I wish you all a very Happy, Healthy, Successful and Safe New Year. Hope all of your wishes come true this year and beyond.

My only wish for the year 2009 is that it be more peaceful and prosperous than 2008.

This year we had no extravagant celebrations, just watched the ball drop in Times Square (on TV).

How about you?

Do you like to stay at home on New Year’s or are you the type who absolutely has to be out of the house this day?

I use Justin Tadlock’s Options theme which was recommended and set up by my lovely friend Mig who writes Online Public Relations and I’ve been loving the ease to use this theme.  So naturally I visit Justin’s site often to see the showcase of how other people have tweaked the theme.  I don’t thing any of us keeps up with the premium themes business but I am sure most you will find this discussion at Justin’s site on Automatic pulling premium WordPress.org theme directory interesting to follow.

Don’t know if Abraham Piper followed Jim Estill’s advice in a Copyblogger article - Shorter is better - but with this post he has proven that it doesn’t always have to be a  How To or a Best 101 List to get huge number of comments ^_^

When I visited Jonathan Fields’s blog via reader, as I loved the title mba-shmemba, I found Seth Godin’s Squidoo lens post Instead of getting an MBA, consider spending six months in my office.  In Seth’s words:

If you’re stuck in a dead end job in publishing, or if you made a not-so-great choice in getting your career started, or if you thought Wall Street would be a different place, or if you just got laid off, or if you’re not crazy about fretting away the next six months waiting to get fired and you’re not quite ready to start your own gig… this might be the turbolift you were hoping for. Yes, it’s free.
It’s a chance to get off that track and onto a new track, faster and cheaper than most of the alternatives. And it might even be fun.

The only caveat is that you have to apply before December 14th - which is tomorrow!  That offer by Seth Godin got me very excited and for few hours I was playing in my mind how nice it would be if I applied and got chosen for his course..  I’m telling you, that kind of opportunity doesn’t come often.  I live close enough to the city and could definitely see myself enjoying this rare opportunity except I can’t leave my dead end job yet. So I’m willing to wait for the digital version.  

The different perspectives on the comment thread are interesting and a 17 year old guy Cyrusmassoumi also put together an ongoing list of links to people’s Squidoo lens ‘resumes’  who have applied for this guided 6 month apprenticeship.

If you are like me, I am sure you are visiting tons of social media sites all day long but have not seen consistent traffic to your site, then you want to read 10 ways to improve your results with Social Media today. 

Oh, have you been checking out Google’s Countdown to 2009 Search Tips to make your holiday search easier? 

If you have anything interesting to share, feel free to send me the link and I’ll try and publish it here in next Interesting Links post.

photo by thethi

“This winter,

Heartwarming Usability

Breathtaking Beauty

and

Thrilling Flexibility”

Need I say more?   We’ve come a long long way from 2.2 when I started blogging.

My heartfelt thanks to hundreds of talented people who make up the WordPress team.  We are indebted to you guys for making it a breeze for us to express ourselves and make connections.

What a nice way to post on your blog.  Teeni, my friend from Vegetarian Tea Room is a very creative writer who just created a new meme for posting a handwritten entry.  I’ve often been bothered by the fact that I am always on the computer and my handwriting has deteriorated over the years.  Surprisingly my hand began to cramp up in writing just one page of this poem.  teeni, your handwriting is so clean and beautiful.

When was the last time you hand wrote something? (except of course greeting cards).  I am almost embarrassed that my handwriting doesn’t look as smooth as it should be so I’ll be practicing writing with pen a bit more now.

And teeni’s post also reminded me of the Handwritten Blogs that I had come across a while ago and wanted to talk about it but then forgot.  So thanks teeni for reminding of this technique.

Click on the picture to enlarge.  It’s a poem “Longing” By Mathew Arnold.

And here is the text:

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!
Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

After writing that one page poem, I was on a roll and also wrote these quotes from Abraham Lincoln ..I can’t get over how childish my handwriting looks as I am completely out of practice.

Do you handwrite anything anymore?   Would you like to post a handwritten note or letter or an article to your blog and link back to this post.  We’d love to see your handwriting too.

And of course you can add your own favorite quotes in the comments as well