beach

My Most Graceful and Honest Intentions with the findingenvirons Blog

A TikTokker followed me, this weekend, with the offer of a shoutout if I were to follow her account, and to tag three friends and to share her video to get an upswing started https://vm.tiktok.com/JN4odUw/

“Are blogs still popular in 2020?”

“Yes, blogging in 2020 is still popular and is serving even more purpose than ever before.  …68% of marketers now see blogging as a useful marketing tool.”

https://techjury.net/blog/blogging-statistics/

Just so we’re on the same page.  🙂  It’s a decent rivalry.

It is now summer.  Even though the winter doesn’t usually get too severe here in Southern Ontario, we have summer which feels pretty scorching, and that is surreal.  That aspect is well-intensified by strange circumstances.  Writing this, in July 2020, I am beginning year no. 9 of writing my blog.

time and tide wait for no man

Photo by donterase from StockSnap

A blog, as you know, is long-form writing.  It’s the opposite of microblogging, like how blogging is on Twitter.  A Personal Plan on WordPress, an option on the blogging platform, lets you design a blog by choosing from among a variety of special themes, that shape how your blog looks.

On WordPress, as mine is, a regular domain doesn’t look bad, but a more ambitious blogger might start with a Personal Plan if you want a more professional-looking blog.  In fact, in WordPress, the Block Editor is the design page that helps you put together blocks of paragraphs, to make writing a post easy.

I use a lot of white space, to keep my blog readable, and to keep it feeling like typewriter text transported to a computer screen, which is what early word processing programs were like.  If you know about adventure games in the nineteen-seventies and -eighties, like, for example, the game company Infocom’s game Zork, or a different, earlier, hit game called Adventure, you know they consist of a paragraph of descriptive text followed by a blinking parser, at which you would enter a two-word command to play.  I have that period of gaming as a primary concern, one wellspring of motivation.

My intention presently is to reach several dozen people or so with each post, possibly a hundred visitors per post, which is the typical reach I have at present.  I appreciate that the odd post I’ve composed gets a couple of guests, to boot.  With WordPress, the stats dashboard gives you an idea of how many visitors have turned up for your blog posts, and what they are saying their country of origin is.

I have had this blog for eight years.  That’s the level of expertise I have with it, Level Nine, you might put it.

In the first edition of the former game company TSR’s classic game Dungeons & Dragons, Level Nine was known as Name Level.  That is the famous tabletop game.  It features in the plot of the Netflix hit Stranger Things.

Photo by Freestocks.org from StockSnap

Name Level means that your Dungeons & Dragons character has made a name for himself, as in “Merlin” becoming “Merlin the Wizard,” to take from Arthurian mythology an example.  In Arthurian mythology, Merlin is the wizard who helps King Arthur rule at Camelot.  Like Merlin and King Arthur, here on WordPress, I am leet.

Likewise, with different parts of life, you have goals with your blog, and blogging makes unobtrusive notoriety for yourself (as it is the Name Level guidelines in Dungeons & Dragons sway interaction.)

On occasion, I draw extra thoughts from patterns I see via web-based media, stages like Twitter and YouTube, and TikTok.  On WordPress, I get to blog as much as I make time for it, which is a luxury I know many aspiring writers would enjoy themselves if they had it.  With that sort of extravagance, I am happy with the opportunity to continue without too many time limitations.  I am not too hard on myself.

My intentions, also, are to keep posting in a way that other people might relate to.  When WordPress offered a fourteen-day prologue to composing verse, quite a long while back, I composed through that fourteen-day arrangement.  Actually, at the time, I was kind of pleased with a few of the ideas I came up with, as I think my approach is a touch singular.

I in some cases loan support to other little bloggers.  I have seen that quite a few bloggers do that.  Those are probably the kind of people that I am trying to reach.

Another source of inspiration, outside WordPress, is the real world Nashville Tennessee writer Jeff Goins, an inspiring voice in blogging circles.  I think Jeff Goins worked in marketing when he decided he wanted to begin writing.  In fact, for his first book, he presented the title You Are A Writer.  

The Art of Work is a book that explores all kinds of inspired case studies, of people who bring a special touch to the work they do.  It became a bestseller. I think Goins wrote that unless your heart is in your work, it isn’t right.

As well, my father’s sister’s husband, Rick, and his wife Sue, both residing in Nashville, have written some books.  They are my godparents.

To the reader, if you have ever read my blog and are returning, by all means, thank you.  Such a great hobby.  You’re welcome to comment or to follow.

Have a wonderful day and a terrific summer.  I wish you well!

I’m on Twitter, https://twitter.com/findingenvirons …but you won’t find that verified.

WordPress Discover: Grateful

The WordPress Discover challenges are blogging prompts that help bloggers originate additional ideas to include in a blog. This month, April 2020, the Discover challenges continued one-word prompts that expanded upon detailed suggestions to keep bloggers going in these days of an emergency. I got interested in the second day of April, when I learned unexpectedly, from another blog, that the prompts were back.

Today is the thirtieth of April, and it means it is time to bid the challenges farewell.

Today’s challenge is the word grateful and I am grateful for having lucked into writing prompts as often I felt I could. I am sure others are grateful for the same prompts. Many days of the month this go-round I was able to blog, and this week the prompts wound down to their finale under the guidance of Ben Huberman, who in the past has helped me think of other posts to put together, particularly well-focused I think, this month.

Articulating

Today in the peninsula the weather is gloomy and wet, and it reminds me of a writing prompt I came across in the twelfth grade in public school.

I was learning the foundations of the programming language C, in a classroom setting, and an exercise in word processing came my way. It was a writing prompt. I’d seen many writing prompts in school,l but seldom in a computer skills classroom.

The prompt that day was to write about a spooky house, presumably despairing, or at least that’s what I would flavour such fiction, given a prompt of that kind. It was twenty-five years ago, but I remember vaguely what the prompt was like, given that the exercise was to write a page of flash fiction and input it. Being high school I was writing all the time.

I doubt that I knew the phrase “flash fiction” at that time, or even if it was the going nomenclature for the writing. Somewhat zealously, I suppose, I wrote a piece of flash fiction for the instructor, dutifully inputting it. The teacher had no real interest, knowing that it was a simple exercise and that computers, not creative studies, was the department.

The exercise was at best a distraction, I think, a few minutes to come up with a little tale of being lost all on your own and approaching a spooky house for help. It was likely the fall, when Halloween comes, not the springtime. The lesson was to adopt the role of being a writer and to try filling those shoes by inputting the tale in a word processor.

If I’d had leanings toward finding it interesting for the sake of being computed, perhaps I would have tried a career choice of software if I’d pursued the ambition of computer work. Curiously, the mere interest in writing the flash fiction signalled to me that I would need a creative endeavour to keep myself feeling like I was honouring myself, you might put it.

January 5 2018 collage experiment

I am glad that WordPress Discover prompts returned and I am looking forward to devising a plan, a calendar, to keep a hand in as a blogger. I continue to believe that a blog is an integral part of the world wide web. I am grateful for this practice put in at writing on a schedule that means a consistent effort at blogging, and I think the habits utilized could remain in place if the momentum grown from doing the Discover challenges this month continues to breathe life into my site.

God bless you. You may follow and/or comment on the blog if you like.

Utilising an Art Technique for a Header Photo on Social

January 05, 2018

WordPress commemorated fifteen years Sunday.  It is a hideout for bloggers of all levels of ability and interests.  It’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve improved as a blogger.

 

Juxtapose is putting together things for a result greater than the sum of its parts.  Today’s Prompt is the word juxtapose.

 

I thought of the photos that for the three months between January and March 2018 I “employed” as a header.  https://twitter.com/findingenvirons ….

 

January 05, 2018
Winter 2018 @findingenvirons header photo

I did the juxtaposition with a paint program.  I used other sources and mixed them into a juxtaposition.

 

You can see a photo of the late Roger Moore and Grace Jones.  Jones is thriving these days at age seventy.  The photo dates to 1985 when they were starring in A View To A Kill.

 

Some of the pictures were downloaded from StockSnap.  That’s a site for getting stock photos for free.  They’re not typically thought of as art.

 

They’re cheesy but fun.

 

https://www.stocksnap.io

The comic I found on Pinterest.  Although Pinterest confused me, I would have liked to get to know it.  The photo of the wallet was pilfered from some random website with the help of a friend.

 

Internet images should be used responsibly, but once in a while, something turns up that I want.

 

https://bit.ly/2JapCsC …..

 

The headline is announcing that done were the days of the established hundred and forty character limit for tweets.

 

http://bgr.com/2018/05/25/twitter-timeline-ten-years-ago/

 

I tweet the link to a new post for when someone will want to see it.  I also tweet trending content, Tuesdays, and Saturdays.  It is quiet but rewarding.

 

Tonight is a full moon.  If you are interested, you’re welcome to “like” it, “follow” the blog, or leave a comment, as you see fit.  Thank you for having a look at my blog.

It’s the Beginning of the New and the Time is Noted

Sacrifice is inevitable, and, really, a loss is the essence of tragedy. That’s why tears are shed, whether the sacrifice is deliberate or not, and, in the end, what was most dear to us is gone and never again had. Whatever we lose, no matter how hard we fought to earn it or how profusely we sweated to realize what we hold close, the day comes when it goes and you may not even have a chance to say goodbye.

Dimensions: 2999 x 1854
Photographer: it’s me neosiam

What do we hold precious? Whatever seems to us to be the best, what we cherish if we are among the lucky, people, animals, places, property… it all goes.

It can be gone in the wink of an eye. What’s more, it will most likely be that we will never have known it at all, except in our memory.

Fate unfolds for one and all, I suspect. We have opportunities to wield our hand and to stake claim to everything we feel we want, but if misfortune strikes, all of it can be taken away, and even if we do everything in our power to keep safe what we love, I think you must know that it will go, that nothing is forever. You don’t have but once, I feel, and it doesn’t matter what else is taught you.

I want to tell you this with the best intentions. You have but what amounts to today, and you have to strike, to hold, and to keep fast, and to love because you can never count on what’s ahead. It doesn’t matter what controls you set for the future.

You will see this time go, and it will never return. The most I can do, I feel, is to let you know.

Today’s WordPress prompt is the word “gone.” If you sympathize, if you “like” this blog post, use the “like” button or “follow” or subscribe. I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, but if you’re the same as me, you’re already here.