Changing Things Up

 

My goal, in writing this blog, is to keep things interesting and relevant, so I’m constantly assessing what posts people like and respond to.

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.

-Harold Wilson

With that in mind, I’m changing my weekly updates on book challenge progress and turning them into monthly updates. If anyone was really looking forward to weekly updates, email me and we’ll talk, but I’m not seeing much engagement, and they’re certainly not one of my more popular posts.

Right now, I’m not planning to replace it with a new feature. I’m also changing to a Monday & Thursday blogging schedule.

I appreciate every single person who reads my posts. I love to read comments, and I enjoy opinions and discussion. Therefore, I encourage you to leave a comment or respond to someone else’s comment. But even if you’re just stopping by to read, thank you!

See you on Thursday!

Mystery Blogger Award

Yay! I’ve been nominated for the Mystery Blogger Award. It’s not really about “mystery” writing or anything like that; Mystery is a play on the name of the person who started the award, Okoto Enigma.

In order to participate in the award, I must:

Rule #1

Rule one: Put the award/ logo on my blog. Yep, it’s that way. <—–

Rule two: List the rules. Check.

Rule 3: Thank whoever nominated me and provide a link to their blog. That was the wonderful Janet’s Smiles. Thank you!As you may guess, her mission in life is to make people smile. She does this by talking about life, music, and her wonderful crafts. I’m seriously jealous of her scrapbooks.

Rule 4: Mention the creator of the award and provide a link. I did that above. ^^

Rule 5: Tell my readers 3 things about myself.

1. I love playing board games.
2. I’m known for being quite clumsy. People who don’t want me to die get nervous when I do anything with a potential for injury.
3. I love animals. I have five cats, two dogs, and various squirrels (we consider them our outdoor pets.)

Rule 6: Nominate 10- 20 people. I’ve found most of these blogs through A to Z over the years.

A Texan’s View of Upstate New York

Pen in Her Hand

Life and Faith in Caneyhead

Megan Moran (romance author)

The Cyborg Mom

While I Was Reading

The Lair of the Silver Fox

Read is the New Black

Readers of the Night

Girl Who Reads

Rule 7: Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog.

Rule 8: Ask my nominees 5 questions of my choice; with one weird or funny question.

1. What was the last game you played, and with who?
2. What’s your favorite word or quote?
3. What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?
4. What do you like on your pizza?
5. What’s your favorite question to ask other people?

Rule 9: Share a link to my best posts. Some of my favorites:

The Timelessness of Stories

How My Former Bullies are Doing Now

Words Have Power

The five questions I was asked:

1.   Who is your favorite author? Oh, that’s a tough one. If you’d asked me even a few years ago, I would have said Dean Koontz. I don’t really have a single favorite anymore, so I’ll go with my five favorites: Bryn Greenwood, Holly Black, John Green, JD Robb, and as mentioned, Dean Koontz.
2.   How long have you been blogging? 7 years!
3.   Have you ever been nominated for a major award? Nope, this will be the first.
4.   If you could play a musical instrument what would it be? I’ve always wanted to learn to play piano, but anyone who’s ever heard me sing would tell you I’m tone deaf.
5.   Who is Carmen Sandiego and why should I care where in the world he is? Carmen Sandiego is a she! And she taught me all about geography and and about other cultures on my Commodore 64. She was a spy who traveled around the world, and I had to locate her using clues.
6.   Extra credit question, did I make you smile today? Always. 🙂

My Most Popular Posts in 2015

Haters Gonna Hate– My thoughts on people meeting negativity with negativity.

I Bet 99% of You Won’t Repost This– This was actually published in 2014, but was my second most popular post of 2015.  Apparently I’m not the only one fed up with the new version of the chain letter.

But What If There Are Bad People– I don’t want to be controlled by fear, and I encourage you to think critically about how you let fear influence your decisions.

J is for Journals–  All about how I love journals but until recently, didn’t really write in them.

Q is for Quotes–  A few of my favorite quotes.

Walking Down Memory Lane– Reading my old diaries and thinking about the lost art of letter writing.

The Horrific, Awful, Rotten Truth About Being Fat– Being fat is not the worst thing a person can be.  Get over it.

I’m Fat… Now What?– How to deal with being body image in a superficial world.

Friday Writing Prompt: Nostalgia– This is apparently a popular post from way back in 2012.  I have no idea why this was popular in 2015… but it was.

I Should Totally Blog About That

I’m lucky; I’ve always been forgetful, so when something slips my mind, I don’t blame it on old age or anything like that.  No, I know that it’s just the way I am.

Earlier today, like 5 minutes before I started this blog, I remembered a really awesome blog idea that I had weeks ago and then forgot about.  I grabbed a pen to jot it down, and by the time I’d gotten a pen and paper, I’d forgotten it again.  I have no idea what the idea was, and I’ve tried reconstructing my thought process just prior to remembering it.  But no luck.

Welcome to my life.

I have 10 million notebooks laying around everywhere with little or no organizational strategy.  I jot things about blogs everywhere, and I have word documents dedicated to ideas.  After I write it down, I forget about it.  I love Pinterest, even if it does frequently point out my organizational shortcomings.  Pinterest is like the neighbor who seems to be able to do it all effortlessly.

I’m trying a new thing.  I have a journal, so I’m going to start writing story and blog ideas in there, and then tagging them with special Post-it notes so that I can find the ideas.  That way, it’s a very centralized location, and I’ll always know where everything is.

Sounds great, right?

Yeah, let’s hope it works out for me.  😉

Three Years and Counting!

I just had my third blogging anniversary.  I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for three years!

When I started out, I didn’t have much idea of what I wanted to do with a blog, just that I wanted to blog about reading and writing, and life in general.  I started off by blogging occasionally, then went to daily (which is way hard).  The TV Guy joined me somewhere around December 2010, and he’s done his Sunday feature pretty much without fail since then.  I think that these days, I’ve settled in around 3 times per week, plus the TV Guy, though all that is subject to change without notice!

I’m at 9788 views, 824 posts, but only 486 comments.  Let’s work to increase that number, people!

Thanks for sticking around and reading what I have to say.  Cheers!

Drawing a Blank

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” -Edwin Land

I’ve been drawing a blank about what to blog about lately. I have an idea, and sit down to write about it, but then don’t like it for one reason or another. I don’t like my tone or I feel as if I’m going off on a tangent.

I guess we all probably feel that way sometimes.

Maybe it’s because I was on vacation last week. Before I went on vacation, I had no problems writing blogs, and I did a bunch ahead, figuring that I’d have plenty of time to write more ahead so I wouldn’t have to come up with something once I was back to work.

Oh, I was so wrong.

I didn’t do any blogging during my vacation. I tried to brainstorm, and even sat down a few times. Though I did come up with a few, I didn’t think they were very good.

So here I am, writing about not having anything to write about.

As I usually do when I have a question, I turned to Google. This is what I came up with:

Combat Writer’s Block

Fight Writer’s Block

I found the first link the most helpful, and ended up sitting down and writing 5 blogs throughout the day.  The most important thing when drawing a blank is to  just keep writing something, because eventually, something decent will come out.

What do you do when you get stuck?

Crazy, aka Ultimate Blog Challenge

I decided to join the Ultimate Blog Challenge for July.  Because, really I didn’t have enough to do.  🙂

Though if I’m really honest, blogging doesn’t take up that much of my time.  I really do enjoy blogging, but I need to hold myself accountable, and a blog challenge, where I have to do it daily, really helps me.  The goal is to blog every day for the month of July.  Apparently it’s a quarterly challenge.  The other nice thing about blog challenges is that I get exposure to other people’s blogs, ones I might not read otherwise.

So, here we go… today is day 1 of 31 days of blogging.  I’ll be “cheating” on Sundays, as I’ll continue to leave that to The TV Guy.

Wish me luck.