Not so prompt…

Yesterday’s Daily Prompt from the Daily Post sets the challenge of naming the 8th deadly sin.

Hit and miss – and being off target…

It has to be setting personal blogging goals, announcing them publically on your blog, then forgetting, letting life carry you away with other things…

• I set a goal here, last month, to refresh on blogging101 tasks. I got about a quarter of the way through and stalled. Never mind, I hadn’t signed up for class and can just keep going in my own time. Some of those tasks are good to go repeatedly or need regular revisiting anyway…
• Eight days ago, I decided I would make a post here at least once a week. Then I forgot as the days slipped by. So this post is a day beyond that deadline – but Sunday is a good day for a sinful post, so be it. And writing about the eighth sin on the eight day since last posting and doing so on a Sunday, seems quite appropriate.

…

On a more positive note, I have kept up for the whole of January with the threewordsaday challenge, making a response post every day so far this year (at Snailzpace Daily). I’d like to think I can manage a whole year with it. I’ve also just taken on the extra challenge of working through past prompts from the beginning of threewordsaday. starting yesterday, with an acrostic poem, LIMITS…

I enjoy responding spontaneously to the prompts and I’ve written quite a few poems as a result – just not in my poetry blog – doh! But SnailzpaceDaily is my rough workbook space and many of my responses are just ‘starters’ to go back to. I might start reposting some of my better poems, or those I rework, to my poetry blog and start reviving there soon. Occasionally, I manage a short paragraph of fiction or creative writing I always intend to go back to and write on.

Actually, I’ve a lot of started things I mean to go back to, but never finish yet … so maybe that’s the ninth sin …starting things and leaving them unfinished…

Hoping I’m not guilty of the first seven deadly sins, hopefully I’ll not go to the hell for the eighth and ninth!

Do either my 8th or 9th sin fit for the cardinal sin of ‘sloth’? If so, I maybe have more to worry about than I first assumed!

How about you?  What would you list as the eighth (and ninth) sin? – assuming you’re free of the first seven, but must have one or two minor sins you need to confess?

 

 

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 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neighbourhood – part 1b

Having ventured out to visit existing neighbours in my previous post, I thought I’d also take on the challenge of finding five new-to-me Blogging101 neighbours.

Hallo again Blogging101 !

(N.B. I am skipping class this month and reviewing past material… tagging along – or gate-crashing, if you prefer… but at least I’m walking the walk … and that’s definitely not ‘crash-tagging’!)

Along the way of ‘Meet the Neighbours’ task for today, I bumped into ‘on and off’ blogger Gerry Wilson’s introduction post and look forward to reading more there, soon – and being seen as a ‘veteran’ blogger by some, there appears plenty to dig into in the archives, as Gerry started blogging in 2009.

Thanks to intrigue and curiosity generated by IgneousIdol’s latest post I now am familiar with the term ‘boondocking’ and what it means! I also empathised with the title of that post – exactly how I felt during November’s Blogging101 when I attempted the task as given and was completely overwhelmed with new-to-me reading.

A.L.A.S. at Lifetime of gratitude shares five linked blogs which look appealing – and I do enjoy these kind of posts for finding blogs I’d probably miss otherwise.

I really like Jansenphoto’s blog title and tagline and this post offers five recommended blogs found in their search of reader tags – I’d never thought of searching that tag and look forward to checking out those blogs too.

Finally, my fifth target for this post became Rants and Ramblings exploration of today’s assignment activity. I empathised a lot during reading, although he won’t have heard, because similarly, I tend to avoid commenting – or rather put it off for a return visit I might not get round making.

That’s another good reason for writing these little link-up posts, the handy reminders of must-go-back-to …

So, from checking out the blogging101 tag in the Reader today, there are five latest new-to-me choice reads. Happily away now to elsewhere, real-life awaits. I enjoyed my visiting spree and will have to do it again sometime sooner! Bye for now…