“So, here’s the chal­lenge: make a list of five strengths that you pos­sess as a writer/artist. It’s not really brag­ging, it’s an hon­est assess­ment (forced upon you by this darn meme). Please resist the urge to enu­mer­ate your weak­nesses, or even men­tion them in con­trast to each strong point you list. Tag four other writ­ers or artists whom you’d like to see share their strengths.”

Yep. You guessed it. I’ve been tagged by writer Todd and his Ini­tial Draft. I could hardly pass on this one, since he called me an artist and a writer ! Besides, it’s Sat­ur­day night, it’s about 3C right now and I had a tough week. Let’s indulge !

Let’s see…

1. Writ­ing, draw­ing or tak­ing pic­tures makes me feel good : I love express­ing myself and cre­at­ing some­thing. Whether it’s look­ing for the per­fect pic­ture (never per­fect enough of course), sketch­ing a face on a piece of paper and fill­ing it with col­ors, or find­ing a good intro­duc­tion for a post, I’m enjoy­ing myself.
2. I was lucky with my writ­ing so far : I’ve always writ­ten for as far as I can remem­ber. I know it sounds typ­i­cal for a self-proclaimed writer but it’s the truth ! When I was 18, I pub­lished a book. Three years later, I chose not to renew the con­tract with the pub­lisher and got the rights back on my book (for some rea­son, it still shows up here and here if you want to see !). Any­way, I’ve always though if I was good enough to get pub­lished at 18 — and my writ­ing wasn’t that good, really — I should per­se­vere a lit­tle bit and, who knows ?
3. My Eng­lish is bet­ter now : I don’t really want to write in French any­more for many rea­sons, and even though my Eng­lish is by no mean per­fect, I feel like I’m slowly get­ting there. Sure, my gram­mar is still… well, you know. But yet, it comes eas­ily to me now and that’s a huge step for me. I couldn’t speak Eng­lish five years ago.
4. I have some­thing to say : I don’t want to write about what I ate, what I dreamed of, nor what time I show­ered last night (but if any­one if inter­est­ing, please leave a com­ment and I’ll tell you every­thing). I want to say mean­ing­ful things, I want to think aloud and I want to learn from peo­ple. If I can change only one lit­tle thing if this world, I want to show peo­ple the beauty of the world: it’s not a dan­ger­ous place but a beau­ti­ful mosaic of cul­tures and peo­ple. I hap­pened to be one of these peo­ple. Let me show you my vision of the world and I’ll learn about yours. We might even be friends.
5. I’m an hope­less dreamer, a cit­i­zen of the world, one of these left-wing peo­ple the TV warned you about : I believe art help us to get through life, its up and down, its hard­ships and rewards. I believe art is uni­ver­sal and can be under­stood and inter­preted by every cul­ture. I believe in mak­ing peo­ple dream, think, argue, decide, riot, cre­ate and live. I believe art will save us, even­tu­ally. If we keep on creating.

For this meme, I’d like to tag five dif­fer­ent peo­ple, all unique artists in their own way (yeah, I know I was sup­posed to tag four…):

• Max, from Por­tu­gal : Max has a fresh view on the world. From rela­tion­ship to gen­eral human behav­ior, she observes us like a sci­en­tist in her lab and she always comes up with truly inter­est­ing posts. I don’t always agree with her, which makes her even more interesting !

• Sir Jorge and his Video Store Blues is one of my favorite guys here in the blo­gos­phere. What’s not to like in him ? He’s a truly nice guys, hon­est and cre­ative, who tells of his daily life, ups and downs, lost — and found — hopes. I like his writ­ing because he seems to be able to talk about any­thing so eas­ily, and yet he always makes a point.

• Keshi, author of Viva For­ever… is a young woman liv­ing in Aus­tralia. She has a great per­son­al­ity which shows in her posts : always have a story to tell, and always funny, she’s a great artist with words !

• I can’t help tag­ging Gra­ham once again, but it’s because he totally fits here. His One Man’s Travel Blog is all I need to escape a bit. A great header, cool pic­tures, travel sto­ries of a guy who want to travel more… sounds famil­iar to me !

• Finally, I’d like to tag a new blog I’ve dis­cov­ered lately : Dare To Achieve. From another immi­grant to Canada, this blog tells of cul­ture dif­fer­ences. Posts such as Small Talk means a lot to me, because he sees beyond cul­tural dif­fer­ences and present them really well. I’ll def­i­nitely keep an eye on this blog !

Since I’m a bit off-topic today, I’d like to take the oppor­tu­nity to thanks two peo­ple (well, really, one per­son and one forum !) who really helped me with my Word­Press debuts, Damn, WP can be tricky at first ! So a big thanks to :

• Jack Boot : cre­ator of tem­plate, he helped me once with a script on Blog­ger, and then with my tem­plate and my crazy ideas on WordPress.
• Blog Forum : I’ve been dis­ap­pointed many times with blog forums, since a lot of them are just about drop­ping a link and never com­ing back, but I had a great expe­ri­ence with Blog­geries. Not only the admin­is­tra­tor lives in Ottawa (and we had great sushis together !) but he’s always ready to help, and so are the forums mem­bers. I got great tips there and I encour­age you to have a look at it !

And last (I promise !) : I made a spe­cial pages for all the blogs I read every­day and love : The World. If you want to change the screen­shot, cor­rect any­thing, let me know. And if you want to be on this page… drop me a line !

Related posts:

1. Why Do Peo­ple Choose to Move Abroad? [Spon­sored Post]
2. Meet­ing Peo­ple Is Easy
3. Bloco Da Lama (Mud People)
4. Where I Think Some Peo­ple Are Just Plain Stupid
5. Be The Blog­ger Peo­ple Read (3÷10)