Down and out soon (for Twelfth Night)

Had a listening ear type time today with my pal-sis over the blogging101 carbunkle (again!)

If I were her ‘agent proper’ I’d be well annoyed at her association with improper conducts and improprieties that occurred in that particular arena. However, I’m just a mutual friend and associate. And I chose to mostly avoid it, having visited, been perturbed and snatched screenshots of some very bizarre behaviours by one of the volunteer team appearing to target another member with a potentially deliberate campaign. Anyway, I’m not meaning to rant about that. To preserve goodwill, privacy, respect and all.

I’ve been away for months and mostly in only offline company. It’s been a nice break, family struggles aside. I’m kinda sofa-hopping nomadically for a while but have a drop-in base here at my friends where my old desktop and their monitor and kit can be utilised to access my blog etc and catch up a bit between notebooking and not. So I’m making the most of it.

I’m sposed to be getting dinner ready, but don’t ever so fancy doing someone else’s washing up first and she bought salad and nice bread and I gotta tin of salmon so we’ll have that and I’ll wash up when I get back, cos it’s bound to still be waiting. While she perpetually wastes time banging her head against the tech wall that is an aging wifi adapter in  a clogging up ill-maintained bed-rest gadget. She used to do her tech stuff really well and should know better! I mean she advised me with mine so what the…?!

Anyway, she was whittling on about this shutterbug thing and feeling obliged and compelled to post something for the prompt ‘Love’, but apparently not having anything for that theme(!) As soon as she said about it, this photo she’d taken of one of her creative moments leapt into my mind. It’s in a folder with lots of her other photos from those years, while I was indexing and stuff for her. I wouldn’t have even started trying to blog if we hadn’t had this loosely lame and flimsy plan between a few and two of us… so, we’re still getting there between us. Eventually…

And I wanted to join in and showsome moral support – but not gatecrashing Blogger’s World to do so and don’t need the potential intrusions of trolling or whatever from any cloaked identities. Indeed I’ll be away at a masquerade enough for Twelfth Night soiree-ing soon enough after this salad and a nice cold beer with it. Maybe even time for coffee! So, tagging with ShutterbugShowcase should be enough to join in through the Reader if anyone still remembers to use that – I’m still looking forward to #blogging101 refreshers with co-learning community too!

So here’s Colette’s photo that I screen-grabbed and added text to for today, cos she and others on old mobile phones and slow connections prefer low-res images suitable for small screens. That’s also been our arrangement for my sharing her original work and also following her somewhat annoying method of displaying jpegs within the viewer frame that the viewer can’t resist clicking on an ‘x’ or whatever…

So any idea what it is and / or is made from? Clue: it’s not digital art and the photo this screengrab is from is entirely unedited raw image. [Answer to be revealed around Sunday!]

A poem of a sort, from me too, (only to justify another tag! and a bit of something ready for the soiree gathering!)

LOVE

Last day of Christmas (while Little Christmas begins with the morn!)

Olde English origins and traditions

Verily vilified and scorned;

Even so, and even then, Twelfth Night wishings, with Love, to mend…

[I might be in bother for not drafting in couplets but we can argue over Shakespearean style in fine company later probably more than the words we’ll craft together!]

Happy New Year 2017!

Oh please not Anti-Resolutions Time Already?

[Did a lazy reblog…]

Ten things not to do in 2017? [prompt]

1. Stress about creativity…
2. Plan a strict schedule…
3. Freeze / starve…
4. Apologise for absences and belatedness…
5. Travel so far I can’t get home for months…!
6. Run out of money…
7. Deprive myself of hope…
8. Avoid poetry… whatever anyone has to say about men writing and reading such stuff!
9. Buy any kind of new tech (2ndhand inc) / mobile device…
10. Sink for borrowing too much…

And if I were making it ‘a baker’s dozen’ … it’d just be unlucky for some, but (a) not to be even acknowledging detritus types of western politic, however dangerous it might seem to have alternative ways of ‘free-thinking’; (b) online too much again eventually, unless / until co-writing on pieces of paper, jointly, with Colleen de V. and be careful with it (is that in the nots category? and so, (c) confusing myself with daft artistic notions derived from influence of bogus ‘artful dodger’ types! [no accusations or implications being levied at any acquaintance in either of our worlds, real and/or virtual! cuz we steer clear, as do they of any honest types! lol]

{I might need to add a 14- for an admin vol getting round to some posting some drafty stuff some time, reciprocally & mutually unpaid of course, in our wonderful so often tokenistic ‘free world’…}

I got back specially for a 72-100hour plus New Year marathon ‘Soiree’ and forgot to bring Snickers, but remembered more beans! hooray!

Milestones

When I started this blog, a year ago today, it was a really effective way of getting myself through a bleak mid-winter. It was also a learning excercise and a way of trying to get into a personal writing habit. I still need to push myself further with developing the habit of writing – mainly with getting things finished and getting more of my notebook scrawls onto the online page.

A year ago today, I couldn’t imagine my blog in a year’s time. A year ago today I had no idea what an encouraging place to blog WordPress can be. Don’t you just love the system of trophies and progress notifications – I switched on and logged in to find this today:

 

Along the journey it’s been reassuring to hear from more seasoned blogger’s that it can take up to two or three years to really settle into a blog. So far, I’ve never really worried about stats and numbers as I think they have their limitations –  I selfishly blog for my own enjoyment and don’t really worry if no-one at all reads my posts. I’d often think ‘I don’t blame you!’ Besides, there so much stuff out there in virtual space to grab our short attention spans.

Now that I have been blogging a whole year – albeit inconsistently – what do I want to have achieved here in this next year?

1. To have made at least one post every week, consistently, with no big gaps.
2. To use images more often.
3. To have retained most of my blog’s followers and maybe have some new ones too 🙂

More immediate goals include a new pic for my gravatar profile(!) and a theme change… when I have a chunk of time to be ready to iron out the crinkles that are bound to arrive with a new set of clothes!

A few days ago, I reached the 100 followers mark and this was quite a surprise! Although that’s slow in comparison to many other blogs, I’m a snail and slow suits me just fine 🙂

Here are some links to some great posts from some of my earliest followers:

A wonderful flash fiction story in response to a Sunday Photo Fiction challenge from Prakash who also enters poetry challenges and posts other writings.

Ann at Grubbs’n’Critters shares her great sense of humour and is always making me smile with her fine mixture of posts 🙂 Visits to her blog also make me hungry. This cookie recipe looks easy to make, fun to do with the young’uns and the results look so tempting – as do so many of Ann’s recipe posts!

I’m so behind the times that this is the first news of the 2015 Turner Prize I’d seen! ‘Sculpture Everywhere and Anytime’ is the title of Steph’s blog, offering a feast of visual delights and interesting art-inspired posts.

Among more recent followers, here’s another small helping of noteworthy posts:

Ngobesing Romanus blogs at Success Inspirer, sharing writings and motivational poems such as this one.

If you like cats you’ll love this group blog dedicated to those feline friends. With fun posts like this, it’s easy to see how this blog has grown such a huge following of over 28k!

Sally Burr’s latest post about private renting will hit home for many stuck with landlords who fail to provide a decent home while reaping the profits. Sally is  a ‘Learning Technologist’ at the University of Sussex and her writing covers many topics of social, scientific and cultural interest.

Thanks again to all followers and readers of this blog 🙂