Month: October 2014

Where to Get Photos for Your Blog Posts

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Here’s an update on sites that provide domain-free images which you can use on your blog posts and other projects. There are many other sites, but these are the ones that are absolutely free and user friendly: Registration is not necessary and no payments are required; easy and hassle-free downloading. However, even if they’re free to use, it would be nice of you to attribute! Here they are:   morgueFile   By Qedem1611 Although the name sounds gruesome, morgueFile is so easy to use and provides thousands of domain-free photos. Just click on the homepage and you’ll easily find the search box. Type the kind of photo you need and voila! You have instant access to lots of pictures.   Photo Pin photo credit: deb*711 via photopin cc What I love about Photo Pin is that you can get an instant preview of the images. Remember, though, that when there is no preview for an image, that photo requires a fee. Only those that you can preview are domain free. Download is easy and there is an HTML box for …

Go Ahead, Blog! It’s Good for You!

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I know blogging is good for me. It gives me lots of opportunities to write. Writing happens to be one of the biggest loves of my life, which is why blogging has become a very important part of my life. Now I’m thinking that it could be one of the reasons why I remain healthy. I look forward to blogging. I feel good many hours after I blog. It’s good medicine for the doldrums, a perfect way to ward off depression, and a great way to share. Scientists have long ago determined that when we write to express our thoughts and feelings, we do many good things to our body.  Writing has been known to improve memory and sleep. It boosts the immune system and aids in healing in people who have had surgery, or are suffering from AIDS or cancer. According to the American Scientist, since 2008, scientists have been studying the neurological effects of blogging. Some hospitals are even hosting blogs authored by patients on their websites. Nancy Morgan, who is the lead author of the Oncologist study explains why blogging helps …

Writing through the Pain

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“Rosanna, How are you even able to write and post? No matter how many pictures I see, I know I cannot fathom what you and your country are going through. I pray for you,” a fellow blogger, Nancy, commented after reading a blog post I wrote that was filled with pictures of the devastation that Typhoon Haiyan brought to the third biggest group of islands in the Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan, a super typhoon and one of the strongest typhoons ever to hit land, devastated the Visayas last November 8, 2014. I was at that time participating in NaBloPoMo as part of the Yeah Write group and even I was surprised when I was able to pull through the blogging challenge. I never missed a post. Not only that, I wrote more posts about Haiyan in another blog and in social media. I could not stop writing – it was as though the death of more than 7,000 of my countrymen and the uncertain fate of thousands of people left homeless and traumatized by Haiyan ignited a flame in me …

What’s up for Non-Fiction Writers in November?

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The blogosphere is abuzz with the upcoming NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November, and what a surprise – there were 609 novelists from the Philippines who joined this writing challenge last year. Since I am not a fiction writer, it makes me wonder how people can whip up thousands of words in a day while concocting plots and creating characters. An amazing feat indeed! There is also  a writing challenge for non-fiction writers every November. This lesser-known and less intense writing challenge for non-fiction writers is called WNFN/NaNonFiWriMo (Write Non-Fiction in November/National Non-Fiction Writing Month). WNFN/NaNonFiWriMo is the brainchild of  Nina Amir, who blogs at Write Non-fiction Now! Amir explains why she came up with this writing challenge:”In October 2007, a year after I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I asked myself, “What’s a nonfiction writer supposed to do during November?” Searching around in the NaNoWriMo forums, I discovered NaNoRebels. Participating as a rebel might be fine for some nonfiction writers, but not for me. Although I have a rebellious nature, I wanted to participate …

Sunday’s Blessings

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Originally posted on A Soultender's Journal:
Wabi-sabi is an aesthetic of poverty and aloneness, imperfection and austerity, affirmation and melancholy. Wabi-sabi is the beauty of the withered, weathered, tarnished, scarred, intimate, coarse, earthly, evanescent, tentative, ephemeral. . . Wabi-sabi is a broken earthenware cup in contrast to a Ming vase, a branch of autumn leaves in contrast to a dozen roses, a lined and bent old woman in contrast to a model, a mature love as opposed to infatuation, a bare wall with peeling paint in contrast to a wall hung with beautiful paintings. –Crispin Sartwell in  Six Names of Beauty ? Textured with isobel and 2810

Possibilities Often Missed

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I almost missed seeing these fruits on a tree. I was walking a path that led to a tourist facility, and like everyone else, was focused on getting there. The sideshows presented by the trees went unnoticed.. My attention was drawn to these fruits only when three boys began to play beside the tree. Life dishes out so many opportunities that are ripe with possibilities – for peace, joy, comfort, solace…all the good things that could nourish the soul.  But we often miss seeing these opportunities because we are too caught up with the frivolities of the material world. Nature has so much to offer us, to teach us. May we all find more moments and images that would help us slow down and enjoy life in a more soulful way.

Sunday”s Blessings

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Originally posted on A Soultender's Journal:
Concentrate on the goal of meditation. Do not listen with your ear, but listen with your mind; not with your mind but listen with your breath. Let hearing stop with your ear, let the mind stop with its images. Breathing means to empty oneself and to wait for Tao. -Chuang Tzu ? Think of it – we are being told that through breathing, we can awaken to a transcendent level of consciousness and merge with the universe. What could be easier than breathing? Who doesn’t do it? Yet we are afraid to breathe – to really let the universe in and ourselves out. To do so, we must give up control. We must stop breathing and let the universe breathe through us. We must trust things as they are. So it is with cultivating the Tao in every aspect of our lives. We must stop doing and let the universe do us. -Laurence G. Boldt in the Tao of Abundance ? ?

When the Writer in You Begins to Scream

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I have not blogged for three weeks and have been bumping up old posts to keep this blog going. Although I stopped blogging for a while, I joined Wordprsess.com’s Blogging 101.  This post is my attempt at fulfilling one of the assignments: Today’s assignment: build your storyteller’s toolbox by publishing a post in another format or a style you’ve never used before. Most of my posts in this blog have been full of words. So, for a change, I will now use more images and less words to get my message across. The writer in me had been shouting lately, wanting to do more writing aside from the early morning journaling that I do everyday, the once a week blog post I write, and the daily attempts at writing a few pages for a book I intended to self-publish. My journalist persona put up a tantrum, demanding to write feature articles. I believe that when a part of you begins to demand attention, the best thing to do is But with a heavy workload, I couldn’t, for …

Sunday’s Blessings

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Originally posted on A Soultender's Journal:
Life presents us with many paths along our journey. Sometimes the pathways are lovely and make us feel good. Some pathways are are rugged and look hard to traverse; while others are just – well, ok. When we are presented with a new pathway, life asks us to make decisions. Do we proceed along the path we are currently treading or do we stop and take the new one being presented to us? It is almost always easier to go down the familiar road, but the fact that we are being presented with a new pathway means that we are up to the challenge of exploring a new journey, a new way of Being. The next time a new pathway appears before you, know that you are being presented with the prospect of a new journey – and that you have everything you need to face the challenges presented by the new path. Everything you need is within you. ?

Writing on the Fabric of One’s Soul

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Dear Readers,  I am on my third week of sabbatical from blogging. Bumping up a post written last year, about taking time out from writing: In 2004,  I decided to leave a burgeoning career as a feature writer to hearken to a spiritual calling. For almost a decade I stopped writing professionally and relied solely on journaling as my way of writing. It was not easy to leave behind a career I had worked so hard to establish; and it took sometime to accept the fact that I was no longer a writer – and perhaps would never be one, again. During that period, journaling was the only writing activity I had.  It was a welcome avenue, but it could never equal the joy of being a feature writer for an international magazine.  Because of the absence of deadlines, there were days, even months when I abandoned journaling altogether.  I didn’t write a word. Yet, it didn’t bother me.  Abandoning a writing career made it easy for me to accept the days when the words would …