I have been sitting here struggling with what to put up for a post, and have had trouble coming up with one. Happily, my inspiration came in the form a photo. And while I am happy that I have a photo that I can post, I am not happy about the post in the photo. Because the post in the photo is definitely down. (The lamp post down here is in my front yard, and it is supposed to be upright. It was a bit on the wobbly side until some time on Monday, at which point a windy day fixed the wobbliness. Yay! It no longer wobbles.)
Tag: NaBloPoMo
not out of the woods
Today was a beautiful day, and I managed to spend a bit of time outside in the woods with the kids and puppy. It is good for me to be out in the fresh air, and away from the lure of my laptop, and the constant stream of news. I am still in shock about the election results, still grieving about them, and still worried sick about what this will all mean for the future.
This month, in addition to posting daily, I have been working to take stock of the many things for which I am grateful. While I have successfully managed to post something every day so far this month, there have been a few nights when I have been too tired to come up with a new item. (Or sometimes it’s more that I want to be able to devote more time to write about the things for which I am grateful.) In any case, I skipped the last couple of nights, so I owe 3 items for today.
First, I am grateful for having a life that is so full that it is often a struggle to find time to sit down and take stock. While I often feel overloaded with demands on my time and energy, I recognize that these demands are due to having many good things and good people in my life.
Second, I am grateful that I am stubborn. This stubbornness (or persistence, to use a more positively weighted term) pushes me to keep working on things, keep working through things, and work towards goals.
Third, I am grateful for having clean air to breathe.
a little fried
I’m too tired tonight to write, and am turning in early. I had an extra 3 children last night and today, and am feeling a bit fried. Instead of anything of substance, here is a photo of some of the pancakes I made this morning.
I find myself feeling grateful for some of the things I have already enumerated (especially the sleep one), so I will attempt to serve up a double helping of gratitude tomorrow. (I didn’t want to skip posting, though, as I know it is too easy to let one skipped day turn into…months. And there is still too much to say.)
How do you like them apples?
Third day in on my attempt to resume daily blogging, and I nearly forgot to post. This does not bode well…
In any case, I remembered. And I found a photo on my phone to share. These are some apples that the kids and I picked a couple of weekends ago on an idyllic weekend afternoon. We picked quite a few varieties of apples, and it’s interesting to see how varied they still appear, even after being peeled. (We also bought an apple-peeling gadget, that also slices the apples into spirals. It was quite fun, and made a cool tangle of peels. It was also fun to snack on the peels.)
Tonight I am grateful to have access to an abundance of healthy food for myself and my family.
perchance to dream
An oversized and stately but uncomfortable looking mattress-less bed from Stirling Castle in Scotland. Photo taken in August, 2015.
Today, I was feeling quite tired much of the day, due in part to a bit of sleep deficit from a hectic stretch. Tonight, I find myself feeling especially grateful that I can anticipate a decent night’s sleep. I am grateful that I have a bed to sleep in, and grateful that I am able to sleep.
through the woods
It’s true that I just really wanted to use that post title, following yesterday’s “over the river.” When I thought of what images to go along with those, it occurred to me that I had just used bunches of them for my post “tunnels through trees.” Happily, I do tend to collect a lot of images, which means that I always seem to have more photos that I haven’t yet posted here. (At least, I don’t think I’ve posted this one here. But I believe I did on Instagram.) In any case, I do quite like this photo, with its various contrasting and criss-crossing lines: curving tire tracks in the light snow and the crisp straight-line shadows of the morning sun streaming through the trees. This photo was from February of 2013, but the trees look about the same now at the end of November, with only a few stubborn leaves hanging on the trees.
So here we are at the end of November. I more-or-less participated in NaBloPoMo, in that I posted every day and left a link to my blog on the official NaBloPoMo site (I’m number 870 out of the 1427 blogs listed there.) But I didn’t much have time to check out any of the other blogs listed. And given that I had been posting daily the previous 2 months, it didn’t feel much different. Not like in 2007, when I created the now-defunct Ministry of Silly Blogs, and otherwise connected with quite a few bloggers who became friends.
And now that I am through the woods of November, I need to decide whether I want to continue to post daily. In these 3 months, I have actually not written very much. There still remain the backlog of posts running through my head, including some on important topics that I feel compelled to address. But even though I have not quite written what I had hoped, I have appreciated having this creative outlet, and making myself use it regularly. I have enjoyed posting many of the varied collections of photos that have been accumulating in my photo library.
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!
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substantially insubstantial
30 days and 30 posts in, this month has flown by. Unlike in years past, I found it quite easy to post daily. The reason for this was likely that, beyond the act of daily posting, I had no particular goals for NaBloPoMo this year. The downside to this comparative ease is that I don’t much feel like I posted much of substance. I was happy to post a number of photo sets that I had been saving in my digital hoard, and I had a few things to say here and there with more words, but I didn’t find myself sharing more of the stories that have been buzzing around in my head that first prompted me to start a blog in the first place. Those stories take time, and time isn’t something I’ve had in abundance this month. In spite of this lightness of post content, though, I still feel fairly satisfied. Having the daily creative outlet, and this commitment to doing something daily that is purely for my own enjoyment, has actually been more satisfying than I might have expected. I am sorely tempted to continue in this commitment to daily blogging–if not actually putting up a post every day, at least spending a bit of time each day working on a post.
This was a photo I took on November 30, 2010, taken during my participation in Project 365, a commitment to taking photographs daily.
photos of a burned-out mill (friday foto finder: factory)
In this part of New England, the textile industry once dominated. In the towns around where I live can be seen many an old mill. Many of the mills are now abandoned, others have been converted to new uses. This particular mill was once a yarn mill, but in recent decades had been converted to space for dozens of small businesses. About 6 years ago, the whole mill complex was largely destroyed in a fire. The fire started in the middle of the night, so happily there were no casualties. But the businesses were destroyed, and many lost their jobs and livelihood. (It particularly saddens me to think of the many artists who had studios in the mill, who undoubtedly lost years worth of artwork.)
All these years later, the mill is still a burned-out shell. Much of the debris and rubble was cleared out, but large sections of the structures still stand. Here are some photos that I’ve taken on a few different occasions over the past year.
The smoke stack has been converted into a cell phone tower. I vaguely remember that this happened after the fire.
The shell of the rather ostentatious columned façade.
A sign on the fence remaining from before the fire: “No smoking beyond this point.”
I find it a bit eerie to see that remnants of the landscaping survived the fire. Here are some ornamental trees and a hydrangea bush, in their late fall but otherwise healthy states.
I found the striped shadows of these exposed rafters to be quite striking.
A different angle on those shadows, and zoomed in a bit. (Hence the graininess.)
The façade does look very imposing against the fiery colors of a dramatic sunset.
This week’s foto finder challenge was to share photos on the theme of “factory.” To see what other sorts of factories others have found, pay a visit to the fff blog.
collecting tokens 