Tag: blogging

a bit shrivelled, but otherwise sound

shrivelled-rosehip

A month into daily blogging, and I’m feeling a bit shrivelled. Certainly, not all my posts have been fresh and plum this month. However, I did write a few things with some intention, and had fun posting some sets of photos. So all in all, I’m glad I did this again.

I’m amused that there was only one exception to my daily posting success: The 2nd day. I did put something up for that day the next morning, so my grand total of posts for the month is still 30.

skeltal-leaf-shadow

What I haven’t managed to do this month is spend time reading books. Since I finished grad school, I have really gotten back to reading again for enjoyment, and this is something that thas made me happy. But it would seem that the time I use for blogging takes up the time I might otherwise be reading a book. So, perhaps tomorrow I will pick up a book after I get into bed, instead of scrambling to figure out what to post here.

I also generally need to get back to spending more time on my research. I have some deadlines coming up over the next few months.

seize-the-day-mug

However, I really hope I can keep blogging semi-regularly. I need to figure out a way to commit to blogging, without it necessarily being a daily effort. The “when I feel like it” approach seems to result in many ideas, but not bearing fruit. And I like it when my blog bears fruit (even if that fruit is a bit shrivelled).

How about you? Do you have a blog, and if so, how do you decide how often to post?

 

This blog goes up to 11

Eleven years ago today, I put up my first post on this blog. Here we are over a thousand posts later, and I am still more-or-less here.

analog-clock-1111 It appears that I am quite partial to the number 11. Not the least because I regularly post at the eleventh hour. (It might not surprise you that it is now after 11 as I write this post.)

elevenThe number 11 has featured prominently in quite a few posts over the years, in particular on 11/11. In anticipation of the exciting (at least to me) date of 11/11/11, I encouraged others to post things that go up to 11. I’ve posted about the word for the number 11 in Spanish.  I’ve posted lists of elevens. I’ve posted photos of elevens (or at least photos of patterns that look to me like 11s). And I posted a ThThTh list of 11 things, which, given that I posted it in 2007, did not include one now very well known Eleven.

digital-clock-1111

This is all really just a very roundabout way to say happy birthday to my blog. Thanks to any and all of you who have dropped in over the years.

eleven-candles

 

(not quite) back in the swing of things

swing chain, triangle

It’s apparently hard for me to get back into the swing of posting daily.

swing

But I won’t let a day of failure keep be from my goals. I’ll climb back up on that swing, and start kicking my legs again.

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Even if it means posting a bunch of photos that I took years ago (and may well have posted here years ago).

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Before you know it, I’ll get into the rhythm of it, and feel the breeze in my hair. (Blog posts cause a bit of wind, don’t they? Sometimes they may, at least, be full of hot air.)

Not dead yet

x-eyed-pumpkin

Here it is, November 1st, and I haven’t posted since April. Some have wondered if the blog (at least this one) is good and dead. However, I’m willing to declare that this blog is not dead yet.

Since I started this blog over 10 years ago, I have participated in some sort of daily posting every November. Here’s to (at least) one more go. (Expect a high percentage of leaf photos, musings about the rapid passage of time, and filler text.)

partial derailment

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This was a tough month. I started off with high hopes and lofty goals, but my motivation and my optimism have suffered a major hit. I did manage to post to my blog every day this month, as planned, but my idea to share a daily bit of gratitude was less successful.

Even though I posted *something* every day this month, I mostly haven’t written the posts I’ve wanted to. The unexpected election results and their aftermath have continued to have a big impact on my thoughts and to some extent on my actions. I would still like to write more about this. I hope to keep posting here regularly. I think in order to keep the momentum, I will continue to post assorted photos and lightweight things as I work to unpack my weightier thoughts.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThese two photos were among some I took back in 2010, when I was doing the daily photography project. I remembered the one of the “hope” train derailed, and went hunting for it. Funny as it was, it wasn’t actually a great photo, so I mucked with it a bit in a clumsy way.

For the record, I considered calling this post “hope derailed,” but my decision not to perhaps reflects that my hope has not entirely derailed. I am planning to get it back on track (as it were) in the coming months.

10 birthday candles

Remarkably, I started this blog 10 years ago today. 10 years of blogging. Over a thousand posts (this one is 1333), over a million views (1,156,038 at the time I’m writing this), over 3000 photos shared. It has been a wonderful creative outlet for me. Additionally, through this blog and by connecting with others on their own blogs, I have made strong friendships (haven’t really counted how many). In the process, I have grown in my worldview (which I also can’t quantify).

Tonight, I am grateful for blogging. Both for this blog, and for connecting with others. I am so grateful to the friendships I have made through blogging. I am very glad that I have returned to blogging after largely neglecting it the last few years. I appreciate having the creative outlet once more, and the place to share my thoughts. As current affairs have been stirring me to take action, I hope to use this blog as a sounding board, and a way to hold myself accountable.

In case you are wondering, I didn’t light candles for the blog. Conveniently, I have a daughter who is just a few months older than this blog, and so had easy access to photos of 10 birthday candles. In case you were wondering what happens when you put 10 birthday candles into a mini cupcake and light them, you get a tower of flame that threatens to light your daughter’s hair on fire, and melts the candles down to stubs in seconds. Happily, this blog is mostly flame retardant.

not so grand reopening

Um. Hi. I’m back. Yes, it’s been a while.

Somehow, after posting every single day for 3 and a half months, I managed to drop the ball, and stop posting entirely for…3 and a half months. On average, that means I’ve put up a post every 2 days for the past 7 months! That sure does sound like a frequent rate of posting.

I’m not really going to get into why I stopped posting so abruptly, or why it took me so long to get back to it. The short story is that my life got too full. There were so many demands on my time and energy that something had to give. I don’t think I would have consciously chosen to put blogging on hold, but somehow, that’s what happened. But I never intended to stop blogging. I miss it.

So, I’m back, and even considering posting daily again. At least for a month. At the very least, I promise to post on days…when I post.

Upping my game

It’s November again, and I am diving into the daily blogging commitment of NaBloPoMo once more. In fact, I got a head start. I decided to blog daily in September. (Uncharacteristically, I did not declare it). And then I kept on going through October. I haven’t been able to put much time into writing, and, as ever, there are many posts in me that I still hope to write. But I have had fun working my way through my hoard of photos and sharing them according to my whims. This month, I have no particular goals beyond spending a bit of time each day doing something that I enjoy.

I also need to up the pace of my research. Things have been so very hectic with parenting and the new house that I have rarely managed to get in more than my minimum time commitment to my research on a given day. Conference deadlines are coming up, and the time has come for me to get cracking on the last push for my degree. I need to find many more hours each week in order to reach my goals. To that end, I hereby declare that for the month of November, I am upping my daily minimum of time spent on my research to 2 tomatoes. Day in, day out. No time off for good behavior. (Or Thanksgiving.)

Wish me luck!

“

the cruellest month

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

There is a part of me that knows that every month bears its burden of sad anniversaries. There is good and bad to be found in each month. The scientist in me wants to graph the months, and the major events I have associated with each. Major illnesses and deaths, natural disasters, terrorist attacks on the one hand. Birthdays, holidays, wedding anniversaries, exciting trips on the other. I think a clustered bar chart of some sort would work just fine. Perhaps such a graph would show that each month was more or less the same.

Yet somehow, I can’t shake the feeling that the month of April would have a great big tall bar for the bad category, compared to the sorry little representation of happy events. Much of this would be due to April of last year. I have started writing out, in a level of detail that is both agonizing and cathartic, the hell that was April of last year. (I probably don’t need to share that here. I’m sure for someone else there would be far more agony than catharsis to read such a thing.) In short, the month was marked by, in rough order of appearance: impending death, sharing news of major illness with young children, sudden plans for travel, rearranging of work schedules, single parenting, fever, cancelled plans for fun activities, long drawn-out dying, pink eye, death, sharing the news of death with young children, poison ivy, memorial service, funeral, stomach bug, cancelled plans for fun activities, marathon bombing, Officious Dental Hygienist, shootings, explosions, manhunts, and cancelled plans for fun activities. Last April was a relentless series of grieving and petty grievances. And it was supposed to be a month marked by intense productivity for my research.

I can’t help but be reminded that it was also in April, back in 2010, that my nephew’s tumor was discovered, the start of an ordeal that brought on so much stress and worry for many long months and even a few years. The start, in fact, of some of the hardest times I have had in my adult life. (That was also the same month that I had my own run-in with poison ivy, too. It sounds like a small thing, but my doctor said it was the worst case she’d ever seen. I had blisters lasting for 5 weeks.)

April has a bad reputation for me.

So this year, I found that I was bracing myself for April to be another bad month. This is why I picked this month to blog every day. Making myself do something daily that I enjoy has helped get me through the sad anniversaries. Now, there are under 2 hours left of the month, and I think we have come out mostly unscathed. I say “mostly” because the month has not been great. There were some happy things, and some fun things, but also a few bad things of varying scales. I don’t even really want to get into it now. (Really, I don’t tend to think of myself as superstitious, but I find myself not wanting to jinx things. So it would seem that I am superstitious. Also tired.)

So, I bid good-bye to the cruellest month. Next month promises to be a full, and hopefully less thorny, one.


The thorns of April.