<img src="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/images/lovelist7.jpg" alt="" width="557" height="419" />
<h5 style="padding-left: 390px;">Illustration by Jason Berg</h5>
We’re in the thick of it—that extra-extra busy time of year. This year it's not just holiday preparations and celebrations that are crowding every spare moment of time. I have more work deadlines than usual pressing in on me. Earlier today I tweeted that <strong>I am feeling overwhelmed and under-inspired</strong>, and I jokingly asked if the two might be related. They definitely are, as far as I can tell.

Which means it’s a perfect time to be focusing on my <a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/?p=472">Love List</a>, right? But life and human nature have a way of ganging up against us at these moments. <strong>Often the very thing you need most is the thing you can’t seem to make happen.</strong>

It's not that making a Love List takes significant time that I don't have. It takes a certain awareness and connectedness to your heart that I don't seem to have right now. My own Love List seems to have nearly stalled over the past month, leaving me contemplating a chicken and egg situation: Has the list stalled because I have been stressed and down, less open to what I love? Or am I stressed and down because I haven’t taken my list seriously enough?

Just the other day, though, after reading some tweets and a few blog posts, I did add something to my list:
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I love it when people put into words what I want/need to say. reminds me why writing is such an important vocation. #thelovelist</em></p>
Sometimes I just have thoughts floating around in my head, in abstract forms I can’t tidy up enough to articulate. When I find someone who has given form to my loose ramblings, it’s such a relief.

But other times I just feel too stressed, overwhelmed and generally down to express myself. I feel uninspired, and begin turning inward, a particularly scary, spiraling pattern for extroverts like me.

When I’m feeling like that, I need other people, more than ever, to step up and speak or write for me.

<strong>Watching other peoples’ Love List additions filter in on Twitter and reading other Love List-inspired blogs have really helped me travel through my own little drought.</strong> To all of you who have embraced this project, thanks for carrying me—and probably many others—along.
<h4>Some recent Love List contributions, via the Twitter hashtag #thelovelist:</h4>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@OSG I love Gutenberg’s invention and its descendants…and bi-folcal glasses. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@lje2me Sitting on the porch swing watching the leaves, like children, chase each other down the street. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@MoJoJules I love seeing how my twitter buddies are now over lapping. Such a cool family I have here. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@starxlr8 My mom just baked us individual fruit hand pies (apple, strawberry-rhubarb &amp; strawberry) for midnight dessert #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@bridgeout Hope, DVR, Inspiration in the early morning hours, The look on some1s face when they are truly happy to see me #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@lizdyer Love it when my son has friends over and they are little loud and rambuctious - it brings life into our home #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@TrinaMb I love the 'cozy' of Christmas #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@c_w_s RT @livingsexuality "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." -Leonard Cohen #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@dtatusko watching kids play and run outside my window unaware of the corruptions of our world. they give me hope. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@kt_writes I love it when people put into words what I want/need to say. reminds me why writing is such an important vocation. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@lje2me Not much better than having lunch w a good friend when you are feeling down. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@chambanamoms My pup is curled up with her head resting on my leg. She will always be my first "baby." #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@c_w_s In the car this AM, 4 yr old says, "I need to hear Defying Gravity." Yeah, that's my kid. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@kt_writes I love when I’m able to throw myself into something, and then a few hours later I can clearly see the results of my efforts. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">@TrinaMb Love my tween son’s giggle. Reminds me of his boyishness, of ways he’s starting to leave behind. #thelovelist</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span class="status-body"><span class="entry-content">@kt_writes we decorated the tree tonight. I love doing things w my kids that I remember loving as a kid—my traditions overlapping theirs. </span></span>#thelovelist</p>

<h4>And some Love List-related blog posts you should check out:</h4>
- Ordinary Mer (@McMer314): <a href="http://www.ordinarymer.com/2009/11/my-love-list-part-2.html">My Love List, Part 2</a>

- The Wonderer (@MoJoJules): <a href="http://mojojules.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/the-love-list-project-perfection/">The Love List Project: Perfection</a> and <a href="http://mojojules.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/the-love-list-project-new-community-breathe-in-and-out/">New Community...breathe in...and out</a>

- God and the Single Girl (@techlady09): <a href="http://godandthesinglegirl.blogspot.com/2009/11/illustration-by-jason-berg-have-you.html">Love List</a>

- Mothering (my guest post for @CandaceWalsh): <a href="http://mothering.com/candacewalsh/uncategorized/guest-blogger-halfway-to-normals-kristin-tennant-on-the-love-list">Tweet your love, feed your soul</a>

<strong>What's on your Love List? Or have you written a related blog post? Share it here!</strong>