Tag: blogging

My Return to Blogging

It’s been a year since I wrote a blog post.

Shortly after my last post, my mom died. It was sudden and devastating. I lost my best friend in addition to my mom. I can’t describe to you the depths I’ve been in for the past year. I like to think I cover it well, but I haven’t been myself for most of the past 12 months. My soul hurt. That’s the only way I can explain it. And honestly, it still does, even though I’m becoming more and more myself.

Another sudden and devastating death happened on March 11th – the day after my birthday. Laurie, the light of my life, died gasping for breath by my side. It was horrific.

So, along with a worldwide pandemic, the death of my aunt, and Tau struggling to find stability, it’s been a rough year. Also, Shane’s snake keeps trying to eat itself. And I keep finding it when it’s trying to eat itself. We think we have it under control now, so here’s hoping. (See below)

Which isn’t to say nothing good has happened – we bought a new house, I have a new niece, Tau has adjusted to the move better than we expected, we planted a garden (kinda), I was able to move easily to working from home during quarantine, and so on and so forth. The bad just looms large in my memory.

Recently, I started thinking about how nice it would be to sit down on nights that Shane’s in bed early and just do some blogging. I have some pen-pals to write, and a journal, but there’s something different about this format. Even if people don’t read it, it still feels different.

I’m not going to remove any of my old posts, but I’m not going to read them again either. They can just live on.

Here’s to blogging once again. 🙂

Sarah

PS – Before I get any comments on the health of Sarge the Snake – he’s over 15 (life expectancy is 10-20), his new environment is consistently much warmer than he’s used to so he gets hungrier a lot faster than he used to (which in turn was a lot faster than we were used to), he got super stressed when we moved, & honestly California King Snakes are really really dumb so sometimes they happen to think their own tails belong to other snakes (they’re snake eaters). He’s old, hot, hungry, and dumb so he munches on his tail sometimes. We dumped some ice on him and threw him a thawed mouse and all was good. Obviously, it’s not a good thing and I would rather it never happen again, but he’s done himself no permanent damage and we figured out how to keep it from happening (much more frequent feedings) so there’s that. Also, I check on him *constantly* throughout the day to head any weirdness off at the pass.

2019 Blogging Plans

My 2018/2019 are *almost* done I promise, there’s just one more after this. It’s mostly because I ran short on ideas – I was going to review some books, both of which I wasn’t into and decided to skip reviewing them.

I’m planning on moving off of here and on my own server/other hosted site. With Gutenberg coming out, I want to play with all the new custom blocks plugins and WP.com doesn’t really give me the level of freedom I want at a price point I’m willing to pay. I do WordPress development as my day job and was originally just interested in blogging without doing any development. Now, though, I think I’d like to create a theme and maybe some custom blocks. I’m looking at using my personal AWS account to do it, but I might just go with a regular hosting site. Decisions, decisions.

I still want to do book reviews, but I’m not going to force one if there’s not a book I want to review. Or if I just haven’t finished a book since the last review. I want to read a lot more sci-fi and fantasy books that are a lot longer than most of the books I read last year.

I’m not worried about visits, or views, or followers at the moment. I’m just really enjoying blogging. This will never make money or be my career or whatnot, so I don’t have to try to hit goals like that. Obviously, I love seeing that people are reading my posts and I hope people like reading them, but I don’t want to lose that enjoyment because I’m chasing a number. I admire bloggers who do, though. They put in work. This might change – I reserve the right to decide I care about numbers at some point in the future.

Anyway, I’m off. I have a cat to snuggle with.

~Sarah~

2018 Recap

This is my end-of-year stat blog post. Mostly for future me, so sorry if you’re hoping for a thrill.

Coffee & Crows

  • First post: 10 Books to Pull You Out of a Reading Slump – August 21
  • Number of views {as of today}: 559
  • Number of visitors: 361
  • Number of posts: 60
  • Number of comments: 41
  • Favorite search term used to find the blog: “crows and coffee grounds”

Read

Watched

**Note: I didn’t watch many movies in 2018, and I’m not sure I even went to one in theaters. I stuck with Netflix titles here (except King of the Hill) because I didn’t track the movies I watched and Netflix’s watch history is the easiest to use.**

Travel

  • Washington DC for Code4Lib (Feb 2018)
    • I spoke here!
  • Atlanta, GA for Code4LibSE (?)
  • Myrtle Beach for Shane’s interview (April 2018)
    • Then we moved here.
  • Mountains of NC, to flee hurricane (Oct 2018)
  • Nashville, TN for WordCampUS (Dec 2018)
  • A bunch of trips to my old hometown to go to work on-site.

I didn’t know I would be making one of these, so I didn’t do a good job tracking anything but my reading. I guess that’ll change with the bullet journal, regular blogging, and keeping a journal.

Wrapping Blogmas Up

I did it! Plus 2 days, even. What’s funny is that I’m only taking one day off – tomorrow – before I post a few posts before 2019 begins on Tuesday. I’m not really taking it off, I’m just not posting anything.

I learned a few things, too. Like being 2 weeks ahead was incredibly helpful. Seriously, it was so nice to not have to worry about posting all the time. I’m not sure I can keep it up, but I’m thinking about having ‘fill-in’ posts sitting in the draft folder so I have some in reserve if I fall behind. Also, the best laid plans are sometimes foiled. I had planned a few different posts that didn’t make it. Book reviews, a gingerbread house post, a post about a visit to Christmas lights. I just didn’t do everything I wanted to do, so I couldn’t write about them. Finally, I’m glad I don’t have to post 365 days a year. 27 days is hard enough, a year is too much.

I will most certainly not start 2019 being 2 weeks ahead in posts. I may not ever do that again {until next December, anyway}, but I definitely want to have several posts scheduled ahead of time.

My plans for next December {that I’ll probably forget, to be honest} are to basically follow through on the things I want to do. I didn’t get to go to see any Christmas Lights, which is a bummer, so I definitely want to go to the nicest ones next year.

Anyway, I’m super proud of myself for following through on Blogmas. Can’t wait to start 2019!

~Sarah