Tag: rambling

Blogging: I Love It and Hate It + Assorted Rambling

~ K ~ 6 Comments

Building traffic and revving up my SEO marketing sounds nice in theory, but I don’t have time for it. While I love writing, I am daunted by a blog’s need for content. It is always hungry, never satiated, always wanting more.

I don’t blog every day because, frankly, I have nothing of value to add each day. I don’t want this blog to become “I had a good day today because my family was here!” or “I had a horrible day today. Worst day EVAR!!!” I want this blog to be somewhat smart and interesting. I want to tackle topics that are important to me that other people don’t talk about. (Well, I could talk about poop but moms of newborns have that covered.) Okay, maybe I’ll tackle politics this year.

I have several blogs, each focused on a different topic: Pop! Goes the Music focuses on pop music but I’ll probably only post to that when I feel like it rather than trying to establish a regular posting schedule. I’ve been upfront on depression introspection that the site is rarely updated and mainly offered as a resource. I also have a professional blog about the dynamics of the American English language.

Posting to This Journey Is My Own is still fun. I don’t do it often, much of my posts are scheduled (thanks to prompts), and I blog when I want to rather than feeling like I need to (as with my professional blog). I also like that my readership is moderate despite that wacky 992 e-mail subscriber number. Continue reading “Blogging: I Love It and Hate It + Assorted Rambling” →

Midnight ramblings

~ K ~ 3 Comments

When it comes to looking at other female Christians, I’ve always felt like an outsider. Through the lens of my “doo doo” eyes, these females tend to be white, wholesome, and happy. Now that I run with the 30 and older crowd, they also have babies or toddlers. I tell myself I’d die if I were a mommy blogger. I don’t mind being a blogger who happens to be a mom but adding “mommy blogger” to my job description would just about kill me.

Or maybe not. Because I have no problem being a sellout because I am that desperate for acceptance. On a forum I frequent, someone posted a link to a job description as a reporter for a popular politically conservative website. I’m not particularly conservative politically but I’m not liberal enough for the Huffington Post either. But I’d spout conservative principles if I had to just for the opportunity to write for a living. Unfortunately, on the liberal side, I’d only go so far since the abortion issue is a big problem for me. If I could blog as a pro-life liberal, I’d be okay on that end.

My counselor in Kentucky used to say to me and my husband, “People desire two things in life: to be right and to be accepted.” I so would prefer to be accepted than to be right. If all the conservatives hated my political views but thought I was an otherwise cool chick, I’d be ecstatic. I don’t care if my friends think I’m a total idiot as long as they love me anyway.

The only time I’ve ever felt accepted by a group in my entire life was when I joined a sorority at the first (secular) college I attended. In a sense, I feel like I earned the ability to be accepted. I left the college shortly after so my feeling of acceptance by my sorority sisters was short-lived.

The feeling of acceptance decreased ever since. I attended a fundie Christian college for a few years where I stood out like a sore thumb in various ways: my shirts were too tight or too see-through (even though I didn’t think they were all that bad); I didn’t have a plethora of skirts or dresses I could rotate through; I didn’t look or think as wholesome as those other homeschooled Christian girls; I wasn’t as naive (or maybe I was). I moved joyfully to the melody of hymns during church services while the few friends I had desperately crowded around me to make sure I didn’t get in trouble for moving in time to the rhythm of the music. (I called myself “Bapticostal” during that time.) What was wrong with dancing to music? Didn’t David dance joyfully while worshiping the Lord? Gosh, I was such a freak.

I still think of myself as a freak. Continue reading “Midnight ramblings” →

My messed-up imagination

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Because I am doped up on cold and flu medicines, my equilibrium is off, and I’m feeling rather spacey, I’m going to use my blog here to just rant about nothing. Nothing that makes sense to anyone else anyway. And if it’s really bad, when I come to, I may take this down. I don’t know.

In any event, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve got a really messed-up imagination. By Christian and non-Christian standards, you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that I’ve written. Some of it’s so far-fetched that it simply boggles the mind that I could have come up with it to begin with. Some of it’s incredulous. I need to go up to the loft, dig up some of the stuff I wrote (as in literally—wrote by hand) when I was a preteen, and type it all out. I’ve written 200-300 looseleaf pages of a novel. None of it will ever see the light of day because the stuff rivals L. Ron Hubbard’s books for believability. And they’re so embarrassingly bad. Want to blackmail me? Get your hands on some of that stuff. I’d turn darker than an a red delicious.

I have a storyline running through my mind. Different stories have been running through my mind at different times since I was 12. I may take every NaNoWriMo that comes along and actually put it on paper. Heaven knows I have the characters, plot, subplot, and conflict to keep it going to 50,000 words. Ending it may be the difficult part.

It’s October 22 and I’m not working steadily for the ad agency. Last year at this time I was so it’ll be interesting to see if I can crap out 50K words by November 15. (Although I doubt it.) Last year, I finished my novel just under 50K and had to keep writing nonsense to hit the 50K word mark. It’s a novel no one will probably ever see or read but it’s part of that running storyline I have in my head.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Participant BadgeSo I may just take some time off from revising my current novel to do NaNo. I’ll probably go it alone this year instead of attending write-ins like I’ve done in the past. But I’m rambling out of a head filled with DayQuil and Theraflu. Writing a chapter in my novel should prove to either be interesting or a challenge.

Now that I know what I want to write for NaNo, I can’t wait to get started. A coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old rich girl on Long Island. (Not autobiographical at all.)

November 1 can’t get here soon enough.