Thoughts About Keeping It Simple

I had a thought yesterday about what I was going to post. After deciding on a post title, I search the Internet to make sure the words aren't being used in some way. Nowadays, with so many millions of people online, it is very difficult to find a genuine title you create that isn't in some way of wording, being used already by someone else.

Thus, the title I chose was tossed because it is the name is too close to a television series title, The Edge of Everything (HBO).

Ink drawing 2001

Anyway, the thought is about how being on the edge of an idea or on the verge of something, I feel that we can get lost in adding too much detail. Keeping it simple isn't as simple as it should be. Nobody, methinks, likes forgetting something important. The plan should be thorough, the best it can be.  

Is there a trick to keeping it simple? 

If minimilism is the theme, then simple is easy.

If not, then struggle city we go.

For down sizing aka simplifying life, I decided to only keep the books that fit on my bookshelf, the pans I cook with, the dishes I use, and, the clothes I like that I actually wear. I wish myself a lot of luck getting that done.

Day 75 of Week 11 March 2024

Bachelor Button Sprouts*

Internet wise, if you pause your blog, then your rating on searches and such decreases. Posting a photograph with comments turned off is a way of not losing your blog's Internet ranking. I'm not sure how or what search engine rules are concerning ranking though. 

Posting will might resume in April 2024.

*Using organic potting soil in jiffy planters, seeds sprouted in 4 days.

Giving Pause

With the Best Foot Forward

Walking into the future carries all our baggage, some light, some heavy, some a burden, some a joy. All of you have been a joy to get to know through blogging, comments and emails. Y'all are a wonderful group of folks. My appreciation of y'all goes deep. 

Unlike many blogs I read that are left to dangle, the author gone without explanation, this blog is not taking that path. 

Figuring out how to balance my life's load, I will be pausing this blog indefinitely. I will continue to read your posts, and comment now and then.

Thank you

Assessing a Blogging Past

Together
Mixed media watercolor & cut paper
2008

Do you remember what you were thinking during each project?

Why you started? What the goal is? Where the idea began?

The year 2008 is 16 years ago. I'd have to look up blog posts to jog my memory for what I was doing back then. This blog began in October 2012, moved over from Poet Whale Studio (2010). The 2 years from 2008 to 2010, I was blogging elsewhere as Cornsilk Moon. I morphed the blog title here a few times before settling to this final name.

It boggles my mind that I've been blogging for 16 years. What has changed? I'm not sure, but I believe I don't write with as much scatter-brainess as I use to. My subjects seem to flow the same. I no longer feel the need to change the blog title. 

For what is the same, venting. I still have to put effort into not posting vents about customer service, politics, something in the news or a personal experience. 

(That may change as the 2024 election nears.)

What are the retirement good old olden days like?

Chicken Soup (canned)

For the first meal of the day, it is all right with me, to have chicken soup. The day before, things got in the way of a nice hot bowl of broth, carrots, noodles and chicken bits. A can of anything can become lonely sitting on the counter too long. One must pay attention to the foods they keep.

The same can be said of blog posts. When you begin a subject, it is best, I believe, to stay on track by finishing the thought. A subject also needs attention.

So what is that unfinished post (below) all about?  As I recall, the issue is about managing one's daily flow, the benefits of routine blended in with the doing what you feel like. 

In retirement, it can feel frightening to wake up to an epiphany you having nothing to do that will make any difference in this world. There is nobody to tell you what to do. There is nobody going to judge your accomplishments or lack of. 

The unfinished blog post:

Why am I blogging when all I want to do is have a McD sausage biscuit and a real coffee? 

There's no telling why things aren't the way you want them. You can, though, make decisions. There are goals out there waiting for you to embrace them. Right now, I have so much stuff to do, all I want to do is leave. (I'm laughing.) Going out and about isn't always to be out there to get things done. It can be about not being indoors so you don't have to face the messes you need to square away. Escaping for a moment can ease the transition from not doing to doing.

As it happens, being out of packing tape means a trip to the store. If I'm already out and about, then a short stop for a coffee is all right.

I did go out to buy tape. I did have a sausage biscuit and coffee from McD. I got a lot done that day. That is what matters most to me, to keep on going.

Thoughts About the Holidays

Upstate New York Adirondack Mountains
November 2017

 Photographs are part of our history, images  for moments we will never experience again. We can have similar, not exact. There is no camera that can record the future. 

Speaking of the future...

I read a CNN (11/09/2023) article by Kristen Rogers, about a UK study published in BMC Medicine that indicates people that don't have connections with their family and friends have a 39% chance of dying earlier than folks that do interact with their family and friends. 

It boggles my mind how we ever survived without all the information about what to eat, how to exercise, find friends, survive divorce and so on. I imagine most every subject that can be a study, is a study somewhere from a high school final paper to a PhD dissertation. Oh, and then to be established in one's field, one must be published...more conclusions about what is bad for us or going to shorten our lives.

As for any time of the year, following our doctor's instructions goes above any holiday frollicking, including drinking and food.

As a single parent back in the day, I had a family rule that during the holiday season, December into January, there are to be no arguments. It bit me a few times, but I survived.

With that in mind, holidays are a time to relax, go with the flow, find enjoyment in things, the people we shmooze, spend time with. If being unconnected to friends and family, then maybe you can find other ways to connect.

• Bird Seed (to watch birds)
• Mail homemade cards
• Church
• Christmas Carol Concerts
• Volunteer at a local animal shelter or food shelf
• Book a vacation
• Watch holiday feel good movies (stop if you have nightmares about Santa's sleigh going missing)
• Join an exercise group where nobody knows  your name until you tell them
• Take ballroom dance lessons
• Blog

Blogging: How To Create Columns Using Theme Customization

 

1362 x 855 3.33 MB

In Customize a theme:

I tile vertically and adjust the width of the main blog to fit. When I click on Don't Tile, the columns remain. It takes some tweaking to get it just right.

The photograph on the right is the one I used to creat a Merge photo in order to have part of the image on both sides because sometimes, the size of the photograph will show where the merging lines are between frames. 

Try it on a practice blog template first. Write down each feature you try, (unlike me).

Merged photo (flipped) 4.55 MB
2000 x 796, 4 merged photos

Blogging Changes

How well we communicate with each other is always important. In this wider global cyber space, words can become scrambled in cultural differences. What can't be tossed around, at least shouldn't be, is respect for each other. As blog land groups coalesce into a tribe of like minded people, the experience can be weird to explain to non-bloggers how you can feel friendship with a person you have never met face to face. I believe people miss out on a good part of planet Earth society by not reading blogs authored by regular people living sort of regular lives. 

Regular lives. Thinking back to my early computer days. Downloading terrified me. I didn't grasp photo sizes and computer memory. Happily one day I decide to download a photograph of a nebula. My system froze because the size of the photograph was essentially bigger than my computer's memory storage. I mean the photo was huge. 

A few years later, I began blogging. I decided early on that I only need to learn enough to do what I want to do, type, send, copy, paste, read email, send email, stuff like that. The journey has been interesting. Now I'm dealing with voice recognition applications. I do not use Siri. I tried it a couple of times. Not diggin' it. If hear my system talk to me, then I shut it off. 

However, I am now experimenting with my computer's recording feature. 

The first audio blog post is back in the Draft folder. I had a surge of shyness. 

What do you think of recording your blog posts?

Audio of this blog post

 

P,S,

Day 2 of covid booster shot, not feelimg so great. Iced injection site as arm is really tender. I tend to be wimpish when feeling yucky. Craving Hagen Das coffee ice cream. :)

Post Hiatus

The Middlebury River
Acrylic on canvas 2022
M.Flannery

Post hiatus (hi ay tus). Projects are lined up along with canvases. I feel refreshed. I am especially pleased the comments to my political post are positive. 

Art. Remember the painting series posted last year for the artwork in the photograph above? Well, I will be starting another series from a different photo as yet to be taken. Once again, the series is for an impressionism landscape. 

Internet. In my travels, checking this blog's name on Google, I learned a website that promoted blogs for free, (send in email and URL), has changed to a free plus paid service. It is good to have a plan to promote your blog if you are in business or want to increase traffic to your website for advertising income. That is beyond my small blog world, but other's might consider such a plan.

I believe it is a good idea to Google  your name as well as your blog's name on a regular basis. You never know what might be out there. 

Cereal. Instead of sugary snacks, I treated myself to a box of Special K Blueberry cereal. Breaking up the monotony of oatmeal feels great. Besides, I sometimes like to have cereal for dinner. 

October. Starting this month felt to me like walking into a twilight zone. October 7 actual date. My brain date, September 30th. It is a good thing I had to grocery shop or else I would have missed the oranges of the distant mountains. The trees nearby are just beginning to turn color. When they are at peak foliage, the mountains are past peak foliage.

Over the long weekend, on Route 7, Saturday morning I saw long lines of vehicles traveling south where the foliage and mountains are poplar drives. There was also a quilt show in Middlebury that day. My mask and I stayed home.

Shots. The senior flu shot, done deal, I got it. Arm was sore going in from wrestling with an Ocean Spray juice bottle. (Even after cutting the plastic connectors to the cap, I struggled to get the bottle open.) My arm is tender two hours after the shot. When I lift my arm, I feel the injection site. No redness or swelling. An ice bag later will help keep it that way.

Please read the CDC, and other sources about covid, flu, RSV shots and decide for yourself to get injected.

Remember, being healthy decreases the burden on the health care system as well as your income.

A New Poetry Blog

Coffee Frappes & Seashells

My new poetry blog has a name posted on Blogger, (link above).

Posting will include my original poems as well as articles about the writing process, reviews, and other poetry news. One day I might actually attend a poetry reading to report about. 

It is amazing to me the amount of time it took me to figure out a title over the last few months. My goal was to have a similar one like this blog's title that combines my homeland Atlantic Ocean Boston area vibe with the Champlain Valley Vermont vibe. 

I haven't added Poetry to the title because the description of amateur poet blog should signal searches engines well enough for that category. There's also (eventually as the blog's search rank rises), the bonus of showing up with food and seashell searches.

The goal is to stop posting first draft poems. I hope to develop as a better poet by editing, seriously editing what I write. There are so many poems on my first poetry blog that make me cringe, I feel compelled to change.

I recently wrote a poem that I immediately like. That doesn't often happen. I saved it thinking this should be the first post on the new poetry blog. The day arrived. Whittled down to the easiest and most user friendly free blog host, I decide on Blogger.

At the keyboard, the 5 stanza, 20 line poem became a free verse 13 line poem. I slid along the thought that what I write has to make sense. I use to write inside how words feel, represent my mind's images. Stream of consciousness writing doesn't always translate to making sense unless edited to do so. I hope I got close.

P.S.

This entire post is inside the caption space of the first photograph. I don't know how that happened. See the shadow framing the post?  That's an indication the post is in a caption space. I discovered it when the font color turned out brown inside of the default black. I like it so much, I changed the font color for the entire blog.

The Moon, Writing & Reading

Northern Hemisphere 
Over Vergennes, Vermont, 2 July 2017

 Identifying a photograph is important as adding the 

who, what when, where and 

sometimes the how to an article. 

For the Moon photo, I added the 

where and when in the caption. 

The  photo was first posted 

on this blog on 7 July 2017. 

~~~~~~~

Thinking back on writing, I've taken more writing courses in my life time that I have art courses beginning with journalism in high school to experimental writing in college. I could not tell you in a conversation the technical terms of grammar, techniques of writing or even the define the types of writing with good accuracy.

Over time we can develop habits. For example, I use but, and, sometimes, and thus too often. Keeping our writing skills fresh can be done by reading, fiction as well as non fiction.

Twice a year, I make a summer and winter reading list that is mainly books recommended by bloggers. I also subscribed to Good Reads.

Today I will be reading, doing laundry, staying indoors, and, washing floors. At the moment, it is time to make coffee.

Have a wonderful day!

The Pumpkin: Inner Joy & Fascination

Pumpkins are a time capsule for childhood memories, gatherings, holidays, family fun, Nature, meals, and creativity. 

We admire pumpkins, I think, more than any other vegetable or fruit except for the apple.

Pumpkins are in a variety of colors and shapes.  The orange pumpkin is the icon of the patch.

The image for this blog was easy to chose. Pumpkins are a favorite next to the pine tree and cannoli. 

Pumpkin on Wikipedia

Researching this feature, right away the majority of search results focus on fun images, Halloween and children. The keywords, pumpkin find art will bring up few paintings. If you want to see lovely pumpkin paintings, then add Wyeth to the search.

For author quotes, Emerson and Thoreau mention pumpkins

60 Perfect Pumpkin Quotes at Parade.com

Next on The Pumpkin feature: Politics & Pumpkins

Ponder Fodder, Streaming TV & Blogging

Old Hedgerow Weeds & Sunshine, 2012

 

Ponder Fodder 

A new system to learn. A craft to understand. A morning to decide what to do or not to do. Those aren't questions. They are ponder fodder. 

The sun is shining. I can see the trees are moving. Wind. Clouds. Blue sky. I have on my sloppy work pants and thread worn chambray shirt. I suspect my first thoughts of the day are to finish the Spring cleaning. I created messes pulling things out. Sorting to put them away in a donation box or elsewhere isn't like pulling out an awful splinter. 

It is emotionally worse.

Streaming Television

I have discovered that not all channels allow watching the live programs being aired unless you have a TV provider. I am not sure how Wifi versus TV signal works.  The news and weather reports are available on some of the major networks, but not the regular programming. There are shows where the program will be available to watch after it airs initially.

If you are considering going the live streaming route instead of regular television viewing, then there is a learning curve. At this point, I am comfortable learning as I go. I am seeing though; the lane ahead might have to include some television.

Blogging

I've been surfing blogs again to see how things are going at the level this blog is on, personal low end serendipity style. Thus far, I am finding more good blogs that have stop without a word about what happened. The Blogger, Blogs I Follow feature will show the last time a blog posted. Many of those dormant will either be online or deleted. 

Standing out are the variety of clever fun blog names folks have, and, the unbelievable amount of blogs that are online. 

It may seem like blogging is doing well when in reality, there might be fewer of us that are actively blogging. Google doesn't sort those statistics that I have found.

Link to interesting article about blogging

Finances Online dot com 2023 Article

New Feature in April

Bi-weekly pumpkin posts with links to recipes, crafts, art and photographs

It feels only right to promote pumpkins more.

In summary today, using the Raleway main font with Handlee titles, life goes on into Spring. I haven't been out and about to take photographs or produced artwork to blog about. I have been thinking, but nothing profound has overwhelmed me enough to write up a post on it. I've been reading blogs more than watching television, regular or streaming. 

Have a wonderful day

Hello March 2023

Melting Snow

March 2023 begins on this blog with the font, Brygada 1918. The February font I used, Handlee, will appear for quoted and caption text. 

Changing fonts, appearances, style is as natural for me as the ways of weather, wind and sunshine. 

I am typing this on 21 February while on a newly decided blog break. There is sunshine splashing light into the room. I'm awake, dressed for the day, and pondering whether to do errands.

What did you do last Tuesday?

🐇🐇🐇

Tips

Having blood drawn? 

Take a cell phone photo of the site for future reference.

Consider using a windshield guard in winter. 

It can save on scraping an icy windshield.

Need a mood lift?

Write and mail yourself a nice letter or card.

Do you cook best for guests?

Be your own guest, cook for you.

                       

Happy March!

Oatmeal & Sweet Tea

Sweet Tea

Puttering has been filling my days. I'm not sure what it says about a person to have so many buttons and spools of thread in different places. Busy and distracted are words I think fit. 

A quick sew on a button. Put thread away some place. Dash out the door. The thread builds up in a junk drawer subduction zone. Eventually, a tizzy erupts searching for it. The puttering phase levels upheavals to a calm and carry it back to where it belongs. 

I guess my blog lost a button.

Ergo, I rest.

Had oatmeal with dry fruit and sweet tea for breakfast. 

Back to posting March first.

Blog Thinking & Rethinking

 

Is Open

Are we ever sure why our lives surprise us? For no reason I think of, I decide to bring back The Salty Pumpkin Cafe. Analyzing everything isn't necessary. In a few days, I might put it back to the private setting. Who knows.

What isn't returning just yet is the new blog set up. Why? There's the questions of it being a good idea, and  my blog comfort zone. 

Comfort. I've become more aware than I was in the past. It is disturbing when you hear subjects you talk about as the idea of the person you spoke to. Coincidence? Poor memory? What do you say to a person like that? Nothing. I limit contact with negative people. 

Good idea? The World, I believe, is in a negative phase. Bloggers, in this style, are about what life is meant to be on a peaceful level. When negativity spills over into the blog space, then good ideas need rethinking. We can't manage who reads our blog when it is public. 

We can manage what we post about. For example, I wrote a blog post about summer travel plans. After rethinking the subject, I deleted the post. I can blog about my travels, if any, when I return home.

I also realize that a new blog elsewhere will be tracked down using keywords. Folks that comment on this blog will be searched to see where they are posting comments. Now, making believe I have a new blog...

In summary, there are a lot of cracks browsers and websites can fill in to increase security for users. 

For example, websites that save and publish your blog posts on their website under the guise of archive should be banned.

Commentary: This Blog's Status

The Pumpkin Stays

A recent death in the family has me unbalanced with a need to adjust. Disinfranchised grief is a new and unique experience.

Pondering what next with this blog went straight to closing down. Instead, a new title with the same URL address, Salty Pumpkin Studio. Grieving is probably not the right frame of mind to make changes. The decision, however, feels right. 

I made up this blog's name by extracting the elements I used to create Salty Pumpkin Studio___ocean, land, nature, art.

Thus, Pumpkin, Pines & Canvas is created. 

~ Pumpkin fan since childhood.

~ In 1995, an acute anxiety episode sent me to the ER. The doctor asks what is my favorite calm place image. He tells me to focus on that place. I told him the pine trees where I hiked years ago is my calming place image.

~ Canvas represents art. The Atlantic Ocean element silently associates with canvas as in sails.

Posting will resume as a once a week montague with a main focus on art and nature.  

UPDATE...No new name. I changed it back to Salty Pumpkin Studio!

😁

My word for 2023:

Wisdom

🌲

Reflection Monday February 2016

Beginning with Old, digital photo, ©Maywyn Studio

This photo is one of the first I used for a blog banner. Cropped and edited, the banner is filed away as the old blog morphed into Maywyn Studio.  The old wrought iron fence was removed a few years ago when the property was renovated. It is missed and so are the roses.

Reflecting on where then and where when is a theme this year that's feels right against the amazement of 2000 bringing us into another century.

Blogging began for me as a means to maintain a small path to my small world with the hope there would be a day when I can handle selling my art online.  Eight years blogging is a long time preparing, waiting, wondering if. Hope is still present, and quite a gift to have.

I have cyber met wonderful people through blogging. I'm very grateful to all the readers here that have been so fantastic over the years.

However, the energy to keep this blog going is at an all time low.  Thus, there will be a transition to a photo blog like the "Branches" post instead of a farewell.

If you live in your own home or a place where repairs are done without hassles, and in a timely manner, then reflect on how very valuable that is. 

Embrace your good fortune.  

Living without dread is a precious gift.

Reflection Monday December 2015

Blogging has changed over the eight years that I've been blogging and reading blogs. The feel for me is there is a more defined gap between more and less. The more move from personal blog to a magazine style appears to be a trend that indicates success. However, there are blogs, in appearance mainly, that start out in the magazine style without the more factor  — followers, high end ads, depth of content.  On the personal end of the blogging range I find less, and that makes sense with the evil in the world today. 

I've learned through blogs that either shift over to their own website or use their own domain name on Blogger will show up on Alexa rankings. Dot Blogspot, like this blog, don't show up on with Alexa rankings.  I believe ranking and analytics are important for the ad income a blog can generate.      

Overall, blogging's health in my view isn't that great because of the obvious to me lack of diversity. Why 90% of the interior design and craft blogs I read, and find, lack diversity is a mystery to me. My definition isn't the only one for blogging health. Divides make sense where styles are concerned. Divides between people doesn't.

Reflection Monday August 2014

Pecking about on the lawn, the local pigeon flock is a delight to watch. Reflecting on their movements reminds me of blog reading, milling about the Internet from one to the other, by subject or by chance via Pinterest.
The other day I was looking for a coral lipstick on Pinterest. Afterwards, the Pinterest page I view has lots of lipstick pins. That many people pinning that soon?

I move on to something else because I know in that  small world of sharing, unlike the other social media websites, I will find a variety of interesting things even if I don't find the specific item I'm searching for.
If something vintage or unusual is wanted, then I use to browse eBay (before looking at a search engine's Images). Now, I also browse Pinterest. The more I am there, the more members follow me as well as like, and chose pins of mine to pin. There is an issue where photo credits aren't always carried along with the pin, copyright thing. I try to look them up and add them when possible.

Will Pinterest become bogged down with advertising pins? I believe to some small degree, that can happen as people learn the value of their product's exposure on Pinterest. There is a feature to report spam and other violations. Normally, the areas you pin will show up more on the page presented to you when  you click on the Pinterest name at the center top of the page. What might feel like spam is actually you. A balance of Likes and folder categories will create more variety on your page.
Will the program change to generate more income? That is the question that worried me. There is an interesting article on Business  Insider dot com, "Pinterest Takes Huge Step Towards Finally Making Money With New Analytics Tool," and, on the Wall Street Journal, "Pinterest CEO Lays Out Growth Plan, Sees Revenue in 2014." I'm not worried anymore about Pinterest's plans for the future.

A good plan for a blogger, is to keep up with the news on the websites one networks with to understand where on the landscape of blogging one is as well as might want to go. If you put a lot of time into your blog, then have space for building that asset to a healthy position. Be real. Go with what interests you. Stay true to your goals. Look around and within. Feel slumped? Browse online templates. Read other blogs. Go back and read your own blog.