Everyday life

Among the blogs I read there are a handful which relate the daily activities of particular bloggers.

These are popular blogs and the comments lead me to think people are happy to write/read about everyday lives and stay away from the big, contentious issues which might impact on other people in other parts of the world.

Keeping close to home is safe; not a lot of harm can come to you if you mind your own business, stay behind your own front gate and above all, not hold an opinion on controversial subjects.

When I considered the idea of posting about my daily activities and I researched the most popular activities, the realisation dawned on me that I don’t even have the requisite daily activities to make this idea workable.

A quick straw poll on a handful of blogs I read on a regular basis showed me how short I am on the usual blogging talk points.

Here is a list of the leading topics.

       Spouse                                                            

                                                Children                                 

                                                Grandchildren                                                  

                                                Garden                                

                                                Pets/animals     

And the following list shows how I might fit into the above scheme: 

       Spouse

                                                Children

                                                Grandchildren

                                                Garden

                                                Pets/animals

Not a lot happening is there?

Ah well, I’ll simply have to be creative.

Further thinking about this dilemma leads me to considering posts instead of comments.  Often, I have thoughts on posts which would more than fill the comment box – not that stops other people from shoe-horning what could pass for a blog post, into the comment box.

I’ll give the situation more consideration.

Arts Centre, Melbourne                                              circa 2015

Z, the last letter of the alphabet

And right up there with letters Q and Y for degree of difficulty.

 In the past I have been known to bail out and only do posts for these letters on a quarterly basis but this year I am going to apply myself to the task at hand.

After all I only need to finds twelve zed words in a year.  How hard can that be?

I have a handful of fallback words; if this blog had even the slightest hint of continuity, the fallback words would be very obvious.  Plus I am always on the lookout for unusual z words which might help my cause.

Stick around, Dear Singular and Highly Valued Reader, and you will very quickly recognise those well-worn fallback words.

Flowers - Pike's Market Seattle.    September 2007

Q, the 17th letter of the alphabet

The seventeenth letter is giving me a headache today.

It’s one of a  handful of letters in the alphabet which I should slot into the 'living the blog life’ label.

This means finding an appropriate word and making the blog post happen. 

I need to stand in a queue somewhere.

Or go to London and visit the Queen.

To get to London I will, of course, fly with Qantas.

Or be quite vigilant when reading newspaper, magazines or scrolling through the wonders of the on-line information superhighway in case a new Q word comes my way.

I’m scraping the bottom of the Q barrel now, so I’ll stop right here.

Consider and comments

News has come to me, out of the big, wide cyber-world, about the idea of taking up a word for the forthcoming year. An alternative it seems, to the age-old New Year’s resolution. I put aside New Year resolution making some time back.

The idea of choosing a word for the year seems an excellent idea.  I like words. Words make up a good part of my day; reading words, writing words, speaking words and listening to words spoken by others.

However, choosing one word means thinking about the word and how you might apply it over the year on a daily basis.  I didn’t agonise over choosing a word.  Up popped the word consider and without further ado I adopted consider as my word for 2019.

Consulting the Google Oracle, I discover, unsurprisingly, this business of choosing a word for the year is all about personal growth and improvement. Fancy that!  Inspirational words such as:  growth, believe, happy, obedience, disciplined, patience, self-control, bolder, intentional and purpose are examples of words chosen by people participating on one particular web site.

Unperturbed by the deep and meaningful word choice of others I intend to soldier on with My Word. It’s a flexible word, it can be frivolous, practical or serious. It may, or may not, lead to personal growth and improvement. My advice here is to not hold your breath, waiting for any change in the PG&I department.

Here is today’s example:

Consider stopping this time-consuming activity of blog drafting and get on with those items on today’s chore list.

I wrote towards the end of last year about my general disillusionment regarding comments on blogs. At that time, I grew tired of the repetition, adulation and tribalism among followers commenting on some of the few blogs I read. I branched out and found other blogs where views (and comments) were more balanced, less political and not so given to hatred and bias. 

Of course, it goes without saying that the handful of the tried and true blogs I have been reading for at least 12 years are still on the list.  

This year, when I read a blog post or see a photo and a spontaneous response springs to mind, providing it is not too outrageous, that will be my only comment for the day.

Coombe Cottage roses.                  Circa 2005

Alphabetical re-arrangement

Here it is.  2019 – another year.  Happy days!

And with it the big decision whether to carry on with the jigsaw/memoir blog or whether to abandon it entirely. 

A few thoughts gather like spectres at the edge of this decision. The USB meltdown at the end of last year is the big one.  Whether to try and recover the lost data (at huge expense) or just to abandon everything that went before and act as though this is the point where my blogging starts.

Hmmm. January 1 is the point where the blog, if it has fallen by the wayside, usually starts up again; I’ll stop feathering around and make a decision.

Pauses to think.

OK. Let’s do the usual thing.  Start off the year and wait and see how long it is before the blog loses steam and falls into an abandoned heap – again.

This means of course re-arranging the alphabet continuity. Not re- jigging the letters of the generally accepted English alphabet into any sort of new and haphazard order. I could try that but it’s not likely to be a popular concept.  While I’m considering all this twaddle I have been thinking about how the English alphabet was arrived at and how, unlike the continually evolving English language, the alphabet is not very often tinkered with by people who think they know best and anything goes.

I might pick up this train of thought at a later date. At a date when I’m really short of ideas. Ah, I’ve already decided on the title!

Back to the present.

 My blog, when it is actually happening and going somewhere, is run on an alphabetical basis. Starting off in January and then making my way through the year, month by month, A to Z each month without repeating the first word of each title letter, over twelve months.  Stop grumbling and muttering that you don’t understand and it’s all gobbledygook rubbish.  You don’t have to – I’m running this blog, not you. Get it?

 Stopped reading by now?  I’m not surprised.  I’m a bit bamboozled myself but one of the problems associated with the USB meltdown was losing all my title words for the previous six months.  There goes my continuity.  Nothing to do but to start over.

Right the big decision has been made.  Let’s get on with it.

Building detail, Carlton
circa January 2007

Furthermore

Furthermore, the decision has been made here at the Alpha-bet-soup Headquarters that for the month of January, in keeping with the first photo for the first day of the year, most if not all, photos will come from the photo file.

There is a long tailback of photos waiting to be downloaded from the phone.  It has reached the stage now that there is no room left for new photos so I will search through the files to see what I can find that might be vaguely appropriate for the post topic. It’s more likely the photo will have no relation to the topic what-so-ever.  

Them’s the breaks, Dear Reader.

My first idea of keeping with the sea theme from 1 January soon fell by the way side when I discovered most of my photos were about as far away from the sea as you could get.  This might change in the future when I get back to the print photo collection, the merciless culling thereof and the scanning and saving of them to the portable hard drive.

Anyway, for the moment there will be flowers, national parks, cattle, elephants, (yes, elephants) and whatever else takes my fancy on the day.

Corymbia, once known as Flowering Gum.              Photo file: January 2015

  

Dear Reader

I put up the title for this post imagining I was channelling Charlotte Bronte via her novel Jane Eyre. 

When I set about verifying this detail I found I had made a big bloody mistake.  Jane Eyre, at the end of the novel, used Reader as a form of address.  However, other writers have used Dear Reader as a form of address and it was once very popular in 20th century writing.

All this has come about because if I have one reader coming to this blog I will be more than surprised – I will be gobsmacked. Or, as one of the characters in that wonderful comic strip, The Perishers, once said ‘my gob will be thoroughly smacked.’

The singular reader is way more than I should rightly expect.  If I run a blog which is more like a jigsaw form of memoir than a reliable blog I should expect readers to well and truly abandon reading it.

While this could be seen as just retribution for my inability to stick with the programme, the lack of multiple readers has a silver lining. It allows me free rein to run riot with ideas and words and who knows what else.

There is always one reader. Me.

Yes, you don’t seriously think I scribble down all this drivel and then hit Publish without looking at it do you?  Oh, really?  I’ve misjudged you then haven’t I?  And likewise, you have misjudged me.

And so Dear Reader, you may find this form of address being directed to you; feel free to respond in the comment box but please – be courteous.  Lack of courtesy is getting short shrift at the Trash Palace right now.

Summer Rose                                File Photo 2016

Housekeeping

Housekeeping of the electronic variety – e-housekeeping.

I am taking a serious look at my blog reading lists, both on this blog and on my ancient blog where I still keep a list of blogs that at one time piqued my interest, but nowadays I read on an irregular basis.

I will be doing some pruning.

I was a little surprised to find bloggers are sometimes quite affronted to find they have been struck off some-one’s reading list. I guess maybe I would be taken aback if I were struck off some-ones blog roll, but as I don’t appear on any I am unlikely to ever suffer this blow.

The ancient blog has become a proving ground of sorts, where I can gauge whether this blog or that one will continue to have posts that hold my interest.  I know already there are blogs which will be retained even though the posting is sporadic because the subject matter, when a post appears, is of interest to me. Others have posts with large quantities of photos which can be quickly scanned through from time to time and then there are the blogs which seem to have shrivelled up and fallen by the wayside. 

These latter ones are candidates for the pruning shears.

These are the blogs to which I should take to with the pruning shears because they have not posted in months. And often I am most reluctant to pick up the shears.  These are blogs which I followed for quite a time and which have, for whatever reasons, fallen into disuse.  Maybe because of changed circumstances -  for these longstanding ‘friends’ I am prepared to be very lenient and give them a 12 month lease on their blog lives before waving them good bye.

On the up-side there are always blogs that I will glance at out of curiosity and decide they might be options for probation.

One door closes. Another opens.

Tram doors - another open and close option.