If you are of a certain age, you may remember a time when everything you needed to know fit neatly into 26 alphabetized volumes.

Not so much these days.

The amount of information available, at our literal fingertips, is overwhelming.  Research a rash and you’ve got lyme disease, scabies, pancreatic cancer or perhaps just dry skin.  Google some advice on how to treat a rash and you need to go gluten-free, caffeine free, wine free, go live in yurt in Nepal and only wear yak hair sweaters.  (Yes, I have a rash).  Sometimes the amount of information is so vast and consuming that it’s best to just unplug the router and go to bed with a good book, the old-fashioned kind.  There is a lot of pap, crap and nonsense out there, but there’s also some great stuff.  Blogging has given a virtual voice to many talented, creative, and insightful folk.  I typically visit a lot of blogs in the course of a day.  Sometimes it is just a brief glimpse to see if it is something I find interesting, sometimes I stick around and navigate my way around someone else’s weird thought trains and am amused, enlightened, and entertained.  I may only follow a limited number, but I check in to a lot more.

Where is this going, you may ask?  About a month ago on Facebook there was a chain status making the rounds called Creative Pay it Forward.  In a moment of questionable sanity, perhaps too much wine, I signed on.  Of course now I am left with having to come up with 5 creative projects at some point in the calendar year.  Luckily, my five guinea pigs were mostly family members, so if it comes down to the wire, I can mail off a five dollar bill in a cheesy Hallmark card Nana style and be done with it.  But it got me to thinking.  Why not do the same with blogs?

So I’ve decided that on Fridays I will use my blog post to pay it forward by featuring other blogs that I think are worth a look.  Blogs that perhaps someone who follows mine may not know about, may not stumble across, may not think about clicking on.  So for my inaugural post, I introduce to you:

iScandineighbour

iScandineighbour (iscandineighbour.blogspot.dk) is written by an English ex-pat living in Denmark.  What’s unique about iScandineighbour’s blog is that she embraces Denmark and Danish culture not as an outsider trying to make everything familiar, but as an opportunity to taste, to live like, and to experience what makes Denmark unique.  Always creative, she is like a modern Martha Stewart, but much younger, hipper and hasn’t (to my knowledge) done any time for tax evasion.  The blog is filled with her creative endeavors, from cooking to crafting, interspersed with her personal Denmark.

Doublewhirler

Doublewhirler (doublewhirler.wordpress.com) is a husband and wife blogging team, fairly new to the scene but taking to it like the proverbial duck.  Filled with beautiful photographs, travel experiences, and the connections between travel, photography, and social media, it is always lovely to look at and insightful to read.  With years of combined travel experiences between them, they oscillate between their current New York City location and their memories and photographs (both shared and individual) of the places they’ve been, the people they’ve met, and how eventually, it all comes together.   Their background, which mixes design and diplomacy, offers a unique insight into the world around them as well as the world at large.

So there you go.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on paying it forward, blog style.  Do you have a blog not your own you want to share?  Pass it along, paste it in a comment and I will take a look, and hopefully others will too.  Happy sharing.  May the karma be with you.

p.s.  My husband informed me that there is a similar movement on twitter on Fridays, but I don’t tweet, twit or titter, so I wasn’t aware of it.  Honestly, I don’t understand the whole hash tag thing no matter how many times he explains it to me.  But in any event, if it is something you do, it may work there as well.  Happy tweeting.