A good day

Besides the obvious goodness of having a roof over my head, plenty to eat, clean water, climate control, adorable children, a loving husband, and knowledge of truth in my life, today was an especially good day for these reasons:

#1: I witnessed a truly amazing phenomenon on twitter: #iamblessed. Not only did the trend make the top 10, it was even #1 for much of the day. I truly believe that universal gratitude could go a long way in solving the world's problems. O that there were more days when more of the world was more grateful. Glad I got to see what I saw today.

#2: I was blessed by the comments of a kind friend I've never met. Made me feel very loved. Thank you. :)

The other eternal quest

. . . which is of course to find the perfect background for one's blog. In some cases I solve the problem by creating my own. However, in the case of my "butterfly diary," (see "personal progress") I have yet to actually create my own and instead have installed who-knows-how-many things in an effort to find *THE* background. Interesting project, but I think the latest incarnation may stick for awhile, since it's actually a complete template. Here's hopin'. :)

The Elusive Dream . . .

. . . which is, of course, world wide popularity, with absolutely no critics, of course. Okay, so that's a little extreme, but I'm afraid that perhaps part of my drive to blog, twitter, facebook, you name it is all in quest of some sort of visible evidence that I have friends. The results thus far: I have one true friend on Blogger, 1 true friend on Facebook, and have met several nice people on twitter who have graciously taken notice of me via following (never met them, but they're nice!). It's a bit odd coming to terms with this bit of insecurity, but my comfort is that at least through blogging I have something nice for me when its all said and done. Also, Twitter & Facebook have some nice photo options, which is good, too, since I've become a bit of a photoholic. Anyway, enough, I suppose of the "poor me syndrome" (the other PMS). Mayhap some sleep will help set things a bit better. :)

On this day in 2002 . . .

I had a really bad day that was part of a really bad month (or months) following a really bad weekend around this time in July. It was so terrible at the time that it is now extremely humorous to me. It all revolves around one of the more deliciously sticky, complicated, nasty, and pointless parts of my college dating career. But, oh, it sure makes for great stories! Even while the particularly nasty events of that weekend were still giving me pain, my inner satirist was nevertheless rubbing her hands and cackling in the background. Shall I share the story? My inner satirist is telling me I must, or else she won't let me sleep because she'll be chuckling too loudly about it all to let me do so. However, my inner entrepreneur has an alternate proposal; mayhap I should just send this off to my top secret author blog so that I can let you read it sometime when you can pay me for the pleasure. *wink*wink* Off to the secret lair! :)

(By the way, I actually had a very nice day this year, basically a complete opposite of seven years ago. What a difference about 2555 days make . . .)

Blog envy pt. 2

Interesting twist in our (my) blog envy saga: I've got more followers on Twitter than in Blogger, by a long shot. Granted, some spammers appear sometimes (in a Twitter way), but today 3 reasonably legit ones signed on to my follower list. The funny thing is I don't know any of them, but they nevertheless "listen" to me. Does this mean I sound best in 140 characters or less? Is the verbosity enabled by blogdom overrated for those wishing to be heard? These and other mysteries of the online world to be considered further later, mayhap. :)

Blog envy, blogging, blather, etc.

I have a confession to make: I have serious blog envy for some of those blogs out there. Is it the backgrounds? No, I've now figured out where to get them, how to install them, and even how to make some basic ones of my own. No, it's the comments I envy. Comments, glorious comments, the one thing besides a counter or other such widget that can let an author know that someone is actually reading the blog. *Sigh* (My apologies & thanks to those of you who have commented :)

However, despite this blog envy, I realize that there is greater purpose, for me at least, to blogging. Once upon a time I was a journal writer, but after about seven good years of that, life changes and perfectionist issues pretty much killed that. A year or so ago I first heard about blogs, mostly in the context of "use your blog to share the gospel." So, I tried setting up a blog with that in mind. Didn't get very far. Later, I started actually reading blogs, including friends' and relatives' blogs, and began to understand the whole thing a bit more. The big lightning bolt came along with baby #4 when I realized that a blog was a great way to share baby pictures. Then I realized that it could also be electronic journaling. Just think, a digital scrapbook maintained by Google, and easy to do, too! So, I started blogging. Later, I realized that writing is good for my sanity. So, even though I usually blog to the wind, I blog.

On to the blather: I mourn the exit of bloggers from the blogosphere. If you read this, you know who you are. Those of you who declare yourselves done with blogging. I shall miss you! But think, why call yourselves done? Do you feel some sort of obligation to your blog? Is it like an odious task master chiding you for not making additions according to some abstract schedule? O my friends, be masters of your own blogs! Do not let a little web page intimidate you, especially a web page you created! Why not just consider yourself on vacation maybe? Just because you don't feel like blogging everyday or even every year, why issue such a final sentence as "done" when your blog will wait patiently until you do feel like you have something to say?

All right, glad I got that off my chest. Yes, I am a novice blogger, but I find that I go in cycles with my passions, and I'm glad to know that even if/when my enthusiasm for blogging fades, the blog can still be there whenever the fire returns, just as my genealogy stuff waits for me online across the web or a book waits for me to finish reading it. :)

Writing, ahhh!

One of the first assignments my wise English teacher gave us in college was to write about the process we went through before actually writing papers. That way we could find out what our big "to do before the paper" list was and use the knowledge to get the paper writing done sooner by starting the to do list sooner. The big point that came out of it all was that most of us have lots of things we do to justify procrastinating the actual writing. I never considered myself much of an English-y person in school, and certainly I never had writing at the top of my "want to do" list. However, the tables have turned. In a world full of dishes, laundry, and children, I now find myself wanting to procrastinate those tasks by, you guessed it, writing (chiefly in blog form). How things do change over time. :)

Congratulations, Dad; your Google OS wish is coming true.

Just found this story on the BBC RSS feed today; Dad has been saying for some time that Google rocks and should/can do their own operating system. Well, they are!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8141964.stm