Surfacing

It’s been a while since I’ve been here.  Six weeks to be exact (if being exact is your kind of thing).  I can’t really pinpoint where I’ve been.  I have plenty of excuses I could give you.  (Work took up half that time.  Then I was sad that work was taking up so much time.  I was out of town for a couple of weekends.  I spent a lot of time reading about The Oatmeal’s trouble with Funny Junk.)  None of them really mean anything.

I haven’t just been neglecting this blog.  I haven’t been writing at all.  Nothing.  Zero.  Zilch.  You would think writing would be a welcome retreat, but no, it was more fun to throw myself a pity party.  We’ve all been there.  You don’t really want to go, but you got the invitation and you don’t want to be rude.  Then you end up staying much longer than you ever intended.   So, I guess I did know where I was – trapped in the black hole of self-pity.

I finally decided I was tired of doing that.  I’m trying to get out of the hole and back to the surface where life is happening.  It hasn’t been easy.  I can still hear some of the party-goers shouting after me, “What’s the point?  You’ll never be a writer!  Just stay here with us!  Have another beer!”  Then they crank up some 90s dance mix to try to lure me back in.  They know me so well.  Yes, all the exclamation points are necessary.  They are very enthusiastic about their nay-saying.

In an attempt to drown out said party-going nay-sayers, I’ve been writing in my head.  Yes, yes, all writing thoughts originate in my head.  What I mean is that the thoughts for a story or blog post are flowing out while I’m driving or running (mostly running).  I don’t know if this counts as writing.  Probably not since I have yet to actually put pen to paper for any of them, but the ideas are still clear in my head.  (Is there an app that will translate my thoughts into written word?  Can someone please invent that?)

If it isn’t yet obvious, I have no idea where I’m going with this.  I just felt the need to give some type of explanation as to where I’ve been; although, I really haven’t done that.  I am trying to be accountable.  I’m ‘fessing up to the entire Internet and promising to do better.  It’s almost my birthday, and I want only good things to happen this next year.  I need to get in the right frame of mind.  You know, positive thinking and all that.

So, to summarize, I disappeared for a while because I’m lame, and I let self-doubt take over.  No more!  I’m taking a stand.  To be a writer, you must write, and write I will.  Even if it’s about making dinner or doing the laundry.  Wait – don’t go!  I promise I won’t bore you with posts like that (unless it’s really entertaining, but I wouldn’t hold my breath).

Enough pointless musings for a Monday.  I’ll be back soon – pinky swear.

Popular Search Terms

I love looking at my stats page to see how people are finding my blog. Most of the time they are referred by what I can only describe as weird spam sites. But every so often someone stumbles upon me using a standard internet search. I am still baffled at the most popular terms that lead to my blog. Are you ready for it? Border collie beagle mix, or some closely similar variation.

This is weird to me for a couple of reasons. First, I am surprised at how many people are typing these search terms into Google or wherever. I guess my Maggie is not as unique as I thought, and for those of you with a border collie beagle mix, I do understand why you are searching the internet for information on said combination! Second, I find it strange that those terms frequently lead people to this blog, but not my photo blog, where I frequently post about Maggie. In fact, the searches always lead people to the same post, which was one of my very early posts.

Perhaps you are waiting for some revelation or wisdom regarding blogs and search terms, but no, I am merely rambling. I am still often in awe of the power of the internet, and wonder how I ever survived without it. I can’t wait until I have kids and say things like “Back in my day, we had to read books. There was no such thing as the internet.”

What are the most popular or unique terms that send people to your site?

One Hundred

Over the weekend I realized that I was nearing my 100th post.  I couldn’t believe it.  A few weeks ago I would have thought it would take me forever to hit 100.  I’m proud of the accomplishment, although there have certainly been some starts and stops along the way.  Starting this blog has been an interesting experiencing. In some ways it has been much easier than I anticipated; in others, much harder.

Some days I have all kinds of ideas floating around in my head, and words effortlessly fly onto the screen.  Other days, I have ideas, but I don’t know how to convey them.  And some days, I just have no idea what to write about.  I thought for sure that it would be easy to think of something to write about every day.

Over the past 100 posts, I have found that those posts that tell a story are easier to write than others.  I think that is because the content is already determined.  I know what is going to happen, what the ending will be.  I can simply focus on how to get the content across.

One hundred posts seems like an appropriate time to think about the focus of the blog, where it has been, and where it is going.  I started doing this in order to force myself to write, instead of merely wishing that I had time to write.  I made a conscious effort to take action.  But secretly, the purpose from the outset was to find motivation to try my hand at writing a book.  I can’t tell you how many times I have come up with an idea, written it down, outlined it, and then done nothing.

So, in celebration of my 100th post (among other reasons), I have actually started writing something.  It’s only about 200 words so far, but it’s a beginning.  The full plot is still working itself out, but I’m excited about the prospect regardless of the outcome.  It seems as if it will be much easier to keep going now that I’ve gotten past the hard part of just starting.  And now I’ve blogged about it, so I have to be accountable!

Just Write

When I saw WordPress.com’s post with this phrase come through on my Twitter feed, I didn’t know that it was related to the user-friendly changes to the dashboard.  Although it piqued my interest and I planned to read the post once I got home (because my phone is about worthless), I started thinking about what “just write” meant to me.  As I thought about it, I no longer even cared what the post was actually about.  I was already inspired to focus on just writing.  I’ve been struggling a bit lately with focus, and, I am ashamed to admit, gave up on the Post a Day Challenge and switched to Post a Week.  I even deleted my Post a Day badge.  I didn’t want to mislead anyone or take away from those who were still keeping up with the Challenge.

When I got home I pulled up my blogs and immediately noticed the changes to the Dashboard.  Things were more organized and compact.  Then I remembered I needed to actually read the post whose title alone inspired me.  As I read along, I was reminded of why I love WordPress so much.  In my opinion, the site is constantly trying to make things easier and more efficient for its bloggers.

I love the new distraction-free writing feature.  Sometimes posts write themselves, and I’m fine with all the menus around me.  But sometimes I’m not sure what to say, I’m easily distracted, I start thinking about categories and tags, etc.  Being able to push all of that aside and just focus on the post is invaluable.  I used it for the first time while writing last night’s post (yes, that’s right, a post two days in a row…maybe it’s working), and I loved how the final post was appearing before my eyes.  It helped me to keep my focus and keep writing.

Another great feature – the ability to resize the writing box.  I would often look at my tiny, narrow writing space, and think, if only there was a way to make this bigger!  I of course immediately resized it, but I don’t know that it matters much now that the full screen mode is so clean and writer-friendly.  In fact, I’m using it again.

This is the second blog that I created with WordPress, and I’ll be honest with you – I started my photo blog using another site (which will remain nameless).  After about a month of frustration caused by waiting what seemed like hours to upload the photos and the inability to easily move things around a draft post, I started looking for other options.  I found WordPress, seamlessly moved the blog over, and have been happily blogging ever since.  I mean, really, I now have two blogs!  Thanks, WordPress – I never ever thought I would be a “blogger”, and now I don’t know what I would do without this community.

Dear Blog, We Need to Talk

I think we both knew this time was coming.  We’ve been together now for about five months.  It started out a little rocky, I’ll admit.  We flirted a bit before actually beginning our relationship, but then we saw each other only sporadically.  A couple of random dates here and there.  At the first of the year (and in response to WordPress’ The Daily Post Challenge), I committed to seeing you every day.  I’ve kept up my end of the bargain fairly well – I’ve only missed a couple of days…up until recently, that is.

You’ve probably been wondering where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing.  I can assure you I have not been seeing other blogs (except my photo blog, but you knew about that going into it).  Maybe you are wondering if you’ve done something wrong.  That’s not it, but I have been thinking a lot about where we are going with this.  I try to give you good content, and in return I expect something from you.  But what?  What are we really trying to achieve?

When we started out some five months ago, I was hoping you would be a creative outlet for writing, thoughts, general musings.  But soon I realized that putting pen to paper, so to speak, was more difficult than I thought.  Those thoughts tumbling through my head didn’t easily come out in coherent writings.  So I wrote nothing.  Then we started getting together every day.  The competitive side of me was bound and determined to post something on you every day.  I’d made the commitment, after all, even placing the Post A Day image on your sidebar, announcing to the world (potentially) that it could find new content here every single day.  I had to put something, anything, on your pages.

I’ll be honest with you, I stopped enjoying our time together.  I won’t go so far as to say that I dreaded seeing you, but the quality of our time, the quality of the content I was giving you, was suffering.  Posting became something I had to do, even if maybe I didn’t want to or was just pressed for time one day.  I know that ultimately you and I exist so that I can develop my writing skills.  And after all, isn’t writing something, anything, better than writing nothing?  I started to question whether that was so.  Is crap really better than nothing?

Obviously you know that I went on vacation.  That was the longest we had ever been apart.  You might not believe this, but I spent a lot of time thinking about you.  I spent a lot of time thinking about writing.  I remembered that what I really want to do, and have tried to do since age 8 or so, is to write fiction.  Don’t worry, I’m realistic about it.  I don’t expect a best seller.  I don’t even expect to get anything published.  But to actually write something, a complete something, would be a great personal accomplishment.

So, what does this mean for us?  Don’t worry.  We aren’t breaking up.  I’m not going to start a third blog.  But I do think we need to spend less time together.  I really believe this will help me to focus on your content and make each post something we can both be proud of.  I don’t think we should cut our time to only once per week.  That’s not enough.  But I think four or five times a week would be more appropriate.  You are like running.  I just can’t run six days a week.  I get exhausted and burned out.  I don’t want that to happen with us.  I want to keep us going for as long as possible.

I also think you need some sprucing up.  I’m not criticizing you.  After all, I’m responsible for your appearance.  I think a make-over would do us both some good.  Give us a fresh perspective.  I’m sorry that I’ve let you go as long as I have, but I was so focused on posting every day that I was too tired to improve the backdrop for my writings.  I’m not sure yet what we’ll do.  I love your appropriate header photo – the blurred wave of runners starting a half marathon race in the dark – but it may be time to let it go.

I hope you understand where I’m coming from.  I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll agree with these changes.  I promise it’s only going to strengthen what we have.  I’ll see you soon.

Love,

Me

Someone Read All My Blog Posts!

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on the couch, and pulled up WordPress to start blogging for the evening.  Much to my surprise, I noticed on my front page that over the prior two days, someone had read almost every one of my blog posts.  My husband was sitting next to me and I said, “Wow, someone read almost all of my posts!  And after all that, they still didn’t subscribe!”  His reply was, “Hmmm.”

I started working on the post for the evening.  I was focusing on writing and about ten minutes later or so, he tapped me on the arm.  I glanced over at him and he said, “You really don’t know who read all your blog posts?”  My eyes widened, and I sort of felt exposed.  “You did?”  “Yeah, babe,” he said.  We both started laughing, although I was laughing to mask my panic.  What did he think?  He read them all but didn’t tell me and didn’t offer any feedback.  What did that mean?  Did he hate my writing?  I mean, he had read my legal writings many times, but this was the first time he’d ever read any of this type of my writing.

Ironically, just a couple of days before he read the blog, I had written about how I had yet to share this with my family and friends.  I wrote that I wasn’t even sure if my husband had read any of it, although I had not told him that he could not.  He referred to that post, and then I thought, “Oh, my, I hope he knows I take creative license when describing things that happen to us.”

After laughing for a bit longer, the flush faded from my face, and I resumed my writing for the evening.  I didn’t ask him that night was he thought about the blog.  In fact, I have yet to ask him what he thinks.  I suppose I am afraid he will just tell me what he thinks I want to hear so as to avoid hurting my feelings.  I am afraid that because he didn’t offer immediate praises that he didn’t like it.  I know I should just swallow my anxieties and ask him.  Here goes nothing…

Overcoming My Obsession With Stats

When I first started blogging about nine months ago, I was consumed, obsessed, addicted to my stat tracker.  How many people looked at my blog?  Where did they come from?  Did they subscribe?  Did they comment?  Do they have a blog?  I couldn’t get enough of it.  The sad part was, no one was really looking at my blog(s).  Yet I still checked the stats page like there was something to report on.  It was depressing.  It’s like I was just punishing myself.  I was obsessed with the Freshly Pressed sites.  How were they chosen?  Was it how often they posted?  How many subscribers they had before?  How could I get Freshly Pressed?

I would check my email when I got up in the morning to see if anyone had subscribed or commented.  I would check my blogs first thing when I got work to see who had looked at them.  Then I downloaded the WordPress mobile app – not so I could blog on my phone…oh, no.  I downloaded it because I could check my stats.  Then I was able to check them right after I checked my email.  If I had lots of hits or comments, I would feel ecstatic!  If I had none, I would be sad.  What a horrible way to start the day, right?

I have slowly been able to wean myself from my stats obsession.  Don’t get me wrong – I still check them every day.  But there are times when I will go most of the day without even thinking about them.  I rarely check them on my phone (unless I am away from a computer for an extended period of time).  So, what changed?  I still want people looking at my blog.  I still want people subscribing.  How did I get over that unhealthy obsession?

I started focusing on what the blogs were really about – the blogs!  If I focused on my content, readers would come (yes, I’ve been thinking about Field of Dreams a lot lately…”If you build it, they will come.”).  I can’t expect people to find or subscribe to my blog if I’m not concentrating on the one thing that would draw them in the first place.  Once I started The Daily Post challenge and I was posting to two blogs a day, I didn’t have as much time to worry about the stats.  I had to worry about writing posts.  And what do you think happened?  That’s right…I had more readers and subscribers.

There are still some days when I think I’ve put together a really smart post and I only get a few reads.  I still feel a bit of disappointment, but rather than dwelling on it, I immediately push it aside and focus on the next post.  I’m blogging for myself, to practice writing, to find ideas, to push myself.  That’s what I try to remember every day, regardless of the stat tracker.  However, that’s not to say I wouldn’t be thrilled to wake up one morning to find one of my blogs Freshly Pressed on the front page of WordPress.com!

The Process of Writing a Post

Some days writing a blog post is as easy as watching TV.  Ideas and words seem to flow as if by magic.  I have tried to pin point why this is.  Is it what I’m writing about?  Is it the mood I’m in?  The kind of day I’ve had?  I’ve determined that a big part of it depends on what I’m writing about.  If I’m telling a story, or writing about something important or close to my heart, the words come more easily.  This makes sense to me.  Most of those posts are ideas that I have thought about over and over again in the general context of life.  When I struggle to come up with an idea, I struggle to write once I’ve thought of something.  It’s like I don’t have an investment in the idea.

I don’t plan out my posts.  I have a list of ideas that I pull from (sometimes), but I usually don’t do any writing until I’m getting ready to post.  This is mainly because I feel like I don’t have time to work on writing more than one in a day.  It can be frustrating to sit and stare at the computer screen, writing a line, deleting, writing almost the exact same line, deleting, and going back to staring at the screen.  Inevitably these turn out to be the posts that I am unsatisfied with, but I believe there is much value to going through the writing process.

I find there have been fewer days where I sit and stare at the screen.  However, there are some parts of the writing process that I don’t think will ever improve.  For instance, I always fear grammatical errors and typos.  I try to review every post before I publish it, but sometimes your eyes see what they think they are supposed to be seeing.  Every so often the errors slip through the cracks.  Oh, the embarrassment!  I immediately edit the post to fix the error, hoping that no one read it in the meantime.

I would say 50% of the time I will think of something else that I should have included, or think of a better way to phrase what I already wrote.  Sometimes the ideas come within 5 minutes, sometimes it’s not until the next day.  I typically don’t revise or add to posts once they’ve been published.  Perhaps I should.  Actually, I think what this tells me is that I should write my posts out ahead of time and ruminate on them before publishing.  If only I could be that organized and on the ball.

I’d like to be able to say that blogging has gotten easier over the last sixty days, but I think I’m still trying to figure it out.  Still trying to find a focus.  At least it hasn’t gotten any harder, and I’ll take that for the time being!

The Irony of Blogging

This blog has been in existence for about four months, although I have only seriously been blogging for a couple of months (sixty days to be exact!), and I have told none of my family or friends about its existence.  Well, my husband knows about it (and he blabbed about to some of his work people) but I don’t know if he remembers the web address.  He certainly could find it if he wanted to (it’s on our Safari top sites page after all) and I’ve never actually asked him not to look at it.  For some reason, I feel very protective of this blog.  OK, not this blog, of myself.

Writing is so personal, and I am afraid to have people I know read and critique me.  But here’s the irony – I have no problems posting quasi-anonymously and having (potentially) the entire world find and read my blog.  Crazy, right?  I don’t feel the same about my photo blog, even though my photos are also personal expressions of myself.  I post links to that blog everywhere – Facebook, Twitter, Flickr – anywhere and everywhere I can think of.  I guess if people don’t like my photos I can explain it away by saying I’m just a beginner.  I’m still learning.  Cut me some slack.

But with writing, I don’t have that excuse.  I was taught how to write when I was a child.  If I can’t write well by now, then I must not be able to, right?  These are the things I fear people who have known me for a while will think.  I also blog a lot about my job and my career and how much I despise both.  I’m hesitant to link to Facebook because I’m “friends” with most of my coworkers and one of my bosses.  That could be awkward, right?  (Um, no boss, that wasn’t you I called an idiot on the World Wide Web where everyone and their brother can read what I wrote.)  I don’t like my job, but I don’t want to be fired!

I also don’t want to change or limit what I write about just because I’m afraid of who might read it.  This blog is just one part of the process I am going through to figure out what to do when I grow up, and that includes reflecting on where I am right now in life, where my career is and where it is taking me.  So, for the time being, my Publicize button will remain unlinked to Facebook, and I will only tweet posts related to photography.  Maybe one day I’ll have the courage to share with my friends and family what the rest of the world can already see!

Overcoming Self Doubt

I have not been very satisfied with my writing lately.  I feel like I haven’t been devoting the proper time to it, and then I don’t like what comes out.  I recognize that the solution is in the problem – just spend more time writing.  Unfortunately I have just been overwhelmed with work and am preparing to speak at a conference next week.  I’m also lacking inspiration.  Perhaps it’s the weather.

I spend a lot of time reading other people’s work to see what types of things that they write about and how their posts develop.  I read so many creative, insightful, witty and humorous posts and I wish I could write like any or all of those writers.  I don’t want to write exactly like anyone else, of course, but I feel like I am struggling to find my voice.  I thought I had a focus, but I feel as if I have no focus right now.  My thoughts are all over the place.

I haven’t seriously thought about giving up, because that’s always what I have done in the past and I am determined to do it differently this time around.  But I definitely need to narrow my themes.  I think it will also help to specifically plan out posts for the coming week, so that I’m not struggling to come up with an idea at 9:30 at night.  If inspiration strikes me during the day – great.  I can use the planned idea at a later date.  But if not, I’m not stuck with a weak idea.

I have tried keeping a list of ideas for posts, but after the list sits for a while, I pick it up and think everything is stupid or boring.  What I need to come up with is a list of generic topics that I can then apply to some situation that came up during the day.  Like, make up a story about someone you passed on the street, or write about a favorite memory.  I don’t know how helpful that will be with focusing my writing, but it should help with finding my voice and style.

It’s 9:00, and I’ve got a few more things to get done before bedtime, including coming up with my posts for the week.  Hopefully this plan will quiet the thoughts of self-doubt that are spending way too much time bouncing around my head.