Category: writing

Coming Together

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“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.” – Gandhi

This weekend my kids and I went to a wedding. As we were going through the receiving line, the bride squatted down so that she could be closer to my 2-year-old son’s level. And when she squatted, he squatted.

As I laughed, I thought about how we mirror the people around us. Neuroscientist David Eagleman, says that who were are is shaped by the five people that we spend the most time with.

But lately the grown-up people I’m spending time with seem to mostly be feeling a general sense of despair about the US and the world. I feel like I’ve hit my saturation point of not being able to take in more bad news.

Then I stumbled on this paragraph from poet Mark Nepo, “I realize that, when things fall apart, they make a lot of noise. When things come together, they do so quietly and slowly. And so, we often miss them. Our culture is obsessed with how things fall apart. The news reports only the noise of things breaking down. The weather is even called Storm Watch. Yet things are constantly coming together, though we have forgotten how to hear them.”

That is when I turn to the WordPress community because unlike the news, I find people writing stories of things coming together all the time. Here are 5 posts that recently gave me joy and delight.

A touching story of kindness from Stuart Perkins of the Storyshucker blog: A Nugget of Kindness | Storyshucker

A researcher joke from the Candid Cerebrations blog: I stole this… – Candid Cerebrations

A beautiful walk through a garden with Rebecca from the Fake Flamenco blog: 5 Local July Flowers ‹ Fake Flamenco

A photographic trip to Venice from Natalie on The Hot Goddess blog – Silent Saturday Solo Sojourn – The Hot Goddess

Camping and Canada Fireworks from the view of a child from Ab and the My Life with T blog – Ignite the Night and Let It Shine – My Life With T

And those are just a few of all the wonderful and creative posts that make me laugh and inspire me.

Thank goodness for all you amazing bloggers that are writing posts about how life comes together. This is what I want to mirror and reflect.

What’s inspiring you this week?

It’s in the Comments

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“To listen with an open heart and ask questions to better help us understand the other person is a spiritual exercise, in the truest sense of the word.” – Harriet Lerner

Yesterday I re-blogged a post about sliding glass door moments, the moments where you see the life you could have on the other side and choose whether to open the door and cross that threshold. Deb commented on it and mentioned that solid door moments, those times when we have no real sense of what’s ahead yet we know we need something in our life to change, might take even more courage to pass through.

Wow, did that make me think. It is just one example of the very many where a comment has expanded the envelope of my thinking. Which is the wonderful effect of comments. They often drive me to a deeper understanding of myself or the topic, sometimes both.

But when I first started blogging, I found commenting hard. Did I know the author well enough that a typed comment would be relevant? Was I interpreting the material correctly and would I be on point?

Maybe first time comments are like tiny solid doors – we often have no real idea who’s on the other side and whether our typed message which is often a bid for friendship will be accepted or even acknowledged. But you have to open it to find out whether or not the person on the other side wants to sit around your coffee table, to use my analogy of blogging from last week, or just speak from the podium.

What do you think about comments? How about the experience of commenting?

Blogging Around the Coffee Table

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“Fill the paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth

I have a feeling when I blog – both reading and writing – that it’s like having coffee with a group of friends. I get to talk about what is holding my interest these days and I get to hear about what’s going on for other people. The topics are wide-ranging but the lovely part is that there’s space for everyone to share.

My experience differs based on whether I show up to share with my head or my heart.

When I write from my head, it feels as if I’m tussling with my inner critic. I find myself more restless and wanting to rely too heavily on other people’s ideas and words. It feels as if my fingers are encased in bubble-wrap and I have a harder time getting the message across. If I were to name someone I write for when I’m in my head, it’s my mom who is incredibly smart, very literal and a stickler for a solid argument and perfect English grammar.

When I write from my heart, it feels like being in the flow of the stream. I can produce faster when I get out of my own way. It’s not that my head isn’t present – it just has accepted its position to be subordinate to the heart. In that way, I get to the point more quickly, as to the “heart” of the matter. When I’m writing from my heart, I write as if for my dad, the person who is incredibly generous in their desire to understand the point of what I’m saying even if I miss a couple of steps in my argument.

Where do you go, metaphorically speaking, when you write? Do you have a specific person or image that you write for? What does the blogging experience feel like for you?

(featured photo from Pexels)

WordPress Help

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“Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance.” – Buddha

Last week when I was writing about WordPress data, I couldn’t find the answer to why emails of posts from my blog include a “like” link at the bottom but emails from other blogs like the posts I write for the Pointless Overthinking blog for don’t have the “like” link – just the “comment” link.

I did my due diligence trying to find the answer by googling the question and by searching the WordPress FAQs and knowledge base but there was nothing there that I could find. So I used the contact us function provided by WordPress.

It took a back and forth but they answered my question:

Thanks for sharing the screenshots!

It seems that this is a known bug, however, the reason why it affects pointlessoverthinking.com and not your other one is that it only occurs on sites with the Business, Pro, and eCommerce plans.

Our developers are already aware of this but are backed up with other areas requiring their urgent attention. I will mention your case to them but we cannot guarantee a fix for this anytime soon.

So, I have an answer. It makes me rethink wanting to upgrade to a plan other than my free one. I’m glad they are working on urgent issues but this has been happening for at least 3-4 months, possibly more so I hope it’s working its way up the queue.

But it was a good lesson that WordPress does respond to its users on questions that you can’t find the answer to anywhere else!

(featured photo from Pexels)

Data With a Grain of Salt

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“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein

Talking with some blogging friends the other day, the topic of blog views came up. We were discussing all the different reasons that view numbers could be less this year than last year: people’s attention spans getting shorter, maybe viewers read more when the pandemic shut down other activities and now they are reading less, etc..

I’m too new to blogging to have enough historical data of significance, but I’ve studied similar data in my professional life to know that numbers aren’t as concrete as we think. So I did some digging and thought I’d share the results of my research specific to WordPress.

First of all – what is a view?

According to the WordPress stats and insights page it is:

“The two main units of traffic measurement are views and visitors:

  • A view is counted when a visitor loads or reloads a page.
  • A visitor is counted when we see a user or browser for the first time in a selected time frame.

A visitor is an individual looking at your site. A visitor can view many different pages of your site or view the same page multiple times. Therefore, the views number is typically higher than the visitors number.”

With those definitions in mind. Here are some things that impact the numbers.

  • If a viewer reads your content in the body of email notification and never clicks on any links within the email, it doesn’t count as a view.
  • If a viewer reads and/or likes your content in the WordPress viewer but does not click through to the full post, it does not count as a view.

One of the blogs that I write for has changed in the last few months so that when posts are emailed out, they no longer have a “like” link at the bottom, just the “comment” link. However posts that come from my blog still have both “like” and “comment” links at the bottom. Some posts are emailed out with just the summary and then something like “click here to read the full post.” For people who are reading blog posts in email like I do, those three differences are going to impact the number of views.

There are some things that WordPress makes a point not to count as a view – search engines and views from anyone that has logged in and who has authoring permissions. Generally speaking, there are trying to report how many views of the content by readers as accurately as they can.

The technology is constantly changing so things like a change in the format of the notifications by email or even how well the WP Reader performs on a mobile device can impact things like view numbers. Numbers as reported within a week are probably pretty accurate in relation to each other because the functionality is consistent. There are likely seasonal differences with dips in summer and holidays. Year over year numbers, comparing the same month this year to the same month last year, is very interesting data but needs to taken with a grain of salt.

If a blog has a drop in views, it’s possible that it’s because the author(s) has alienated the viewers or our collective attention span has gone to seed. But since the trend over time for active bloggers is towards more followers and views, it also might be worth considering these technical factors as well.

For those of you who are interested in more information on the many way people read blog posts from two incredibly talented writers and experienced bloggers, both Ashley and Claudette have covered the topics in depth and by survey here:

Ashley Peterson’s post on How Do You Read Blog Posts? on her Mental Health @ Home blog.

Claudette Labriola’s survey results of How Do You Read Blogs on her Writer of Words, Etc blog

(featured photo from Pexels)

Confession of a Writer

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“What you are afraid to do is a clear indication of the next thing you need to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the year before my dad’s sudden death in a bicycle accident, I had a soul whisper that I needed to get to know my dad on his terms. He was such an enthusiastic supporter of so many people that it was hard to get him to talk about himself. But I sat him down and asked questions and recorded his stories. It was one of the most inspired things I ever did. His death catapulted me into an ambition to write a book about him.  In those months as I was pregnant with my daughter and writing about my dad, spinning between death and birth, I met Sheila, my writing coach.

With her help, I finished and published the book, and after my daughter was born, I found more to write about. When I contacted Sheila again, she asked, “Do you remember the first thing that you said to me?” I didn’t so she reminded me that I had told her I wasn’t a writer, I just wanted to write a book about my dad. But as we worked together, she told me along the way that I would have more to write about.

I think back to how I was so quick to disavow any greater aspirations to be a writer and it showed how much I feared admitting what was calling to me. I didn’t want to presume that I had anything valuable to say (or write) and it wasn’t what I went to school for. In fact, when I was finishing my BS in Electrical Engineering, the last course I needed to complete was a technical writing course, and it took me until after I walked through ceremonies and had a real job to complete those credits and finish my degree.

Sitting down to write and publish blogging posts every morning has been my practice to walk what my inner self already knows is true. That I’m driven to write about this one wild and precious life of mine, to quote Mary Oliver, and that it’s not presumptuous to own that.

I like to think of writing as the last gift that my dad gave me before he departed this planet. And as such it’s the one that helps me integrate him with the life I have now with these two beautiful children. It’s the gift that has brought me depth and wonderful relationships with you all in the WordPress community. To not own that I love writing is a betrayal of all that so I guess I need to call Sheila back up and tell her I’m a writer.

How about you – do you admit that you are a writer?

(featured photo from Pexels)

Influence

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“Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out.” – unknown

I went back to look at footage of an interview with Madonna in 2012 that has stuck in my mind. In the interview, she’s being asked about Lady Gaga’s music and she calls it “reductive.” Something about her facial expression made it stand out when I watched it even though I’m not deep into either of those artists’ work.

When I went back and watched it, I saw a lot of things that I didn’t remember. The ABC News interviewer was really pushing Madonna to say something unkind about Lady Gaga’s music – to weigh in on some perception of “feud” that was being circulated online. Madonna says a number of things about influence and being amused before being pushed to call Born This Way reductive. When the interviewer pushes further to ask what that means, Madonna gets this sassy look on her face and says, “Look it up.”

According to the Oxford Dictionary, it means, “tending to present a subject or problem in a simplified form, especially one viewed as crude.” Setting aside the issue of what we do to celebrities to try to stoke a controversy or conflict, I suspect I’ve always remembered this because I wonder if what we all do is reductive.

Speaking for myself, I think everything I do is derivative or reductive of someone else’s work. I’m endlessly influenced by the books I read, especially the Mark Nepo and Frederick Buechner meditation books that I read every morning before I write. But more than that, I’m influenced by all the posts I read from everyone else and the podcasts I listen to when driving. I try to carefully quote and link when I use material but often times what I get is inspiration or ideas about how to think about a topic.

Celebrity feud aside – isn’t what we are here to do to influence each other? And isn’t that an honor to be a part of someone else’s path? I’m not talking about plagiarism or giving credit where credit is due – but just knowing that our content might touch one other person in a way that is meaningful, isn’t that a good thing?

(featured photo from Pexels)

Worth Quoting

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“Do small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa

I like quotes. I curate them the way my dad did humor – but instead of using notecards, I use an Excel spreadsheet with a column for where I’ve used them and where I got them. I loan my spreadsheet out now and again – like to my friend who was taping quotes to her teenager’s mirror every morning as they waited for college admissions results to come in.

Quotes have such an elegance – a succinctness of capturing a particular idea so that it can be passed on. It’s an amazing gift to be able to do that, to coin a phrase or sentence worth repeating. And worth repeating outside of the context of any longer writing.

There is also an inferred meaning of a quote based on who said it, if attributed to someone. One of my favorite quotes is from Anne Sexton “Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.” It doesn’t take much looking to find that while Anne Sexton tackled some deep and revealing subjects in her work, she also is alleged to have physically abused her children. Knowing that, I find it harder to use that quote because who said it matters.

When I first started writing, I had a difficult time believing my own voice had any credibility so I wanted to rely on quotes as a crutch. To counter that, I changed my process so that I wrote and only when I was done or had trouble pulling together the last sentence did I go and find a quote that helped me clarify my topic. In that way, I’ve found a way to add another voice to what I’m writing without silencing my own.

The quotes that I think of when I’m in a crunch or stuck change with the major themes in my life. I had a different set of go-tos when I was trying to work up the courage to have kids then now when I’m in the thick of parenting. With that said, here are a few of my personal favorites.

“You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you’re right.” – Henry Ford

“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” – Roald Dahl

“Everything you’ve always wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Adair

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.‘” – Erma Bombeck

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” – Matthew 7:3

“The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” – Mark Twain

“God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.” Hazrat Inayat Khan

“Please remember, it is what you are that heals, not what you know.” – Carl Jung

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.” – William Blake

“You don’t have a soul, you ARE a soul.” – Dick Leon

And the perfect one to end this post comes from the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, “Everything will be alright in the end, and if it’s not alright, it’s not the end.”

Do you have any favorite quotes?

(featured photo from Pexels)

Expressive Writing

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“Fill the paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth

My 6-year-old daughter, Miss O, brought home her journal from first grade because she’d filled the composition notebook. The teacher gives them a topic and they write a little bit every day.  Miss O sat me down to show me how in the beginning of the school year she wrote a couple of words and doodled. By her entries in March, she was writing a couple of paragraphs. She was incredibly proud of her work.

It reminded me of a recent reference I heard to the work of James Pennebaker, a professor of psychology (and formerly the chair of the department) at the University of Texas, Austin. In the late 90’s, he wrote a paper summarizing the findings of studies he’d done that showed that people who practiced expressive writing, writing about thoughts and feelings, tended to have positive health outcomes (less visits to the campus health center or evidenced by blood pressure and heart rate).

In a summary paper published in 2017, Dr. Pennebaker theorizes that expressive writing helps because keeping things secret causes stress. I’d say that many of us creative non-fiction bloggers, know the benefits of expressive writing anecdotally – in the community that we create and the support we get from others. Sharing our thoughts and feelings, even though unnecessary to reap the health benefits according to Dr. Pennebaker, makes them feel more normal.

It feels to me like words give our thoughts and feelings definite shape. It morphs them into things that can be actionable. There is a magic that comes from owning our stories.

This brings to mind the post I wrote about humorist Kevin Kling whose therapist was helping him through a bout of PTSD stemming from a motorcycle accident in which he lost his arm. He was angry and unable to sleep until his therapist had him tell his story about that day as if the accident didn’t happen and he reached his destination unharmed. It worked like a charm and Kevin’s takeaway was, “we need to rewrite our story sometimes just so we can get some sleep.”

Flipping through Miss O’s journal, I find this entry that I share with her permission:

“Wen I grow up I want to be caring. Because caring is nise [nice] and I’m areredey [already] nise. Caring is what you shod be!”

Miss O’s 1st Grade Journal

The Fruits of Blogging

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“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso

I have just passed the milestone of posting to this blog 300 days in a row. Writing a blog has been so personally gratifying to me, mostly because of the community of friendship and support I feel with fellow bloggers on this journey.

So I looked around for studies about blogs and found some interesting conclusions that come from a paper published by the Canadian Center of Science Education. The paper entitled The Effectiveness of Using Online Blogging for Students’ Individual and Group Writing studied a students who were learning English as a Foreign Language. Studying their writing styles before and after a 14-week period of blogging, here are some of the key take-aways that caught my eye:

  • Not only do learners better improve their writing skills through blogging practices, they can also build their self-confidence as writers and attract a wider audience.
  • Blogging practices play an active role in encouraging learners to experiment, take risks and foster their awareness to be private and public writers.
  • Blogging helped both individual learners and groups come up with more engaging ideas.
  • As practice time progressed, learners using blogging tried to transform their writings when they acknowledged their audience and expected or anticipated a level of interaction in the form comments, criticism or support.
  • Blogging became a space where they could improve their writing, and where numerous readers and bloggers were also arbiters in matters of language usage and mechanics, cohesion, coherence, idea generation, debate, discussion, critical thinking and so on.

I couldn’t find a study that verified the positive benefits of interacting with an interesting and interested group of people with whom one would have never met otherwise and who comment in ways that inspire and delight. But I don’t need a study to affirm that – because I live it every day! Thank you my blogging friends!

(featured photo from Pexels)