What I mean by that is that I'll be looking at something or listening to something or half-paying-attention to something and BAM! out of the blue like a giant brick, some sort of inspiration will smack me square in the side of the head.

It sounds much more violent than it really is. Most of the time, I get this little worm near my left temple that sort of wriggles and says "THIS WOULD BE COOOOOOOOL IN HTML, WOULDN'T IT?!?!" over and over until I either want to make that page/story/journal entry/graphic, or scoop out my brain with a spoon.

Even though inspiration hits randomly, several people have been a consistent source, either though their person or through their amazing sites or projects. Each of these links opens a new browser window, mainly because I'm greedy and want to keep you here for myself.

Heidi K. Hodge-McMurdo
SOIGNEE
Not only is she beautiful, as her pictures suggest, but she's tremendously talented. Her journal entries make me want to start a garden or paint or do something creative, and she and I -are- going to Mexico this year sometime. She's a recurrent player and the reason for my long-skirt-cheesecake-and-henna-party fantasies.

Ginkgo
JADE-LEAVES.COM
Everything about this woman is creative. She has more than her share. All of those uncreative people that you meet, masquerading as normal humans? Ginkgo stole their creativity. One look at her site and I'm off in this world where faerie tales are still real and koi circle the pond I started in my back yard after reading Heidi's journal. :)

Iko
WOOLGATHERING.NET
Consistently working to improve the writing side of her journal, "The Mind's I", she's an inspiration both for her dedication to craft and her incredible coding skills. Not to mention her totally unflappable nature. She can keep a cool head, something I can't do. Ever.

Matt Coburn
Geekboy(2)
I met Matt on accident. Well, not really on 'accident', but by chance. He was on the diarist.net awards committee for the first quarter, and dropped me a note about atropine. We've been corresponding since, and he's helped out a ton with JavaScript and such. (Since I am, at the core, a JavaScript Moron.)

Leslie
Impermanence
I got sucked in by the "Another 17 Years" project, and haven't ever stopped going to Leslie's site. The way she comes up with and implements these collaborative projects on what seems like a rapid-fire pace is totally inspiring to me. It's her fault that I'm redesigning, even though she doesn't know that.

Noah
The Midnight Pages
Take one look at his site and tell me you aren't inspired, too. Incredible graphics, beautiful words, and an even more beautiful soul inhabit them. I either want to marry him or be him when I grow up.

The fine people at:
Infatuation
For a worthwhile, relatively well-organized, visually stunning page. This is what I want to do if I ever get good enough. (And learn JavaScript. *ahem*)

Joseph Squier
The Place
I had this brilliant idea for my first Flower-Willow project. A scrapbook look, with words typed over the top and pictures and memorabilia pasted in....so that when you go through it, you can click and get the memory associated, kind of like looking through a scrapbook with a close friend. Come to find out that Squier has already done this in his "Urban Diary" and has done it better than I could hope to. (Not that that little detail will stop me from making my own interpretation of the idea, but oooh....soo much for being original...)

Matt Sturges
same as a picture
Okay. Not only does he keep this kick-ass journal that makes me laugh my head off most of the time, and say, "Oooh...yeah..." the other part of the time. Not -only- does he have a second project that gets my creative undies in a bunch. Not -only- is he a really cool guy and a reluctant yuppie....he's also responsible for bringing my work in to the Age of the Digital Camera. Any pictures you see from June 28th on out are -his- fault. Go tell him thank you. A lot.

There's more. A ton more, in fact. Some of them journals, some of them "just" sites. So many that I can't possibly list them all here. Suffice it to say that if you're not on here and think you -should- be, let me know. (But don't yell at me and tell me that I'm an insensitive lout. I'm not. Just an airhead sometimes.)