I am honoured to be one of Jamie Ridler’s first interview subjects in her podcast series Creative Living with Jamie!  Jamie is an amazing self-development coach and artist. She offers weekly Wishcasting, monthly Full Moon Dreamboards, a book club, in-person workshops, and electronic resources.

We had a great time talking about finding harmony between the act of creating and the administrative aspects of getting your creations out into the world (a challenge I face in my work as a writer/producer). I also of course discussed how being softer generates space and energy for creativity .

You can listen at her site, or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or other software.

To fans of Jamie who found me through her site, welcome to Be Softer!

Here’s a way to spend 15 seconds and no money to:

• get food to those who need it
• help sick, blind or amputee children and prevent blindness and HIV infection
• help prevent breast cancer by getting mammograms for women who could otherwise not afford one
• provide books to children around the world
• protect rainforests
• feed abandoned animals

All with just the click of the mouse! Just visit The Hunger Site once a day and click once for Hunger, Breast Cancer, Literacy, Child Health, Rainforest and Animal Rescue. For each click on the site, sponsors donate money for the charity partners.

How does it add up? In 2008, the site donated:

• Over 70 million cups of food for people
• Health care services for nearly a million children around the world
• Funds to protect over 600 million square feet of rainforest
• Over 500,000 books for kids
• 7500 mammograms
• 75 million bowls of food for shelter animals

If you want to do more, you can buy a variety of products on the site, a portion of which go to further support the causes. For more information about where the money goes, see the “about this site” on each of the pages.

If you set the page as your home page on your browser, you’ll be sure to remember, and you’ll know that no matter what else happens that day, you’ll have made a small difference that adds up.

This sounds like a very cool project!

Inspire Me Today is going on a global hug tour. The founder of IMT and her husband will be flying around the world in a small prop plane, to over 100 locations on a tour to “gather inspiration, deliver 100,000+ hugs and share more than $1,000,000 with important causes…”

If you want to get a hug, you can see where they’re stopping see where they’re stopping. They’re also looking for team leaders in each city they visit.

For $10 you can sponsor a hug for one of the causes they are supporting:

• Chennai, India, to support the efforts of Dr. Mani’s Children’s Heart Foundation where just 100 hugs – or $1000 – will save the life of a child;
• a preserve in Chiang Mai, Thailand to help rebuild the threatened elephant population;
• Siem Reap, Cambodia where a mere 2 hugs will fund a years education for a child.

Wishing them luck with the project!