Breaking the Ice and Sticking in the Oar (ROW80 Round 2 GOALS)

Wordcloud created at Wordle with text from this post.

An accounting of the last two months and re-commitments to blogging, writing (Row80), fiber art finishes, reviews, healthy habits and Joy (the state of being full of it, One Word and, yes, myself).

Coming out of the personal crisis that consumed late January through mid February I was felled by a series of infections.  The laryngitis I had Valentine's week segued into the flu with cough which became bronchitis with 2 weeks of  coughing fits.  One ten days in, that woke the whole household upstairs and down, warranted a visit to the doctor.  She suspected pneumonia and sent me for xrays saying if it was in both lungs she was putting me in the hospital.

But it wasn't pneumonia at all.  According to the xray it was just severe bronchitis along with visible COPD damage in my lungs.  That diagnosis has been hard for me to wrap my head around. It seemed to be the death knell to the goal I'd set myself two years ago to get healthy and eventually get off all the meds including the BP, the ADD and the antidepressants. And now I'm looking at yet another condition that is considered something you manage for a lifetime but not cure.

Will it mean more meds?  And what about my dream to start running again? At the very least it's going to mean more doctor appointments and I've about had my fill of them.

Where's the nearest hole I can crawl into?

COPD!! It didn't feel like a very fair reward for all the hard work of the last two years.

Since January 1st of 2013 I've dropped 60lb, (from 220 to160) ten dress sizes, (from 24 to 14 or from 2X/3X to 0X) and 7 inches off my waist, (from 44-37).  Losing the weight and getting active was probably why I was able to loose two of the three BP meds I was on two years ago.  And just last week my med nurse agreed to let me try stepping the Trazadone back to an occasional sleep aid instead of one of the daily antidepressants.

Between the personal drama the first six weeks of the year followed by one infection after another ever since (it's been ear infections for the last month) I haven't done much at all with my writing.  Even dropping the blog!  Between the fatigue and brain fog I just seemed to have nothing to give it.

Most of what productivity I have had since the first of the year has gone into the fiber art projects.  I have pictures I took for blog posts I didn't get around to writing which I'll be sharing in the coming weeks.

I confess that a great deal of my time since the first of the year has been given to endless hours of video watching.  About 50% of that time was shared with fiber art--mostly crochet.

In the last month I invested some of my scarce energy into decluttering, sorting and organizing with significant progress in the bedroom and office and the repacking of the boxes down in the basement from the rushed move in spring of 2013.

I realized things were improving in the second week of April when I began to be able to sustain my focus on reading for over an hour at a time and began to give up the videos in favor of the book more and more often.  Since then I've finished 5 books.  3 of them ARCs.  Which meant I needed to break the ice with the blogging again so I could post my reviews soon.  I knew I wouldn't post anything else until I'd posted something like this to explain my absence and set expectations for the future.

I got the reading back just in time for the spring Dewey 24 Hour Read-a-Thon.  Can't wait for Saturday!  I'm going to be free to do the whole 24 hours again this time! For the first time since the fall of 2012. Or at least attempt it with hope of making it since I got to ditch the zombie med.

The last four Thons just haven't been the same.  Making it the full 24 was my thing.  The only thing I did better than most since my visual impairment makes racking up impressive numbers of pages or books impossible.

I began to yearn for the creative writing again in the last week or so.  That's another thing I need to break the ice on.  I think the last creative writing I worked on was this poem I posted February 8th.

Considering one of the 11 verses, it might behoove me to put my oar in the water and start ROWing again:

There was an old woman who swallowed her words
they scratched and sliced and stabbed her innards
she wants to holler and howl and curse
perhaps she'll burst

ROW80 ROUND 2 GOALS
same as for Round 1 except for the last one and as always they are time investment rather than word count.

• Storydreaming 15min Daily (I never lost this one since instating it in my first round in 2012.  A ROW80 win!)
• Read/Study Craft 15min Daily
• Move/Breathe/Meditate 15min Daily
• Personal Journaling 15min Daily
• Read Fiction 30min Daily
• Social network activities 30min Daily (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc)
• Engage with the Blow Me a Candy Kiss structural rewrite file 30 min Daily

All of this in service to the overarching goal for 2015: Regain the joy in writing that I lost sometime last year.

Let me close with another of the verses in my February poem:

There was an old woman who swallowed her story
said it was boring but she feared its glory
now they grapple in purgatory

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Time to Find a New Normal

"time flies" by Robert Couse-Baker

I let everything else fall away the morning of May 27th when I found Merlin unconscious.  Now it is closing in on a week since he crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  I've found my way back to enough emotional equilibrium it's time to start moving towards a new normal that puts me back on a track towards my priority goals.

I have a lot of catching up to do--sleep, email inbox, 2Do lists, clutter on desk and in clothing and accessories area and so much more.  Including posts.  I'm still running three or more days behind in getting posts ready to publish though I continue to open new drafts for each day.

This is an added stress I don't need so I'm going to simplify the task and lower my expectations until I

• catch up on sleep
• rack up a week solid of 7.5+ hours of sleep
• declutter desk, closet, accessories and crafts
• get my schedule back in place (I've gravitated back to night owl)
• get back on my exercise routine
• finish the rewrite of Candy Kiss
• and whatever else occurs to me that needs to have priority over posting

So my plan for simple, quick posts is to

• use blog this to create drafts from things I encounter online that are uplifting or useful
• use my cell camera to take photos of something I do that might be post worthy and start a draft
• create LOLs
• find posts in my archives that are worth a replay or a rewrite


By creating more than one draft a day that way I can have a backlog of potential posts to choose from.

Read more...

Friday Forays in Fiction: Spring Challenges

hello mai purritteez
see my 1st caption of this pic here
with my poem Prioritizing Agony
both with the same theme as this post

There are four challenges I'm joining this spring.  That I know about so far.

It is not the first time for any of them.  I always seem to go into them with sparkling expectations and excitement but by the 1/4 mark I can already see I'm not going to meet my goals then the remainder of the challenge is tainted by demoralization, stress, and desperation.

And at the end, in spite of all that I did accomplish that would not have gotten done without the challenge and community support, I come away with a pervasive sense of failure.  Not just failure to meet my goals but personal failure as in Looser or Fool, Clown or Fraud.

So this spring, in the spirit of the time-management coaching goals my husband has in mind, I am running my goal concepts past him to get his observations, suggestions and explanations of what makes a reachable goal and how each of my concepts would impact both the goals weeks, months or years out and the already in place goals for the foundation of self-care we are working to put into place to support the other goals, dreams and aspirations.

It is very important that I don't sabotage what we have already got in place or set myself up for another experience of failure.  Thus it is better to keep the stated goal a reachable challenge--doable but only by pushing myself a bit.

UPDATE: I added Bloggiesta Saturday morning because I found out it was currently in session this weekend only after I'd posted.

SPRING 2014
March 27-30

Bloggiesta -- The Blog Improvement Fiesta  SPRING 2014: March 27-30

I found out just before midnight last night (Friday) that Bloggiesta was on this weekend and I'd already missed two days.  The last one I participated in was fall of 2012 because I keep missing them by a few days to a month, learning about them by stumbling upon someone's Bloggiesta posts after it was all over.

I need to find a way for the information to reliably reach me ahead of the fiesta.  Now that Bloggiesta has its own hub blog maybe it also has a newsletter or subscribe to post form?  [DONE]

I almost decided to let it go but I'd been needing a Bloggiesta for the impetus and info it provides along with the community support and the sense of accountability provided by publishing the 2DO list.

I had to wait until I was able to consult my time management coach (aka my husband) before I could publish a 2DO list though as I'm utterly convinced that I could not make a list that would not sabotage the success we built up this past week. See final paragraph of the top section.

During this morning's (Saturday) vid chat Ed immediately saw the importance for me to participate.  He said it was analogous to a college course or seminar in blog management and would tie me into a community with the management expertise in an area he was not up to speed on but that was essential to my aspirations to self-publish and freelance among other online biz concepts I have.

So after conferring with me on the most urgent tasks he helped me create this list:

Saturday:

• Update Friday's Spring Challenge post to include Bloggiesta
• Sign up on Bloggiesta blog
• Finish the structural rewrite and fine edit of the draft for Saturday's post which was promised in Tuesday's post for Wednesday and then postponed because I mismanaged my time Wednesday
• Post Saturday's post, I Tried it My Way and link it on the fb fan page and twitter. Share fan page post with fb ROW80 Group (those whom I made the promise to on Tuesday)
• Subscribe to Bloggiesta post via email. (yeah. I just added that. It was not on my radar when discussing with Ed this morning)

Sunday:

• Prep and post the Sunday Serenity post.  Link on the fb fan page and twitter. 
• Prep Monday's IMWAYR? post and schedule it to go live after midnight
• Clean up the Joy Renee on the Web section removing defunct links and adding new
• Clean up social media section and add links to SM I signed up for after the last time this was done..  Most urgent is to get small discrete buttons for a more professional look. I would like that section to take up no more screen real estate than a credit card
• Clean out old and defunct buttons and banners in the challenges section of the sidebar and replace with current ones.  The five in this post at minimum
• Break my lurking habit and interact socially in the Bloggiesta community by commenting, asking a question, do a mini-challenge, or participate in the twitter conversation
• Update Camp NaNo profile to reflect the goals for April Camp

Wrap up:  I didn't get the sidebar work done, nor the mini-challenge and socializing,, nor Monday's post to give me a day out from under the pressure.  But I did spend a lot of time exploring the mini-challenges both current and archived.  I focused on organization, sidebar, social media and monetizing.  I don't think I'll wait for the next Bloggiesta to continue reading and then applying what I learn. I may even add blog management goals to my ROW80 for the next two rounds at least.

Camp
NaNoWriMo

Camp NaNo --  Kickoff at midnight (12:00:01) April 1st.  That's Monday night folks!

This is different from the November NaNo in which the majority of participants comply with the original challenge of a 50K novel in 30 days.  For the NaNo camps you can choose your own writing project in any category or genre.  And establish your own word count and/or other measurable goal(s).

My original idea was to

• Create a backlog of 15 book reviews ready for posting from the many I have in progress or from other books I've already read.
• Rewrite and edit my 6000 word short story Blow Me a Candy Kiss
• Complete all the writing exercises for my AWAI  copywriting course

I'd only got as far as listing the first one when Ed said he needed to think about it overnight.  Two days later he said 7 reviews was a reachable goal.  It took a detailed explanation of his logic before I agreed.  Its not that I couldn't do more just that I shouldn't state more as the goal so that I would get the rush of success when I achieved it and again for every extra one.

But then I told him that I had also been thinking about a structural rewrite and fine edit of Candy Kiss.  Which would entail two to three passes through the 6000 words and likely a bit of expansion up to an additional 2-4K.

That's when he said Drop the reviews and do that!

I was reluctant and it took a lengthy explanation of his reasoning before I agreed.  The most salient point he had was that I had set as my first goal in my first round of ROW80  Spring of 2012 to get Candy Kiss prepped for a self-pub experiment and not only is it still not done, it is a pivotal task in the establishment of my dream of self-publishing my writing.

He would like to see me actually publish it by the end of the month as he believes it is important for me to get the ice broken on that and realizes that the hardest part of that challenge is the emotional work I'd have to be doing as I write and edit in order to be ready to take the plunge when the time comes.

No, I didn't even bother to share my intent to add the AWAI exercises.  I dropped the idea as his reasoning on the others was convincing and I could see it ruled out adding anything else as his estimate on the time investment required for the Candy Kiss project was well above 30 hours.  I would guess 20-30 hours per pass through the manuscript.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2014
The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

ROW80 --  A Round of Words in 80 Days -- The Writing Challenge That Knows You Have a Life

Altho this is modeled after the November NaNo it is four rounds a year of 80 days each with brief hiatuses between.

It's about flexibility and learning to adjust goals as needed.  You can work on any kind of writing project or multiple projects but your goals must be defined such that they are measurable.

Since I knew how crazy word count often makes me I started off in April 2012 to use time investment goals and as of January this year I use a Google Doc spreadsheet to keep track and then share both a screenshot and a link to the chart itself in check-ins.

My goals for round 2 this year will combine the goal of regaining the ground I lost as reflected in the spreadsheet in March by the end of April with the goals for Camp NaNo in April and JuNoWriMo in June along with the Time Management, Self-Management and Project Management goals Ed is coaching me on which are all designed to support my writing and entrepreneurial goals.

Add caption

Dewey's Read-a-Thon -- 24 hours of reading, sharing, mini-challenges, prizes, cheerleading, bloging, social networking...

There are no goals for this one other than to enjoy it and go with the flow. It will depend on my mood when the time comes what the ratio between reading and the other possible activities will be

I used to pride myself on my ability to stay awake the full 24 but that is no longer a given.  Unless I have had a solid week of good sleep (7.5+ per night) I shouldn't even try.  But even then I would have to do it without fudging on my med schedule which is tricky with the bedtime Trazadone which I'm rarely able to resist more than an hour.

JuNoWriMo 2012

JuNoWriMo -- Begins June 1.  It's a little more flexible than NaNoWriMo which encourages you to start with a fresh story and write a 50K novel as it allows for continuing with a WIP while counting only the words produced in June.

I thought I remembered that it didn't have to be a novel or even fiction but I can't find that mentioned on the site today.

I was hoping to transfer my Book Review Backlog concept to JuNo but if that isn't possible I'll save it for July Camp NaNo and choose among:

• put another short story through the rewrite and edit wringer
• wander around my fiction files adding words to character sketches, character monologues, scenes, back story and NaNo messes drafts
• select a previous NaNo mess draft and do a structural rewrite aka clean up the NaNo mess
• select a previous NaNo mess draft that is likely to need another 40K to complete and start working where I left off at the end of its NaNo
• start a fresh novel from the long list of story seeds I have backloged

Read more...

Read-a-Thon Prepping.

Only 30 hours before the start of my 11th 24-Hour Read-a-Thon.

Somehow I've got to figure out how to get a decent sleep before it starts and at the same time be ready to start at 5 AM in spite of the fact that I've been going to bed between 4 and 7 AM for over a week!

I have signed up for a minimum of 2 hours of Cheering as well and have been assigned to the Nerds Squad.

I will also be hosting a mini-challenge again.  The same one I've done before: post a photo, video or audio of children reading or being read to or write/talk about an adult who turned you on to reading as a child.  The mini-challenge will run through hours 11, 12 and 13 or 3-6PM Pacific Time.  The prize will be one of my crocheted bookmarks.

This year my read-a-thon stack has got to be predominately ARCs as I'm so far behind on them.

Between now and 5am Saturday or in the next 30 hours I've got to prep five posts counting this one (Friday's regular post, Saturday's Thon post, the Mini-Challenge post and my ROW80 check-in.  Get at least six hours of sleep.  Prep my food and drink for the 24 hours.  Prep my reading list--mostly ARCs as I said above but for those times my eyes or mind go out of focus I want some light reading or an audio book to fall back on. Only one of my current ARCs can be considered light reading and it's font is smallish.

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Sunday Serenity #304

Fiesta Days @ art.com

Bloggiesta is over.  My list looks much the same as when I created it on Frida.  Only two items crossed off tho  I began many more of them and along the way also got sidetracked into tasks not originally on the list but blog improvement related.  But again, many begun and few finished.

Unfinished is my middle name.

Issues with connection made some tasks slow and tedious or interrupted altogether so I didn't complete any mini-challenges or visit many blogs or leave any comments.  Which kinda  put the fizzle in the fiesta for me leaving me just plugging away at a 2do list alone in my office like any other day.

But I don't mean to make it  sound like it was all fizzle and no zesta.  I enjoyed the learning and discovering of new things in the mini-challenge posts I did read and also on the sidebars of those blogs.  Probably the biggest accomplishment was the addition of many more 2dos onto my master task list for going forward--widgets to add, social media to join, blogs to follow, events to participate in, organizational tips to try....

Too bad Bloggiesta can't be once a month instead of twice a year.

I hear the next one is scheduled for the last weekend of March.

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Bloggiesta September 2012 Goals

JOIN IN

This time I hope to put my major focus on considering and implementing options for making daily posts less onerous to complete and cut back the average time spent daily from over 3 to under 2 hours.

Organization of tools and information would be the main players here I think and maybe some post backlogs..

 The urgent:

• write author interview questions for an upcoming blog tour
• create an embedded spreadsheet to keep track of my ROW80 goals for the next round to replace the obnoxiously long posts I have been using.  I created the spreadsheet in Google Docs but could not figure out how to embed it.
• create a ROW80 page.  
• check out all of the mini-challenges and complete at least one.
• read/write blogging related email
• prepare a backlog of posts to see me through the the next three busy months.  These could be Sunday Serenity posts, Quote posts, and book reviews.
• collect book cover images for likely book reviews
• prepare a list of themes and concepts for Friday Forays in Fiction posts and a place to collect info and images for them.
• learn and apply at least one new traffic gaining trick.
• clean up the sidebars again.
• add commitments for next several weeks to calendar
• visit Blogiesta participants and leave comments

Less urgent: 

• pare down labels and add labels to old posts from the years before labels were available.
• fix image and video size in old posts created before the template change two years ago that are too big for the current post column.
• change icons for social network links in sidebar and add the missing ones.  I would like smaller icons and if possible a consistent size.
• work on about page
• clean out inbox pushing 7K

Read more...

Bloggiesta Fall 2012 -- September 28-30

SIGN UP

It is time again for the big blogging slumber party, the three day weekend that comes around twice a year in which bloggers gather to learn from one another,  do maintenance tasks on their blog templates, write a back log of posts for the future, learn new tricks, network, comment, teach, promote, and whatever other goals they might have towards improving their blogging experience.

Sign ups are happening now the event is this weekend.

Bring your appetite for fun, friends and fiendishly focused blogging.

Read more...

Spring Fling Finale

SITS Girls Spring Fling Event:
A Blog Improvement Challenge--
Build Your Community &
Improve Your Blog

Today was the last day of the SITS Girls Spring Fling.  I spent a lot of time working on the assignments for Tuesday (About Page) Wednesday (Best Of Paage) and Thursday (Do Something New).

The new thing I'm doing is setting up Pages in Blogger.  I've known I had the capability for over a year but kept putting it off.

You ought to be seeing the About Page in the top section of the left sidebar.  I tried to get the links to show in tabs across the top but it wouldn't take for some reason and I think I actually like it this way better anyway as there are going to be over six total when I'm done.

I put a lot of time, thought and effort into it over the last several days and still have only the About Page ready to publish and even yet consider it still under construction.

I don't know if I'm going to have a Best Of Page as I am planning to have several others that serve a similar purpose only splitting the best posts into categories: Reading, Writing, Fiber Art etc.  Once I have them ready they will replace in function what the Portal Posts have been for:

Book Review Portal will become part of the Joyread Page
Poetry Portal will become part of the Joywrite Page
Fruits of the Spirit Story World Portal ditto

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Of Spring Flings, Sidebars & Social Networking

SITS Girls Spring Fling Event:
A Blog Improvement Challenge--
Build Your Community &
Improve Your Blog

While working so hard to finish Mom's scarf/shawl before Moother's Day I dropped the ball on SITS Girls Spring Fling for Thursday and Friday assignments.  So my goal today was to catch up those two assignments and do today's which was to declutter our blog.  Thursday was share your Google+ link and Friday was share your Pinterest link.  Though I had a Google+ page I hadn't done a profile for it.  I didn't have a Pinterest account at all.

Earlier last week we shared our facebook and Twitter links.  Those I already had well establishes so those two assignments took only minutes.  Except for the visiting others part.  That always takes me a looooooong time.

But today I spent hours on Google+ and Pinterest.  Signing up for the latter and setting up profiles on both and following and pinning and liking and...


I was so bummed that both JoyRenee and Joystory and Joywrite were already taken as usernames.  I probably spent half an hour just staring at the sighup screen before I finally went with 'storyismyjoy'


Might as well round them all up here:

Joy Renee on Google+
Joy Renee on Pinterest
Joystory fanpage on facebook
Joy Renee on Twitter


For the declutter project I chose to begin with getting rid of all of the old buttons for events and challenges from the past.  But I didn't want to just delete them.  So I moved them into a footer at the bottom of the page in a section I named Once Upon a Time.  That was so easy I wondered if maybe I was about to loose my aversion to sidebar fiddling caused by a frustrating experience every single time I attempt it.

But then of course it happened again.  One of the buttons I wanted to leave in the sidebar above did not reappear after I'd removed the others and saved the widget.  I spent nearly two hours beating my brain over the problem.  If it had been any other button but Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon I might have given up and deleted it after fifteen minutes.  It wasn't until I did a character by character comparison of the code in the sidebar widget with the code in my last read-a-thon post that I discovered that somehow the url for the image had lost all its capitalization.  Once I'd copied the url again from the post and inserted it in place of the deformed one it worked again.  Now, tho, I'm left confuzzled as to how it happened.  All of the letters were still in place but had converted to lowercase.

So altogether today I must have put in seven hours on the Spring Flling.  Including a few comments left and reading some of the posts on SITS Girls about Google+ and Pinterest.  Some of that time in the last three hours has been about waiting for pages to load and tabs to unfreeze. It must be time for a browser restart or computer restart.  Or both.

My mind feels like a pretzel.

If tomorrow's assignment looks like it will take me more than thirty minutes I might have to pass so I can focus on getting caught up on a crochet project that has to be done a week from today.

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The SITS Girls Spring Fling Has Sprung

SITS Girls Spring Fling Event:
A Blog Improvement Challenge--
Build Your Community &
Improve Your Blog

I signed up for this a couple of weeks ago knowing that it was to start on the day I was leaving home.  I was actually able to get Monday's task [link your blog at SITS and leave comments on two others] done before I had to shut down my netbook and pack it for the trip but there was too much getting unpacked and organized at this end not to mention rested yesterday to get Tuesday's task done so this evening I caught up on Tuesday's [link your Twitter at SITS and follow two others and send some tweets] and after I get this posted I'll be doing Wednesday's task [link you blog's fb page at SITS and fan two participants pages]

It's not too late to join in.  It last through next week.  Here are the links for signing up and doing the first three tasks:

Sign Up: Get on our email distribution list for this event

Blog link-up: Share your blog URL and get commenting

Using Twitter to Build Your Community

Facebook Fans Page

Tomorrow will be about using Google+ and Friday about Pinterest.  The only one I'm not already signed up for is Pinterest.  But Google+ is sitting dead in the water since I signed up a couple months ago.  I don't really know how to use it.  Hoping for help from the tutorials at SITS tomorrow.  Same for Pinterest.

I'll also be looking into the tutorials on Twitter, and fb available at the links above.

As soon as I've done today's assignment I've got to get busy crocheting again.  Can you believe that I started a shawl for Mom for Mother's Day in the car on the trip up her Monday.  *shakes head*  *sighs* 

Look for pics of what I have so far by tomorrow afternoon on tomorrow's post.  Right now it is about 60 inches long and 2 inches wide. It takes me just under an hour to do two rows. Four rows equals and inch and I'm aiming for somewhere between 10 and 18 inches. I'm working a simple rectangle the long way so that I can stop wherever I reach by the wee hours of Sunday morning.  If it ends up being a scarf instead of a shawl, so be it.  I'm using the hand painted silk lace weight thread that I made my MIL's shawl with last year and using the same love knot stitch aka Solomon's knot.  Tho I won't be changing up the stitch size as I did before.  I'm making the knots about a third of an inch long which makes the mesh just right to stick my thumb through.

Read more...

The SITS Girls Spring Fling Event

SITS Girls Spring Fling Event:
A Blog Improvement Challenge--
Build Your Community &
Improve Your Blog

I just signed up to participate in SITS Girls Spring Fling.  Seems to be similar to Bloggiesta--build you community and improve your blog--but lasts nearly two weeks instead of one long weekend and puts more emphasis on social networking as part of blogging.  Also instead of an intense marathon like pace where you try to cram as much blog improvement as possible into 72 hours this one seems to encourage doing a few small things each day.

I almost didn't sign up seeing as it starts the day I'm going to be on the road back to Longview and I'm expecting things to be a lot  busier while there this time so will have less time to hang out on the computer.  But if I manage to get even one useful tip or memorable experience out of it it would be worth it.  And since the whole social networking things is something I am still fumbling around with and still not really getting the point I should see what they have to say about it.  More than just see what they say but see how they work it.

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Bloggiesta Wrapup

I accomplished next to nothing of my goals.  I should have realized the moment I learned Bloggiesta was happening the same weekend of my return home after a three month stay at mom mom's that I wouldn't really get to participate.  But I couldn't bear to just give up as I'd been really waiting for it to happened.

I knew Friday would be all about packing and Saturday about the trip but I really though I'd have most of Sunday to devote to it.  Ha.  I should have known that I couldn't get away with holing up in my office incommunicado after three months away.  Even my husband, whose hermit tendencies are stronger than my own, needed more than a little of my attention on my first day back.

And the sandman too.  I had been dissing him too long and he caught up with me.  13 hours in zonk land Saturday night.

I understand the next Bloggiesta date has been set for the last weekend of September.  I'm marking my calendar now.

But I'm not waiting for the next Bloggiesat to do some of the work I'd hoped to do this weekend.  One of the things I did manage to accomplish this weekend was reading some of the mini-challenges, collecting links for suggested helpful sites or articles,  taking inventory on other blogs of things I'd like to do or have on mine, and adding to my todo list.  I plan to use the resources of the Bloggiesta posts. especially the mini-challenges, to continue to educate myself and to start crossing some of those items on my list.

Basically I guess that means I'm going to carry on as if Bloggiesta is still going on except I'll be partying alone and not quite as intensely.

Meanwhile this is still Script Frenzy month and day three just commenced and I've gotten zero words let alone pages.

I also came home to a pile of review copies and those are only the treebooks I've got several ebook review books either in my possession or on the way and I think two more treebooks.  So many that I'm having trouble keeping it all in my head and one of the tasks for this weekend had been to make a consolidated list for review commitments and stop depending on my email inbox for that.  That is a task I should not wait too much longer to complete.

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Bloggiesta 2012: Goals etc.

I've been checking in on the Bloggiesta off and on all day but was unable to sit still long enough to make a post. I've just in the last few minutes reached the point in my packing for tomorrow's trip that I can start doing some things I want to do instead of the must dos. My sister is packing the van with my stuff as a type.

I'll have to shower and wash my hair in a few minutes so my hair can air dry before I sleep but then I'll have a few hours to play on my blog or at least do some more reading on the participant blogs gathering ideas and leaving comments.

Leaving more comments is my No1 task for Bloggiesta and going forward.  I am such a lurker.

2nd most important to me is learning some ways of putting posts together quicker.  The three to six hours I devote to my blog each night is not how I want things.  I want the blog be secondary to my creative work in writing, reading and fiber art.  I want to get where I can spend an hour or less per post so I can invest the rest of that time into writing stories and poems, crocheting book marks and reading novels.

3rd but related to above is learning how to whip out book reviews in an hour or less.  That is in addition to putting the post for the review together.  I have dozens and dozens of partially prepared book reviews.  Most are a collection of note, quotes, links and images related to the book and author.  Some have a good start at writing the review and a few just need final edit and fact check which often needs the book which is in the library.

Which wouldn't be an issue if I could get the reviews done before the books had to go back or failing that at least know which facts I'm likely to need so I'd have them collected in reliable notes.  Things like character names, occupations, locations, dates, page numbers.  I'm thinking maybe I need to create a form I can fill out for each book as I'm reading it.  Or is that getting too OCD?  Would it end up being just another task that would consume more time than it saved?

4th.  I want to learn how to use social networking.

5th.  I want to learn how to use the Pages feature that Blogger now has to organize my blog

6th  My side bar needs updating and decluttered

7th  I need to go into my archives and resize images and videos that are too big for the new template which I switched to two years ago.

8th  I need to label posts before 2007 and consolidate the labels I have which means rethinking many of the posts since I began using labels.  I've got so many labels that it takes forever to find the ones I want for the current post.  So sometimes I think it isn't there and I make it only to discover that I've added or subtracted a plural s or a capitalization so that my label list now has one of each:  i.e. label and labels or Label or Labels

9th  I also need to organize my blogging related email and create a calendar for commitments.  Earlier this month I lost an email in the clutter of my inbox that had the date I'm to post for an upcoming blog tour and I had to email my contact to get a reminder.  So embarrassing.  So unprofessional.

Well that is way more than I can hope to accomplish in this weekend seeing as how I have only a couple more hours to devote to it tonight and then can't get back to it until after my husband is in bed tomorrow night.  Still hard to believe that in only fifteen or sixteen hours I will finally be back home.

I hope to spend a lot of time at this on Sunday but that is also the first day of Script Frenzy and my first full day at home in three months.

So to summarize,  my main goal for this weekend besides breaking the lurker habit is to get educated on all of the above so I can continue to work at the tasks over the coming months.

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Bloggiesta Happening This Weekend

I just discovered this was happening this weekend.  Friday through Sunday, midnight to midnight or 12AM Friday thru 12AM Monday.  It is hosted at Suey's It's All About Books where you can sign up.

What is Bloggiesta?  It's a three day challenge and blog-a-thon in which bloggers devote as much time as they can to doing blog related work and asking for and giving help and doing mini-challenges.  And there are prizes.

I'm going to sign up but I'm not going to be able to participate the whole weekend.  I may get to do a little in the wee hours of Friday morning as it begins but then most of Friday and Saturday will be devoted the trip preparations and the trip home Saturday.  Then maybe Saturday night after Ed has gone to bed and if I'm not too exhausted I might get to check in for a bit.  But I will try to devote as much time as possible on Sunday.

Oh, Man.  everything is happening all at once.  The trip home that I was beginning to think was never going to go through.  Script Frenzy starts at midnight Saturday night.  And now this.

I don't know what to commit to working on.  Some possibilities:

• my sidebars are in dire need of attention
• checking out the mini-challenges 
• checking out other blogger participants to see what other's are doing and that I might like to try.  
• stretch myself socially out of the lurker mindset and leave comments.
• writing up reviews for the six books I read this month.  Which I could conceivably work on in the car Saturday tho I'm sure my sister and I will be getting our last visit in for most of that five or six hour drive.  

I know that somewhere in my notes is my todo list for the last Bloggiesta which was huge and not nearly completed so I'l look for that to remind myself of all those things I once thought were important to do or change or update ect.

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BBAW 2011 Day 5: Blogging Tips and Tricks

BBAW 2011 Day 5

Today's topic share 3 tried and true practices and 1-3 things you've either recently implemented or would like to try

3 tried and true (sadly I often fall short)

1. consistent content reflecting your true heart
2. use images--for some reason the search engines love them especially if you've given them a file name or caption that is a likely search phrase and reflects the content of the post
3. network--visit, comment, reply, return visits, participate in events, challenges, memes, thons and read alongs

3 things I'd like to try

1. add a follow widget in sidebar--I've added a bunch of blogs to my reader as I passed by this week because of the ease of it
2. use social networks
3. host a meme or challenge

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Thursday 13 & BBAW Day 4

read more entries @ BBAW

Join in @ Thursday 13

13 Ways Book Blogging Has Change the Way I Read

my BBAW day 4 response

1. Book blogging shifted the balance back towards even from over 80% NF.  Fiction had been my first love and remained nearly 90% of my reading until the year I went back to school in 1985 at which time I discovered that, in the hands of a good writer, good stories could wear the guise of NF and that good storytelling was my access to areas of knowledge and information that I had thought too technical, too obscure, too academic or too jargon obfuscated.
2. Book blogging shifted the balance of my blog reading from predominately news & views to well over 70% reading, writing and fiber arts (many book lovers, as am I, are workers in thread: crochet, knit, needlepoint etc)
3. After I started reading the book blogs I started getting to read new releases the same year they were out because I got heads up and got in queue at the library before it was in the high double digits.
4. After I began reading the book blogs I stretched my comfort zone into even more genre than I'd already favored
5. I discovered new authors
6. I started seeing things in the stories I might not have because I am constantly alert from something to say/share about what I am reading.
7. I learned to defend books I thought were being misunderstood by some and to do so with humility so as not to offend (I hope as I try)
8. Book blogging has changed reading from a solitary experience to a social one which was HUGE for me who am extremely shy.
9. Because of book blogging I gave audio books another try and have come to LOVE them which is good because in a few years, due to a degenerative eye disease, I will have to depend on them more and more and eventually exclusively.  My main reason for disliking audio books in the past was impatience because I could read three times faster than the reader.  That is no longer true but I realize now that I was missing out regardless as hearing the words aloud emphasizes the music of the language and opens a new dimension to the enjoyment of the story.
10. I have discovered the world of Indie and found it feels like home
11. I read more ethnically diverse stories.  I always did enjoy stories from ethnic backgrounds different from mine but my encounters of them were aleatory and before the book blogs luck was constrained by a much narrower access to information. i.e. the new books shelf at my library was my primary source of info
12. My wishlist and TBR pile have exploded
13. I read fewer books.  Counter intuitive?   I've already read several of the posts on today's BBAW topic and found every one of them claiming to be reading more than before.  In my case, reading the book blogs and writing my own posts has eaten into the time I used to have for reading.  But that isn't necessarily a bad thing since a case could be made for my life being better balanced now.  Before the web I was isolated and a loner mostly by choice, somewhat due to visual impairment.  Joining the blogging community has given me a sense of belonging I never had before and I suppose I am paying for that with less pages read but I'm not sorry.

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Book Blogging Community Generating Events--Current and Upcoming

Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2011

Day 3 of BBAW and today's topic is on how you do community.  Well, I don't do it well actually.  I'm hit and miss on everything from getting reviews posted for challenges, memes, book clubs and other community efforts to foster discussion on a certain book or theme; on commenting; on keeping my sidebar updated with links to my frequently visited blogs which further cloaks this skulker's activities; and on posting reviews of the books I finish.

To make matters worse this past year I nearly stopped reading altogether and my blog's focus shifted with mine from books and writing to crochet and video by which I got my story fixes by either streaming online or DVD.  Which might have been OK if I'd posted more reviews of the movies and TV series I was watching, many of which were based on books.

This week I'm trying to change all that up.  I reflected on the aspects of book blogging that had once made me feel part of a community and the first thing my mind flashed on was Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon which I've participated in twice a year since fall of 2006.

Then I remembered with shame all the reading challenges I signed up for last year and how abysmally I failed at completing them for even with the paltry number of finished books I had not posted their reviews and how can you foster community if you don't have anything worth inviting others over to see or talk about?

Library Loot

It's Monday!
What Are You Reading?

Next I Remembered the two memes I've participated in semi-regularly this past year: It's Monday! What Are You Reading hosted by Shelia's Book Journey and Library Loot hosted alternately by  Claire from The Captive Reader  and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

There's a lot of potential for fostering community in both of them but not the way I've been doing it--posting late Monday evening or even the wee hours of Tuesday for the former and for both spending so long preparing the post like some kind of persnickety magazine editor that to weary and my vision too blurry to start making the rounds.  And of course then the next day preparing that day's post takes precedence over visiting yesterday's participants.

Where Are You Reading?

Word Shakers On Line Book Club

 Shortly then I reminded myself that I had committed to two ongoing bookish activities early this year both hosted by Sheila: Where Are You Reading Reading Challenge and Word Shakers On Line Book Club.  Neither of which I've done much with yet.

Dewey's 24 Hour Read-Thon

While I was at it and since I knew it was due in October sometime, I checked the Dewey Read-a-Thon site for the schedule and found it has be set for OCTOBER 22, 2011. Noon, GMT

Read Your Own Books Read-a-Thon

Read Your Own Book Read-a-Thon
Sept 15 to18 2011
Giveaways are planned.

Runs from 9pm on Thursday the 15th (EST)...some of my posts might be a bit off since I am 11 hours ahead of EST in KST. Sorry for that...anyway it will run until Sunday the 18th at 9pm (EST).

This read-a-thon and others like them were designed for bloggers whose pile of review copies has overtaken thier life and pushed out the piles of book they bought or received as gifts.  But I'm planning to participate to give me an excuse to set aside library books for books I own that have been haunting me from the shelf..

Bloggers’ Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees -- I've been wishing for something like this.  Usually more than half my reading is in NF.  Though fiction was my first love and I eschewed NF throughout my youth I eventually discovered that story were's many guises and in the hands of a deft storyteller/wordsmith story has the power to impart understanding of very arcane subjects one has thought too obscure, too technical, too jargon armored to approach.

They have a monthly meme like event with rotating hosts who set the theme.  They have delayed September's event in light of BBW but it will commence soon after.

Banned Book Week Virtual Read Out

Banned Book Week is upon us: September 24−October 1, 2011.

Here are two sites with useful info a book blogger can use to support the cause.

American Library Association

www.bannedbooksweek.org


The buttons above and below are for two Banned Book Week Events.  I will probably go listen to the videos of readings out of banned or challenged books on the Virtual Read Out YouTube Channel but I can't picture myself making one.  Not without hold the book in front of my face as you see in my profile picture which I never put up at all until a year ago.

As for the BBW Book Blog Hop is all about giveaways.  Participating blogs will all have at least one.  I won't be hosting a giveaway (barring some miracle) but I'll probably go enter some of the drawings and contests for prizes, drop a few comments, collect links for my blog reader and drool over book cover images and story summaries.

Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop

Frightful Fall Read-a-Thon

I love the read-a-thons.  They are such a rush so I admit I was keeping my eye out for more of them on my hunt for community oriented things to participate in in the short term.  I also love scary stories so this is a perfect fit for me.  The host says:

• Monday, October 3 at 12:00am through Sunday, October 9 at 11:59pm (your time zone).
• To go along with the scary theme, this time I will have a requirement.  You must read at least ONE scary book during the read-a-thon.

There's more but I'll let you go read it on the site.

In case it wasn't obvious, most of the picture captions were links to the stated event.  In a few cases early on the link was already in the nearby paragraph so I passed on duplicating it.

Once again I've put so many hours on this between research and post prep, my eyes are worn out so I can't go visiting other links after I drop mine and this post will likely drop into the ocean of blog posts little noticed since everybody likely to be interested will have already turned their attention to Thursday's topic and round of visits.  Also because of all the hours invested in one post, I've sacrificed time for writing reviews, for reading and for blog surfing and commenting.

This is the issue I need to attend to most urgently if community building is at all important to me.

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BBAW 2011 in Full Swing

Book Bloggers Appreciation Week 2011

This is the week when book bloggers gather to sing each other's praises, thank each other for great read recommendations and revel in each other's company.

 Oh and there are prizes and awards.

This year's theme is 'community' and each day there is a topic reflecting that theme to post on.

Today's topic, unlike most of the others, isn't one you can just run with on your own.  You needed to have signed up for it weeks ago and been paired with another book blogger who you most likely didn't already know and then the two of you interview each other and post those interviews on this day and link them on this post.  <--so click there and start visiting those interviews and meet old and new blogging bibliophiles.

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Ch- ch- ch- changes. Gets Thee Behind Me.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

I'm always discombobulated by change. No amount of reasoning as to how it is inevitable serves to make me comfortable with it. Today I woke to discover my blog had been hacked and was redirecting visitors to a spam page offering the domain name for sale. While I was dealing with that Blogger via a popup asked if I was ready to switch over to the new platform.  I don't know why I clicked yes.  I was not in the mood for learning a new way to prepare my post.  But then when would I ever be?  I think I may have been feeling a minor surge of courage after figuring out how to fix the hack on my blog without running to Ed to rescue me.

Well there are several things I like about the new posting platform : 

• more buttons for coding--strike, undo, redo, jump break.
• more space in the editing fiels tho I could still wish for more.
• ability to change the size and position of photos after they are in place without going into the code
• ability to add labels by scrolling through a list of available ones and clicking on them.

And there are a few things I don't like so much:

• the font in the editing field used to be large enough for me to see without zooming and now it isn't.  A difference between size 14 and size 10
• which wouldn't be so bad if I could then use zoom but when I implemented zoom the right side of the editing field went behind the panel of commands in the right hand column and no horizontal scroll showed up..  I would prefer anyway if the whole page, editing field and command panel remained in same ratio and the horizontal scroll appeared for the whole page.  I'm used to that as I take advantage of zoom on many pages because of my vision impairment and am used to using horizontal scroll

I'm sure there are more I would put in both lists but I've had enough for tonight.  I need to take my change in small doses.

I've been talking here only of the editing platform itself.  I haven't even begun to explore the other new stuff on offer: the stats and analytics, settings and layout.  But that's gotta wait for another day.  Like I said.  Small doses.

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Goals, Dreams, Aspirations

Am continuing to work on blog improvement stuff for Bloggiesta. Today, for the mini-challenge of My Friend Amy, I'm giving thinking more priority than doing.

January is the time for reflection and re-evaluation and re-vision isn't it? I know that one of my issues is to set big goals, complex projects and get overwhelmed. I know about breaking such big projects down into smaller tasks and am even pretty good at doing that. At least as far as making the todo lists.

Sticking to it is another thing altogether.

I also tend to be a serial obsessionist, being totally wrapped up in one thing to the exclusion of all else. My blog tends to reflect that. Currently crochet and video watching has all but pushed out reading and writing. But that is probably going to run its course and I'll be on to something else in time.

Now all the advice regarding blogs needing to be singular in topic and finding a niche and so on had me feeling inadequate and like maybe I should settle on one topic and court an audience accordingly. But the thought of that pretty much sticks a pin in the balloon of my bliss and lets all the joy leak out.

I was going to say 'no pun intended' but on second thought loosing the joy is tantamount to loosing the Joy--aka my self.

And the advice from My Friend Amy was to think about making your blog into the blog you would love to read. I love eclectic blogs and blogs where the blogger at least occasionally puts some of their personal life in so I get a feel for the who behind the opinions. So obviously the niche advice doesn't have to be for everyone.

And there is an organizing theme to it all anyway: Story. I don't say story is my joy for nothing. It is all about story whether the current obsession is books, movies, news, poetry, music, writing, reading, research, jokes, puns, riddles, puzzles, trivia, creativity, dreams, religion or Joy's story. Even the crocheting and needlework is strongly associated with story for me as I've always worked on it as I contemplate one of my own writings and often while listening to music or audio books or watching TV/video. Or gossip at family/friend gatherings.

So I'm thinking, if I'm going to keep posting on whatever aspect of story that has taken my fancy currently the thing I need to do to draw and keep readers is to make navigation easier so they can find which ever topic they are most interested in and ignore the rest. Which is why the main goal I set for this weekend is to change my template to a 3 column. A huge task for me. And scary. But many of the other tasks on my long list are dependent on that one. Some I could do before but they would just have to be tweaked if not redone after the switch.

Maybe managing reader expectations by establishing a routine of sorts so that certain regular themes have assigned days whether or not there is a meme involved. Like Mondays are for sharing my reading plans and accomplishments and musings in Book Journey's 'It's Monday What are You Reading?' and Friday's are for sharing my fiction snippets or musing on the craft of fiction writing in my Friday Forays in Fiction which I let slide for most of a year now. And Sunday's for sharing the variety of ways in which I find bliss, serenity, joy, and contentment in my Sunday Serenity. And so forth.

A third goal to reach for would be to break the lurker habit again. I'd made great strides on that once but have slipped back into it again in the last year.

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