When I started blogging I had one focus : Write. That's all I really wanted to do : Express my self, my ideas, my values. Yet it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to just sit down and do the writing.

I now spend a good half to two-thirds of my day dealing with emails, conference calls, etc. etc. Not that I mind.

There is a lot of offline work that needs to be done most of the time before I can even do my work online. It's just that I feel "broken down" by all the "other work" I am expected to do but can barely accomplish.

I am living in the flesh that sexist comment about "I need a wife" (was it Gloria Steinem in one of her more inspired times?)

Yet, I mean, I am a wife. A working mother and wife. Grock knows I don't need a damn wife. What I really need is a staff.

I need not only an assistant. I need a housekeeper, a bookeeper, an events coordinator, a tutor for the kids and an afternoon babysitter.

Of course, the truth I "need those people". The problem is that I need a substantial operating budget --and that money I just don't have.

Earlier on Wednesday I twittered asking people for uplifting stories. I actually received links to quite a few. Unfortunately I didn't think of making sure I could easily get to the answers.

It's why am writing this post.

I ask for uplifting stories in order to lighten the "death, pestilence and disease" load on my blogs but especially over at The Awearness blog. We want to know what awesome and inspiring things people (or even you) are doing to change the word.

I have been playing quite a lot with Twitter, but feel empty inside. For one, I have and awful lot of things to say that do not quite fit there (for they take up more than 140 characters) yet neither at culturekitchen, since they have to do more with the minutiae of the blogosphere.

So, here I am. Let the ranting begin.

I started writing this as a response to one writer on the Drupal Developers mailing list and it's gotten to what Elisa Camahort has described on mailing lists as the 2 paragraph rule : If it is more than 2 paragraphs, it needs to go on the blog. Grock knows I break that rule ALL THE TIME. Yet, I feel this response needs to be more public and so, I'm following Ms. E's advice.

I've been on a warpath for about a year now, looking for leaner and meaner blogging tools. I have been particularly obsessed with the possibility of using one interface in order to post on several blogs, if not at once then at least as tightly in tandem as possible.

Ecto seemed to the that tool but it is not optimized for Drupal users. Meaning, I can post to a Drupal site but I would have to edit the post from within the site in order to add categories --and that's part of the reason why I have been looking for a remote or semi-remote solution.

Their site says the following : Journler is a daily notebook and entry based information manager. Scholars, teachers, students, professors, scientists, thinkers, the business minded and writers of every persuasion use it on a daily basis to connect the written word with the media most important to them.

I checked this product out as an alternative for multi-blogging, unfortunately, it comes short. Yet, I am keeping it as an excellent tool for book, monograph and proposal writing.