I now have an iPhone. It’s pretty easy to use since I’ve had a Mac desktop computer for a year now. I’m not exactly young, and all this technology stuff will always feel foreign to me, I’m afraid. If you are over 50 you know what I mean.
Although I work online, and can understand the online world much better than I did a few years ago, it will never feel exactly right to me.
As a young person I would have loved to have all this access to information. I appreciate it now too, but back when I was a kid, if our parents, siblings, friends, books, or television didn’t explain it, we simple didn’t know it. Whatever ‘it’ was. Now everything is just a search away.
Because of my need to work, and the fact that I sort of stumbled into my online job, I have had to learn how to promote and interact online. I tweet, use Pinterest and have a FaceBook store page. And I love being able to earn a living from my home office.
And now I am on Instagram. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to upgrade from my old flip phone. I wanted the ability to take photos at any time, which I can do with my new phone, and share them. Continue reading “Trying New Things”
Snow covering the icy ground this morning. Just another day during a New England winter.
Winter can be beautiful, and I love seeing the snow. Life in the north can be tough, and especially so for an older woman without a man to help out. I’m capable of shoveling the deck and entryways. I lug wood and build a fire in the wood stove. And I run the snowblower and shovel out the mailbox. I even feed the birds and sometimes make my own suet for them. That means shoveling a path through the backyard to get to the feeders.
But the things that are most difficult for me are the problems that arise that I can’t fix, like when there is too much snow on the roof, or the driveway is all ice and we can’t get the car out. It’s hard for me to buy sand because it’s too heavy for me to move. Or when snowstorms cover the mailbox with heavy cement-like snow that I simply can’t lift with the shovel.
As my son has gotten older he can help more. He’s not happy about it, and he is away at school all day of course, but I do have that.
Here’s the thing; I am only getting older and I have no one to turn to for help. I hire the help when I can’t handle things, but I don’t have much money for that either.
Living in New England can be beautiful, but for me, the work and worry overshadows the beauty most of the time.
There comes a time when I say to myself; either do it or don’t. Decide already and move on! It’s been that way with blogging for a while now for me. My online business keeps me very busy, and since it’s my bread and butter, I am disciplined and do it every day. I even work weekends, so I have no problem with the design part of my business. That is because I enjoy it, mostly. I never run out of ideas for designs to try on various products I sell. But that is the easy part of my business. Promotion is a big part, and that means writing, as in blogging.
Often I will enjoy writing. When an idea is born and takes flight, I can write and write. Too bad most of those ideas come in the middle of the night when I know I will forget them by morning. However, I now have a new iPhone, and as I’m learning how to take advantage of it’s apps, I see that I can “speak” a message. How about telling my phone, using the notes app, about my great ideas? No pen and paper and lights on in the night required. Just my groggy voice speaking my idea into the phone. (I knew I needed an iPhone!)
After reading The Daily Post article on blogging “Three Thoughts on Sustainable Blogging Resolutions” I was inspired to make some changes in my attitude about blogging. It doesn’t’ matter that I don’t plan to do exactly what the writer suggested, reading the article was enough to make me realize that I need to do something productive. And as it goes with my design work, the end product will probably be a lot different than I visualize in the beginning. My new attitude is positive!
My excuses for not blogging range from no time, to no inspiration. I don’t write because I feel like it will fall flat. What is the point of writing something that is horribly boring and dull. Who wants to read that? So here is my solution. Although I realize that a good, long post is what helps in the rankings, not every post needs to be a masterpiece (according to my scale). I love photos, and when the weather is good I tend to take a lot of photos myself. It’s easy and fun to share photos, whether they are my own or borrowed from a public domain site, like Pixabay. A short post with a nice photo can fill in the gaps between my big stories.
So there you have it. These are just a couple of new ideas I plan to follow going forward. This is not my only blog, so I will have to do it times 5, but I am hopeful that the days to follow will bring better posts. And with that, I will be a more focused blogger.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,500 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
New England's Narrow Road 