A difficult challenge for me to face was smoking grass. I started smoking pot with my friends when I turned eighteen. We had a lot of fun putting on the tunes and lighting up.
I was mostly in it for a good time, but it upset my mother. At the time, it was illegal. When it came time to go to college, I stopped, but I missed it.
In fact, I missed my friends–I was away from my home at school. I thought I would feel better. My first semester of college was challenging because I lived in a dormitory, and my friends got drunk often.
On the weekend, they would go out to the bars in packs, and while I was smart, I lacked study skills. I spent a lot of those weekends reading and writing for school. I felt left out and lonely.
In fact, it became hard for me to stay sober–I had to work at it. I was a little scared of ruining my chances for a career. While I had a general art & science diploma from college, I had emotional difficulties–back home in my parents’ house, the best work I could find was telephone sales work, which was disappointing after putting so much effort into earning a college diploma.
The jobs I got were boring and eventually disappeared in favour of lounging about, back on the reefer. While I made the decision to quit, I actually had to count the days until the habit dispersed. It’s said that it’s not a physical addiction, but I had trouble putting an end to it.
Smoking pot was one challenge I overcame–I liked partying with my friends, but no one stays young forever. I don’t have those same friends, as they went their separate ways. I can kind of guess the element that was the bond for all of us to keep thick as thieves.
People let go pretty easy, especially among businesses like websites and billboards for visitors on WordPress. I remember when the fantastic Beauty Beyond Bones blog was discussing the ill-fated Fyre festival that was documented in a couple of different movies, including one on Netflix.
The summer this year has been made more than a little difficult, as you know. I didn’t have an opportunity to make any kind of heroic effort of going anywhere, myself, last month, but what was exorbitantly cool was John Boyega in Hyde Park, in London in the UK. The TV news reporting what he said moved many writers–John Boyega has an impressive film credit, Imperial Dreams, that is about having been apprehended by police and about wanting to write.
(Of course, he’s an actor in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. John Boyega’s the Rebel hero, Finn.)
Maybe the world in 2020 doesn’t know where it wants to stop. A few days into June I lucked out, with the fun chance to “read” a film challenge written by three Twitters, and a week in, I began the challenge, intending to start watching a film each day, for the rest of the month, a little fun. I will try not to make any of the days a Star Wars movie if it can be helped.
I am including the challenge in this post, and if you don’t want to start now two weeks into June, you can wait until July if you like.
This next section is where a new table of contents starts.
Surely, it does not usually work that way, but I will dive in a bit and Botox wherever the five-year plan has got inefficient.
Narrowing My Blog’s Focus I wanted then to go from just starting out, to having something a bit meaningful. I took part in writing exercises to make a strategy, but I don’t want to get into that.
I am presenting here quite a few old postsI think I am presenting over thirty-five posts below. They were all intended to be free.
It’s the beginning of the New and the Time is Noted
Photo Challenge Entry, Ambience at Our Quiet Church
The Heritage of Louth United Church in St. Catharines and Maple Lawn Cemetery
I thought I wAfter ten years, I have considered whether I should withdraw, although the time I would be abandoning is a tough thing to turn my back on. My mother has also asked me not to quit.
What Might Have Been Adventure Can Show the Rust
Thinking I Have Been Misguided [?mis’gid?d]
What Will Trends Be Like in 100 Years?
Content is cheap, no doubt, and while possibly only possibly mass-produced reading/viewing material, media companies inundate their readers with it. It’s a lot of work if that’s your hustle, but I would think nice work if you can get it. “We are really excited to announce a ton more Content coming your way this fall!”
10 Guidelines for Charitable Giving Facilitated by the Government
Showing Photos Past the End of the Challenges
Pausing to read The 4-Hour Work Week
Secret Tip My favourite advice that Tim Ferriss provides in his book The Four Hour Work Week is the guideline to check your email twice a day, once at noon, and once at four in the afternoon. The reason is, if you are operating in the EST zone, at noon the west coast is just at nine o’clock, the United Kingdom is calling it quits at five and Australia has folded its last call. At four the same principle of time is true: the afternoon’s work is beginning on the west coast, the United Kingdom has comfortably already had dinner and Australia is looking forward to the start of the next day.
The Sunshine Blogger Award –I received the friendly notice of a nice Sunshine Blogger Award. It is just something passed around, to establish some friendly interaction.
A reference to this post became my pinned tweet on Twitter. I was thinking then more frankly how and what I meant, and about a question that Robert Persig put forth in his 1973 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: What is quality?
The late but certainly talented musician Lou Reed put it another way: What’s good?
I wasn’t sure I knew. Okay, I published all kinds of compositions. 🙂
My father took an uncharacteristic interest, in a story that I think he meant to assist me by.
It’s about bearing a monkey on your back.
A Difficult St. Patrick’s Day
By now, with the lockdown, no matter what, these days would be difficult. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t want you to think I had broken communications with you. I have a little left to say today.
I am beginning to wrap up the better ideas I put together, and this, I think, is good. I saw that WordPress, in April, reopened its Discover challenges.
A few WordPress bloggers wrote for every day of April in an atmosphere of daily sweat and tears. I don’t want to be trouble for those individuals, but I came up with a culmination the start of June that was a fresh page:
For Critical Thinking and an Equivalent, Creativity
I appreciate the freedom to do all this. It hasn’t been efficient at generating leads for my dad’s business or anything like that.
When someone does follow the dots, and takes an interest in the last ten years, first, I buy a lottery ticket (j/k), and then I start to wonder if they got on our site here:
That’s the website for my parents’ business, which we’ve been operating with the help of my Uncle Dave. That about wraps up everything I wanted to say, after five weeks now, but it’s the meat and potatoes. Oh, and what was I saying?
Here are some additional contact links if you require me for any reason.
This has been a different kind of month for me in the blogosphere. Obviously, the province which is my home is on lockdown, but as you may know, Ben Huberman helped devise the WordPress Discover challenges again for April, which were lacking for some time as, I suppose, the nature of the beast changed. Don’t take it from me.
I finally began to rest where most previous days of the month I published something in response to the challenges, and it isn’t because of them, it is just a lot of work to keep those up again and again. That’s why it’s a challenge, though.
I looked today, and the test was distributed the previous evening. I weighed my options and decided to read what the challenge had to say.
The WordPress Discover day by day challenges has been important for developing as a blogger. It is pleasant that this was available last night, and I looked at what the challenge is, and I noted that Ben actually went so far as to say in the post that the decision to put it up early was deliberate and that he hoped participants are making good use of the time.
I made a mental review and weighed how effectively I actually did spend last night, against what would have been best. The list challenge had what I perceive was the intended effect, of jumpstarting interest in the winding down Discover challenges.
The word last night for today is List, so I took a dice game score sheet that I was keeping on hand for an occasion like this, and made a random list of the some of the more effective pursuits I made in the time between last night and this morning, that was, perhaps, shaped by the continuing interest in being part of the blogosphere, and of being motivated by the Discover challenges. I could hypothesize whether I am attempting exercises because of the endgame of searching better for being in the blogosphere, yet I don’t think so. The activities I was, you might put it, afoul of, were only what I might pursue with an interest in amusing myself.
I wasn’t deliberately mindful that the test had just begun. Ben included the line “we hope you make the most of the extra time!” regarding the decision to present today’s challenge early. Indeed, even without the cognizant exertion of setting up a post, I thought about whether I could make the contention that I was getting ready for the post by attempting typical kinds of exercises I embrace if I was effectively mindful.
The challenge is good, too, and even though I stated previously that I expect the reason for the early availability is to galvanize participants into writing, I also think Ben felt he had a strong idea on his hands and he wanted to give a solid opportunity to address it, by making bloggers interested in it more eager and more thoroughly than they may have if it only became ready this morning. I can’t say for certain, but I know at least that he is aware that we’ve been looking at these Discover challenges all month and now we are beginning to wrap up, and he felt we all merit a strong finish.
I would prefer not to state an excessive amount, however, I might rehash my appreciation for having gotten the open door for WordPress prompts every single day of April. I haven’t written this in a while, but you are welcome to follow and/or to comment.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 