Creative Website of the Week

​This entry begins a regular blogpost I hope to create weekly, highlighting a creative website that motivates me and helps me to capitalize on my creativity. I hope that you will find it helpful as well. This week I want to share, Brain Pickings a site that is a feast for the eyes and intellect and one that excites me in creative ways. 

The creator of this page describes herself like this: 
"My name is Maria Popova and I’m a reader, writer, interestingness hunter-gatherer, and curious mind at large." 
This is a perfect way to describe what her webpage encompasses. Her original intent in 2006 was to create a weekly email to highlight 5 interesting things she learned about each week that would take only 4 minutes to read. She has commented on the error of her thinking...It definitely takes much longer to read what she shares (and longer to learn about it, compile and share it with readers). I find myself spending a lot of time devouring all she posts weekly, to the point that I could spend hours if I had hours to do so! Much of what she shares intrigues me to the point that I find myself digging deeper and deeper into the topics and links she includes, and sometimes even going beyond to learn more. Her work with Brain Pickings is exactly what I want to do with my life - read, learn and share what I find!
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​Popova describes her website this way:
"Brain Pickings — which remains ad-free and supported by readers — is a cross-disciplinary LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces spanning art, science, psychology, design, philosophy, history, politics, anthropology, and more; pieces that enrich our mental pool of resources and empower combinatorial ideas that are stronger, smarter, richer, deeper and more impactful. Above all, it’s about how these different disciplines illuminate one another to glean some insight, directly or indirectly, into that grand question of how to live, and how to live well."

A recent newsletter highlighted what she considers the best books of 2016. The illustrations from the books she included in her post drew me in and I immediately ordered all of the children's picture books she recommended from my public library so that I could appreciate each one. I like to read the newsletter format of Brain Pickings that comes to my inbox once a week so that I don't miss anything and can explore its contents at my leisure. You can sign up for it on her website if you are interested. I am glad to highlight Brain Pickings as my first creative website of the week on my blog. I am sure you will find something fascinating, new and creativity inducing from this website. 

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