Day 1 of Just Write Challenge

It popped into my head while this morning’s coffee was sinking in: “I should just write, even a little bit, in my blog each day.”

I miss blogging. I miss reading the blogs of the handful of fellow writers I follow. I miss WordPress.

This challenge to myself does not have a time limit, but thirty days is a nice goal because WordPress gives that bit of encouragement through its congratulatory comments every time you reach a milestone number of posts, such as three in a row, or a week, or a month. I will see how long I can make a daily blog entry, even if to say something simple like “It’s sunny today.”

It IS sunny right now, with clouds, and a comfortable zero degrees Celsius outside, here in the Cariboo region of BC, Canada (that’s 32 Fahrenheit for any American readers). Inside is cozy. I woke up to find the heat-activated fan on the woodstove still spinning slowly, thanks to a nice bed of coals. It’s a cookstove, so the firebox isn’t as big as a dedicated heat stove. The most we can expect from it to burn when it’s fully stoked at bedtime is around six hours, depending on the wood.

But back to the thought of my writing challenge. I write every day, one way or another, but not always in a blog post. Don’t you? Can you imagine life without writing? Aside from manuscript works in progress, there is so much more: Grocery notes, items on your to-do list, text messages, social media comments, email, addresses on an envelope, filling in a cheque (there are still people who only accept cash or cheque in my small community), etc.

How awful it would be to lose the ability to write! If I lost my vision and my hands… But, no, I don’t want to think about that.

Suddenly a song by Cat Stevens comes to mind. Have you guessed it before you scroll down to see which one I mean?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Yes, that’s right: Moonshadow.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds, or if I will even take another breath after this one, so I will see how it goes with this writing challenge.

“Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” (James 4:14)

Maranatha!

Blogging again

I started another blog, the name and location of which I don’t want to make known publicly, but if you contact me privately, I might be able to pass on a link. That is, if I fix it. Right now it isn’t working properly. Some of the preliminary links are failing and I don’t yet know why.

So, here I am, blogging again, as well as reading more posts by other bloggers, in hopes it will assist my sanity level.

WordPress “Stats”?

On my WordPress.com blog Dashboard, I click on Stats, then Top Posts & Pages. It shows me a list of the posts on my site that got the most traffic. Strangely, there are items that it lists as having only one view, yet there are several “likes” and comments for that post.

This makes no sense to me. I don’t even know what to ask, let alone who to ask. I have other problems with WordPress, and I’ve posted them in a WordPress support forum, but so far I’ve not gotten any solutions.

Are there any actual WordPress gurus out there who know how to use this site and how to fix problems, or is it all run by users who are in the process of figuring it out themselves?

Someone’s thoughts on running

I’m loving the “Reader” feature of WordPress.

Here is a post I found by a fellow blogger. I wanted to comment about how much I appreciated his thoughts about running, but comments were closed. In the link below, I share it so I can reread it and comment on specifics later. If others want to comment, my comment section is open.

The blog entry was called “I Remember What it Was That I Loved About Running”.

https://wp.me/p2ZUci-on

Instagram is no gem either

Facebook’s got its huge downside list, but then Instagram is no gem, either. The latter, owned by the same conglomerate, is not as addictive as the former, but how many women need to be out there showing off their abs in front of a mirror with their cell phone in hand? Is it an addiction for them to seek approval? Is it an addiction for the approval-givers to keep seeing more?

Hey, I’ve got some pretty decent abs, too, and a cell phone, but you will not see me showing more skin than necessary on the internet.

You wanna see my abs, I’ll show you in person, in a public place, with other people around. You wanna see my phone, I’ll show you that, too. You can even touch it to see it’s real. (I said “it”, not “them”. The phone, not my abs. Just so we’re perfectly clear.) But the former will never be on Instagram or any other social media. Not because I’ve had seven babies. Take my word for it that abs can be made strong and beautiful again after childbirth. It just takes hard work.

You might, however, catch a glimpse of my phone online sometime. Oooh, scandalous!

Can you handle the scandal? Full-on back view shot of my PHONE!

When WordPress posts don’t space properly

When you write a WordPress blog entry and it seems to have the right amount of spacing between paragraphs when you’re in the editing window, but then you go to the preview window and find that the spaces have been squished down to nonexistence, here’s the trick to forcing some more space.

Go to the Text view and look for the part in your writing where you want more space. Then you will insert these six characters, but without any space between them. (I can’t type it in this document without spaces between each character because I just discovered, when I went to the Preview screen, that it doesn’t necessarily HAVE to be done in the Text screen – it also works in the Visual screen!)

& n b s p ;

See that? It’s the ampersand symbol, followed by the letters n, b, s, p, and then a semi-colon. Do that, without any spaces between the characters, and your line spacing problem is solved. Put it anywhere in your document that you need an extra blank line.

Watch what happens here when I put in nine lines of that string of characters:

 

See all that blank space above this line of type?

I hope that helps someone. If nothing else, it’s a reference for myself for the next time I need to add more space.

Blog Commenting

I am always amazed when I read someone’s blog entry and see comments and discussion following it.

I read a blog post yesterday wherein the writer was saying they aren’t a fan of reading their notifications.

Me, I don’t worry about notifications, for at best there are a handful of likes, and rare is it that comments happen.

When someone has something to say to me, I am happy to respond. Unless, of course, it is rudeness. That is best ignored.

I’ve been blogging since 2011, having started on another site and then opening up this one on WordPress a year later, and on both blogs, very little interaction has resulted.

How do people get so many comments?

What am I doing wrong?

Or maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.

Where is the WordPress “like” star?

The little star that used to be there for me to click on when I read a WordPress blog entry that I like is not showing up when I read from my computer, yet it’s still there when I’m reading it via my phone’s app. What’s up with that?

All I can do is leave comments. The “like” star symbol still exists for other comments under the posts, so I can click on those if I like the comments.

What’s going on?

Is anyone else experiencing this?

What do I do to fix it? I tried to find answers on my search engine, but I must be typing in the wrong terms, for nothing is coming up to help.

(Sorry, I know I just posted a few hours ago to apologize for posting too many blog entries lately, but after I did a few chores, I came back to my computer and am immersed in WordPress again. I’ll try to restrain myself.)

When social media fails

When social media fails to satisfy, when every button click to search for connection results in nothing that speaks to you, and every hollow word you read from people not talking to you makes you turn your eyes away, do you feel more empty than before you sought to be filled?

Is it like a car running low on fuel, continuing to drive and thereby running lower on fuel?

I think it is.

And so I park the car, get out, and walk home.

It is so nice to have the deactivation button, to get out alone for some fresh air, do some thinking by myself in silence and not with the thoughts of others that fail to connect with me for they really aren’t reaching my way in the first place.

It is so nice to have WordPress, where nothing is expected but its silent pages welcome me with their blankness.

Hello, WordPress, I love you.

A WordPress “Slug”

I opted to upgrade to the new setup WordPress has for us bloggers. I’m not sure if the page where we create our blog is called a “dashboard” now, or if it is something else, but whatever it is has got a new field called “Slug”.

I had to Google to find out what this slug meant. My, how words have exploded in meaning since Webster’s paperback dictionaries were some of my dearest companions.

So, the new meaning of a slug, at least here on WordPress, is a user-friendly URL for your post’s link, so it’s not a string of characters with the title of your blog entry possibly woven in.

Here is a link for a brief article on the WPBeginners page that describes it better:

WordPress “slug” meaning

That’s all. Happy Word Pressing!