and again. I need a fresh spark.

So I headed to Twitter and asked my awesome Twitter friends to Tweet me some random 3-digit numbers. Then I took a list of the ten numbers I’d received and headed to the library. The idea was to head to the Dewey decimal numbers with those numbers I got from Twitter and get whatever books I found with those numbers on them, no discriminating. This served the immediate purpose of getting me out of the house and focused on a little adventure to see what I would find at the library. And it serves a longer-term purpose of providing me with new reading and research material to help inspire new things in my thoughts and my life.

Here’s what I came home with:

1. A book on The Buffalo Soldier Regiment. Thanks @Pomquat for Dewey decimal number 356!
2. History of Japanese Community Party. Thanks to @nerdJERK for #329.
3. Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became. This one is about the women of Brearley School class of 1968 and how they were affected by being born in the 50′s but going through the 60′s/70′s cultural revolution. Thanks @offgridlife for Dewey decimal number 356!
4. The Gardens of California. Thanks @Lacy61 for #712.
5. Mind by John R. Searle. Relates to philosophy. Thanks @crochetmomma3 for #128.
6. Vindication of Love.: Reclaiming Romance in the 21st Century. About how society has a cynical, jaded perspective and how to bring romance back to our view of the world. Also #128 from @crochetmomma3.
7. Lives of the English Poets. Thanks @jamietoohey for #928.
8. Stargazing with a Telescope as well as Human Vision and the Night Sky. Thanks @CrochetAllDay for number 522.
9. A Smithsonian book all about shells as well as a book called Octopus and Squid. Thanks @adanishheart for #594.

Tags: books, reading, reading inspiration, reading project