Virginia Breeze

I hate to complain but I do not feel well this morning. And isn’t that the way it goes? We are having a great time and things just continue to get better and then we hit the crest of our particular experience and head down. We can’t go up forever.

It’s just the way it is and it pays to accept the fact and try to enjoy the ride. So I have this scratchy irritation in my throat and my body feels about fifty pounds heavier. My stomach is rumbling and the computer is not working well. The hard drive sounds very loud. And then the metal chain in the toilet broke and now I have this black stuff under my fingernails from trying to fix it. What is that stuff anyway? It accumulates on the rubber parts inside the tank. So the temperature outside has probably reached one hundred degrees already like it did yesterday. And I have to go to the hardware store for parts.

Also Big Brown did not win the Kentucky Derby because he apparently was feeling yesterday the way I feel today. What’s wrong with him? Nobody knows. Maybe his roller coaster ride hit the crest on Friday and was on the way down yesterday. Too bad he didn’t mention it to anybody. A lot of folks are on the way down today as they think about how much money they lost on Mr. Brown.

What do you do when you feel events turning in this direction? Please tell me. I would really like to know.  But until someone gives me another idea that sounds better here’s the one I use.

I try to find something to do that I always enjoy doing. But it has to be a simple task. And it cannot involve anyone else because they may not want to participate.

Well I am feeling better now and the fact that I am writing this post is evidence of that. Why the turnaround? Because I found some photos from a wonderful day we had last summer and posted them over at PhotoLinkLove dot com. Posting photos takes me to a time and place that was very happy. It also increases the value of my blog. ( So would adding categories and tags but that would not solve the problem). It’s my theory that if you can’t find a way to do this you won’t be a blogger for a long while. And it explains why I have nearly one thousand posts in less than a year of blogging on one blog. And why I also have two other blogs.

I had a discussion yesterday about blogging and fumbled around trying to come up with something worthwhile to say. But what I really wanted to say was this. Find something you truly enjoy about this activity. Something that doesn’t require a lot of skill or sometimes lead to frustration. Something that doesn’t depend on another living soul. And do it when you can’t figure out what to do! Or you are just feeling bad.

At times like this don’t try to plan too much. Try to enjoy the day. Enjoy the ride. Nobody plans a roller coaster ride.

They just take one.

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More writing

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It’s the big Memorial Day Weekend boys and girls. What do we all have planned for these three days of fun? Are we going to the beach to see how much the water has warmed up since January? Are we staying home and cooking meat on the grill? MMMmmmmm. Meat.

Are we going to the pool and display our body fat to the world? Or are we going to go to bed and stay there for three days?

Being sick can be such a drag. I don’t appreciate enough the fact that I rarely stay in bed for more than a few hours to get some sleep. I mean if you are so sick you can’t even scrape yourself out of the bed and sit in front of a computer then you are REALLY NOT WELL.

I would have to be taking the BIG NAP in order for that to happen.

This morning I have been thinking about Lorelle again. I swore I wouldn’t go back to her blog because I was such an idiot the last time I was there. But I can’t stay away.

I did manage to refrain from leaving any comments however. So no damage done. Instead I am going to leave a comment here! Then if it turns out badly I can delete it!

Lorelle wrote a post about being a successful blogger and writing about things that interest lots of people. Makes sense, right? But then she says that lots of bloggers are writing about the same thing and that’s a drag. And clearly she is right again. Who wants to read the same thing over and over again?

But how do you write something very original AND something that lots of folks find interesting all the time? That’s pretty difficult it seems to me. And how do you know lots of folks will find it interesting when you are planning and writing it?

This is why I get crazy when I go over there. I end up with these contradictions and questions without answers. Maybe it’s clearer to you. Please let me know if you have the answer.

Anyway, it is a holiday weekend and Beth warned me several days ago that today (Saturday) needs to be a “cleaning day”. Because I invited a bunch of people over on Sunday (tomorrow). And so the house must be cleaned today. And the grass needs to be mowed.

But first the yard needs to be raked because of the freakin huge tree that likes to drop leaves all summer long. And these leaves can’t be ground up by the lawnmower she tells me. They can’t be mulched. They will just have to be picked up eventually in tiny little pieces if I run over them with the lawnmower.

I want so badly to have this tree cut down. But she refuses.

More frustration. Do I carry a lot of frustration around? Maybe so. Maybe i should let it all go and just breathe. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. Repeat five thousand times.

Alright. Things are much better now. Time to go rake, mow, dust, vacuum, arrange,empty, pick up, water, spray, shop and do other stuff too.

Do many things but not write. Stay out of this chair.

This is not going to be easy.

Update: I think that the idea is for bloggers who don’t have a particular blog theme like living healthy lives or collecting stamps or sports for example is this. . .Try to bring out your uniqueness as an individual. Try to express something that just has “you” written all over it. And try to make “you” entertaining or at least interesting. Connect to the things that interest you and help others in any way you can.

That’s what I am trying to do and maybe I am not succeeding. But that is the goal. Does it meet Lorelle’s criteria?

If it works I believe it does. And if it does not you all will sail away and I will have had fun trying.

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Update : Here’s a nice post written about Lorelle that helps me focus on the actual person who is behind the blog. It even has a photo of her. Apparently those are hard to find. She must be a distant relative of my wife.

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Th’ first thing to have in a libry is a shelf. Fr’m time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure. But th’ shelf is th’ main thing. ~Finley Peter Dunne

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Sometimes you just have to become motivated and make things happen. And around here that means cleaning my room. All the book shelves reach a point where they are stuffed full of papers, folders, gloves, hats, computer cords, old newspapers, empty software boxes, notebooks, towels, a bottle of Murphy Wood Cleaner, tape measures, a box of screws and assorted other stuff. Cleaning stuff up. These are “the days of our lives”.

Basically there are just supposed to be books in there and they should be in a vertical position instead of sideways on top of other books. So I cleaned that up and nearly gave myself some sort of dust disease by stirring up a half inch of wispy particles that fall all over the place like snow over a period of time.

And this room is very warm after about March so I bought a small AC unit and installed it in the second floor window next to the book shelves without dropping it out the window. Beth was sure that was going to happen and kept Sparky and Malarky our sharp toothed German Shepherds in the house while I was doing this.

They enjoyed themselves watching me from the other side of the room and occasionally growling in my direction. They probably think that I am afraid of them but the jokes on them because I know they are harmless as long as they are well fed . So I feed them four or five hours early when they start with the tough dog act.

Boy are they dumb.

I also bought a small digital tape recorder so I won’t forget these great blogging ideas I have while I am driving around. There’s hardly any chance I will remember them otherwise. I am just happy that when I went to the store to buy the AC unit I remembered to buy a digital tape recorder too.

But then I lost it. So after going through all the trash and all the boxes in the room I happened to look in one of the book shelves above the books.

And low and behold there it was and still in its little package too! Losing something before it is even opened would have really been a bummer.

The other thing I did was make a decision about my photoblog PhotoLink Love dot com. The photoblog plugin didn’t work out as you probably noticed if you went over there. The Yet Another Photoblog Plugin just quit working. So then I decided to use one of Sadish’s themes and make some of the photos 650 pixels across.

Because big photos are enjoyable. I think. Nobody has ever told me otherwise. Maybe everyone is humoring me.

Whatever. But then I found another theme by Sadish that has the light box capacity. Virginia Breeze has this and it’s very nice ( I am not sure if these are officially called light boxes or not). But you can’t have both as far as I know. Big photos vs. light box. Hmmm.

Such difficult decisions. So I have decided on smaller photos and the light box. And I had to redo a lot of photos to make them 500 pixels across. So I did it so many times it started taking about thirty seconds per post (And I still need to fix the ugly little line that you see under some of the photos).

And finally I hired someone to fix the code that has not really worked well since the time my domain stopped working completely last fall. For about a month I was forced to post on my Wordpress.com blog and nobody could fix the .org blog!

What a helpless feeling that was! But then it started working again one day on its own. But it still does screwy things and has been especially screwed up since Wordpress 2.5 came out. Someday they will figure all this stuff out and our grandchildren won’t have these problems. Blogs will work fine all the time and we will have time to worry about other stuff.

This will probably happen some time after I depart this vale of tears and frustration however.

But at least the vale isn’t hot anymore. This AC unit is putting out some serious cold air.

One of the things about blogging that I have found interesting is that you can go along for a long while and everything is pretty much alright. But then you wake up one morning and you feel like you may have slept on a pea. Or maybe you dreamed about flying saucers.

Or maybe you just woke up and wondered why you spend hours working on blogs every day and get nothing in return. Oh, wait. Maybe not nothing. You do receive comments from time to time that are very nice. Someone enjoys a photo or something you have written.

And that is your reward. What else could it be? Money? Don’t make me laugh. Hundreds of people coming to your site? Yeah. For two minutes and then they are gone.

So I woke up this morning and for some reason I just started questioning why I am doing all of this labor. And probably if one person had written a nice comment I would have just relaxed a little and let it go. But how many times do you expect someone to write a nice comment? I have a small group of readers who have done that many, many times. And we have sort of gone beyond that stage. We are in the psychic realm of communication where you don’t have to actually type anything on your keyboard. Right Bernie?

So that’s not really the answer. I was hoping my new blog might change things but it really hasn’t done a thing. Nobody has said much about it. Maybe it is a waste of time. Maybe blogging is a waste of time!

Taking photos is not a waste of time. However. And writing poems is not a waste of time. True art is not a waste of time no matter if you are pursuing it at a most basic level. It does matter and I will never regret spending the hours that I have spent doing it.

But the next person I read who suggests exchanging links is going to see my hands coming out of their monitor and grabbing their neck for a nice squeeze.

There is so much BS in Blogging. It should be called BSlogging. It’s like a horse race only when they open the gates five thousand ponies suddenly hit the track. It’s just beyond understanding and I hope there will come a time when just about everyone decides to go on to the next great thing. And please take a bunch of the SEO gurus too. Load them on your shoulders and carry them away. They are not needed.

They are going to hate that I said that. They are all sitting there with their SEO stuff and knowledge of CSS and advertising like cowboys who round up the herds of ponies. But did they actually ever create anything? Mostly No. And do they answer e-mails? Mostly No.

There are exceptions, of course. But most of them don’t have the time to do the things that they preach. They are too busy figuring out how to rake in the dough.

I don’t care about the dough ( in BSlogging. I care a great deal about it elsewhere). None of these BSlogging wizards makes meaningful money as far as I am concerned . I care about the beauty in nature and meaningful emotions. And I am tired to death of dealing with the BSlogging that goes along with sharing these things.

I may just decide to call in my favorite band of aliens and have them all picked up and taken someplace nice for a thorough inspection so they better behave themselves.

And before I complete this diatribe let me say that there is a special place in my heart for one Adaii Freelancer who can’t seem to find the time to answer questions about his special themes. He and the rest need to take the time to communicate and answer questions. Issuing edicts is just not a good alternative.

There are no kings and queens on the internet. But when they actually do return on Showtime I will be there! Henry VIII is returning soon. He was able to cut off your head if you displeased him. And I can respect that.

What are these guys going to do? Cut off your internet service? I don’t think so.

Update: Thanks to those who stumbled/reviewed the Virginia Breeze poems. It means a lot to me. If you haven’t done so I would encourage a look in that direction. I have a personal interest of course. But it also sends a message of encouragement to all of us who are trying to use our talents to create something that will last awhile in our blogs.

I will obviously win no popularity contests. But some of the things in here will be read and appreciated (I hope) long after I have ceased to put fingers to keypad. And this is not stated often enough in Blog Land. Sure there is talk about quality content. But that’s about it. The details are left up to the blogger’s imagination in many cases.

Quality content is something that often does not readily translate into viral impact or money making opportunities. Poetry often does not attract a large audience. Maybe it is just not that good. Or maybe it takes too much time in this fast paced world to appreciate it.

I like poetry that is easily understood but also is able stir up deeper emotions in some readers. That’s what I try to do and I have no illusions that my poetry is anything but a hobby and an amateurish effort. But it can still be good and worthwhile as well as those other things.

So I encourage everyone to try to create and/or support something meaningful in their blogs. Bernie creates wonderful photos of flowers. Helena takes wonderful photos of animals in her beloved Maxwell Zoo. Barbara always has a new and imaginative idea for a photo. And Ron is all over the world taking photos of everything that can contribute to a beautiful photo.

I hope you will support these things. Stumble/review them. Add them to your blogrolls and talk about them in your posts. Elevate the level of conversation on the web. Virginia Breeze Poetry just received about four thousand hits from SU and out of that number maybe 200 folks actually read one poem. But that’s cool. Reaching people who will enjoy this sort of thing is good. But it takes a lot of work and causes frustration at times. Have I gone beyond the recommended number of words for a post yet?

Way, way beyond? Oh Dear. I better stop!