Putting on my Thinking Cap

I’ve been awarded a Thinking Blogger Award by one of my readers, Ryn Tales. It’s an award where bloggers can honour 5 blogs that make them think. The conditions are:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

Ryn Tales herself was nominated for her blog about her warrior princess daughter who was born premature and who is growing up with hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy, reflux, and seizures. It’s a joyful and moving and funny account of their little family’s daily life. I feel very honoured that Fusion View has been chosen as one of the five blogs that make her think.

This is what she wrote about Fusion View:

Fusion View. Yang-May Ooi is a writer, published author, lawyer and all round interesting person. Her blog is eclectic and always presents something new. She posts about writing and getting published, her travels and her technological discoveries related to blogging. I truly enjoy reading her blog as it gets me out of my own head and life and makes me remember to be creative.

Thank you, Ryn Tales, and congratulations to you, too for being a thinking blogger!

The idea of this award made me think (ha, ha). I subscribe to numerous blogs and enjoy reading them on a range of topics from writing, technology, current affairs to motivation, personal stories, marketing, new media and fusion interest. Most of them are informative, many are informative and a lot are great fun and good reading. But which ones make me think. It struck me that I tend to read blogs for light entertainment and news but turn to books for something to really engage deeply with, for ideas that challenge me or for discussion that is thought-provoking or writing that makes me look at something in a different way. Now the challenge for me is choose five blogs that have some or all of these qualities.

I like the idea behind this award because it will make us all review the blogs we follow as readers, asking “Which one makes me think?” As bloggers, it challenges us to perhaps delve a bit deeper the next time we write a post and to think a bit harder when we write so that we can give our readers some more food for thought. I also like the rule that the bloggers who are tagged for an award don’t just rest on their laurels but need to participate in the process of identifying what makes a blog a thinking blog for them, and also in sharing the honour by tagging five other bloggers.

It’s possible just to tag five of your friends, of course, and there may be those bloggers who do that without any further deep thought. But I like the idea of taking this as a serious challenge and am trying to finalise my list of five blogs that make me think. I don’t have them all yet so I propose to give my awards out one at a time over the next few weeks to give me time to consider which bloggers give me good, meaty food for thought.

My first award goes to Will Buckingham for thinkBuddha.org, wayward thoughts on the Buddhist Way. Followers of Fusion View may remember Will - he has recently published a novel Cargo Fever, which is set in Indonesia and draws from Indonesian mythology, He wrote a Guest Blogger post about his experience of being in Indonesia and the process that led him to write the novel. He writes beautifully in thinkBuddha about Buddhism and philosophy, relating it to day-to-day life in a real way. The more thoughtful pieces are interspersed with his personal stories eg about the recent publication of his book and the launch party. Though I am not a Buddhist, I find the ideas he discusses in his blog fascinating and thought-provoking and it’s always good to be reminded of the internal riches that cannot be bought or touched. So, there you go, Will, you’re tagged to find 5 more thinking bloggers!

Update: This post has just been reported on Global Voices Online.