Tag: thoughts

Happy Anniversary to Me

WordPress anniversary badge for six years on WordPress

 

So far, February has been a completely unforgettable month. I’ve been stretched and squeezed and confronted with many more situations in the last twenty-five days that I am literally trying to catch my breath to catch up.

On the second, as you can see above, Automatic reminded and congratulated me for the six year anniversary of this blog. Since I was already thinking about some major changes, I decided to make them as part of completing the Blogging University Blogging Fundamentals course. So, I enrolled.

Of course, my timing could have been a little better, since we were also preparing to move to a new apartment.

So here I was, packing and preparing to move to a new apartment, getting ready for the daily assignments for the Blogging Fundamentals course to start filling my inbox, and generally just doing all the other things that constitute living life – then I got sick. I thought it was the flu, but turned out it was just a minor cold, that didn’t go away, and didn’t go away, and then put me in the hospital.

I spent five days in the hospital getting well enough to come home to the new place. I came home and after a few days I started trying to get back to all the plans for updating this blog and completing the course I earnestly wanted to do. And that’s where I am now.

Rather than completing the assignments from the course on a daily basis like I would have had I not gotten ill, I intend to spend the next week or so combining assignments and making the changes that I want for this blog. So that’s whats coming up next.

One More for 2017

Goodness! The end of the year is fast approaching and 2018 is just around the corner. For me, among other things, that means my annual payment for this blog’s plan is due soon. For that reason, and no other reason right now, I’m writing and publishing something else before then. I’m not sure what this is going to be about – I might just write a bunch of unrelated ramblings or I might just compose a well thought out essay about people who write bunches of unrelated ramblings. Or I might not.

One thing I’ve noticed as I look back over the years I’ve been writing here is that every year I’ve written a post explaining or trying to justify my failure to write anything on a consistent basis. I can do that again here, but I’m not. It’s been said, over and over, so no point in repeating it.

Despite the fact that I am in my sixties now – my age, not my IQ, for all you comedians out there – I still am interested in a lot of things. For example, I still watch college football every year, almost religiously. It’s been awesome the last few years. See, I am a Clemson Tiger fan. I grew up just a few miles from Clemson, SC so it’s just a natural thing and once again the Tigers are headed to the college football playoffs.

I also like to learn. In fact, I try to make it a point to learn something new every day. It’s not hard to do with the technology we have available to us these days. Although much of what I learn on a daily basis just comes from reading or seeing something new while browsing the internet, I still take time to participate in some formal learning . Much of what I’ve done in the last year has been some online classes at Saylor Academy. In addition to Saylor, I am planning on enrolling in some new courses at Coursera in 2018.

Of course, I still have an undying love and interst in music, and I think that’s what’s going to wrap up this post. While I am interested in all types of music, I love rock and roll and bluegrass. But, there’s something of a caveat here. Rock and roll to me pretty much means what is now considered “Classic Rock.” I suppose that some new music fits the definition of rock and roll, I just don’t think it measures up to the bands that recorded music in the 60”s, 70’s, and 80’s – the exceptions being the artists that started then that are still releasing new music today. The best example I can give is John Mellencamp, who is my favorite musician of all time. So I think that’s what I’m going to end with, a song from Mellencamp. It’s appropriate, given my age and my ailment wracked body. Hope you enjoy it.

Back At It, Again

Not too long ago I started reading a book entitled The Divine Guide to Creating a Daily Writing Practice by Pernille Norregaard, a free book I downloaded to my Kindle a little over a year ago. It’s a pretty good book if you are a struggling writer, or have designs on becoming one. Although it’s loaded with tips, the main point is clear from the title – if you want to write, you need to have a daily writing practice.

Something I don’t.

If you take a look at the graphic that opens this article, you can see that my writing practice, at least for this blog, has been nil for nearly a year and a half. In fact, the last article I published here was nothing more than a re-post of an Associated Press article on Dec 31, 2015.

I started this blog over five years ago with a couple of ideas in mind; first, I intended to write often and consistently, as in say, a Daily Writing Practice. At the time, it seemed like a really good idea and something I felt like I could and would do. I thought that frequent writing would help me improve my writing. It made sense to me that the more one writes, the better they become.

Well, I failed miserably.

Not only have I not written often or consistently, I’m not sure there’s been any improvement in my writing. I’ve certainly failed this blog.

Time after time I’ve started writing; fully intending to publish frequently on this blog and make it what I wanted it to be from the beginning. It’s not as if I can’t write. I think I’ve proven I can with the articles I have published. Comments from readers over the years seem to confirm that occasionally I could write rather well. It’s not as if I have nothing to write about. Anyone living in today’s world can find plenty of things to write about if they want, including me. It’s really just always been a matter of utter laziness and a complete lack of motivation.

So tonight it’s time for a change.

So if you are a kind soul and have a mind to, wish me well and stop by on occasion to see if I succeed.

And if you’re not and you don’t, stop by anyway.