Tag: WordPress

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.

Happy Eclipse Day!

Logo for Eclipse 2017 from NASAI’m sure you already know, but if not, today is the day of the total solar eclipse. This is the first total solar eclipse to be seen in so much of the continental United States since the eclipse of June 8, 1918. I’m one of the fortunate ones that aren’t driving hundreds for thousands of miles to view it. It will happen right out in my back yard, since I live smack in the middle of the path of totality. It seems like as good a reason as any for me to start writing again and try to revitalize this poor blog that’s suffered from so much neglect in the last few years.

I know I’ve experienced eclipses before, certainly some lunar eclipses and no doubt some partial solar eclipses, but this is the first total solar eclipse for me. Numerous sources are calling it a “once in a lifetime experience” and I am fortunate that I am going to witness it in my lifetime. As I write this, it’s just a few hours until we experience this event here in Columbia, SC, but it’s already started on the west coast. I’m trying to watch some of NASA’s live feeds but there are some problems. If I had to guess, there are bandwidth problems since I’m sure many millions of people are trying to watch the same feeds as I am. I guess I’ll just have to be content with the real thing in a few hours. If things go well, I hope to put up another post in a few hours after the eclipse is over.

One of the things I intended to do several years ago was to start a “Song of the Day” feature on this blog to share some of my favorite music. Not that this song is one of my favorites, but it is a good song and the perfect song to start with today to celebrate the eclipse. This song was a mega-hit for Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler in 1983. Enjoy the video of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

And I’m off to prepare for my eclipse experience.

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.