Facelift 2016

Friends, as I reflect on the close of 2015, a year that served me up a cocktail of experiences that required substantial personal growth, one of things I can say for certain is that embracing and prioritizing opportunities for creative outlet like the reflecting pool has been a positive force in my life.  I've blogged several times this year about the idea of making things and acting on our own creative energies, and the ways in which social and technological developments sometimes dissuade us from acting on our impulses to do awesome things, or even inhibit us from tapping into those impulses in the first place; writing posts, and in turn receiving interaction and encouragement from visitors to the blog has helped development my sense of accountability and investment in this creative project, so for that I extend to anyone who might be reading this now my heartfelt thanks.  Whatever you think about it, I appreciate the fact that you took the time to click and investigate further.

In that spirit, I'd like to announce several exciting changes that will be coming to the reflecting pool this year: monthly themes, guest blogging, and creative fiction!

Themes

In keeping with TFP's original mission to dive beyond superficial observation into deeper explorations of the forces that shape our world and our daily experiences, posts each month will explore various aspects of a single, overarching theme.  Look for sustained analyses on topics like racial identity, economics, spirituality, and more; to get things cranking, we're going to start off with a family of issues that affects pretty much everyone on earth in some way: patriarchy.

Guest Contributions

As mentioned above, one of the richest aspects of my experience as an author on TFP has been the opportunity to expand the conversations started on the blog with readers in digital (and old-fashioned) conversations, and that got me to thinking: perhaps there is room to incorporate that multi-faceted development of understanding that grows from multiple intelligent minds turning their independent gazes in the same direction into TFP's digital space.   To that end, I'm excited to announce that I'll be posting articles from guest writers directly onto the front page here several times per month.  There are no specific qualifications to make a contribution.  If you're interested in the monthly topic and you've got something to say, get in contact to discuss becoming a guest author!

Fiction Friday!

Lastly, an exciting content update: 2016 will see the beginning of a regular feature on TFP, a weekly short story post on Fiction Friday.  Tune in each Friday to stoke your imagination and see the bizarre places that my mind is prepared to go once I give it free reign to invent and explore.

It's a New Year people!  Let's all go out and do something awesome!