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| Gatsby, my soul kitty (my photo) |
1. What have you recently forgotten to do until the last minute?
I’m probably jinxing myself here, but my answer is… nothing! One of my main OCD tendencies is to make lists of everything and add reminders to my calendar for every possible minor deadline or even things sans deadlines that I simply want to accomplish. There are things I should do but haven’t done, of course, but that’s not because I forgot ~ I just don’t wanna do them.
2. How many blog posts do you publish on average a day?
I would say probably one or two. Blogger doesn’t show you highly detailed stats the same way that WordPress does, so this is just my “feeling.” When I first began this blog (or wiped and restarted it) in the summer of 2024, I vowed that I would not post just to post. My old WP blog had loads of filler posts that embarrassed me when I looked back at them. Back then, it was normal for me to post five times per day ~ I probably went three or more years without skipping a day! Now, I regularly skip days. Last week I think I skipped two days.
3. How long have you been blogging?
Short answer: 22 years, with a few breaks. Skip to Q4 if you aren’t interested in the long, meandering saga.
I began my first blog in 2004 (Ultrablog from my then-screen name of Ultraviolet) because my writer friends were all starting them. Most of those friends have given up blogging, sadly, and their blogs lie abandoned in the internet graveyard. They still operate under the illusion that’s it’s possible to have meaningful conversations on Facebook. I despise FB! I’m only there for my book club now. The latest horrible annoyance is their refusal to hide/ mute stuff you request. They literally do not care how miserable the user experience is; they care only about the ads and business pages people pay for.
Sorry, irrelevant rant. The 2004 Blogger blog got derailed over the Pit Bull War, my comments were “hacked,” and I deleted the whole thing in 2007. I began a new, quiet Blogger blog that focused on cats and trivia, but I became bored with it. At the end of 2007, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I started a private Blogger blog to express my thoughts surrounding her illness and death. I think I invited 20 readers to commiserate with me. After my mom died, I archived that blog and took it down.
A year later, my divorce was in process, and I began dating a man who was supposedly going to leave his wife (ha ha). Since I was frequently depressed over my entire situation, I began a WordPress blog to post angsty song lyrics, snippets of poetry, and sad quotes. That ended up morphing into my long-running blog, which I paid for to eliminate ads and kept up for over a decade until I got heartily sick of it and of WP generally. I deleted that blog in early 2023.
But I still had this Blogger blog! This wasn’t my original blog or my trivia one, both of which had been deleted; this was simply my backup blog, which I used when WP was being glitchy to “hold” posts until WP behaved again. Anyway, I decided in 2024 that I missed blogging after seeing a movie and desiring to write about it, so I wiped this one and began anew.
4. If you had to rename your blog, what would it be?
Idk. I really like this name, but if I had to rename it, I’d choose something like Pointless Meandering.
Gratitude: I am thankful that I figured out how to give Inky her flea pill. She doesn’t go outdoors, but fleas are everywhere, and one might sneak inside the house, so it’s important to stay protected. This particular pill is very grainy and hard to stuff down her throat, so I gave up for a couple months, but Saturday I was determined. I put a dab of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter on the pill to make it slippery. After making sure she swallowed, I put a tiny dab of it on her nose so she’d lick it off and swallow again. It worked! Yay! (I used to give Gatsby topical flea prevention meds, but those are icky, and I want Inky to be able to take a pill.)
No, I don’t have real butter in the house. I like butter to be fake and spreadable. Thanks for asking. Also, before anyone starts, the Chewy vet said this was okay to do.
Thanks for joining in and sharing your world Paula. Good to see you. How old is Inky? We grind Maya's flea and worm treatments and mix them in with treats having got fed up with her eating the chewy 'popper' and spitting out the pill!
ReplyDeleteInky is two and a quarter! She won’t touch food if it has meds mixed in. Fussy felines!
DeleteOne or two posts per day is an incredibly high rate of posting, especially while still working at a regular job. I tend to do three or four a week and I know many bloggers who post less frequently than that.
ReplyDeleteGetting cats to take pills is notoriously difficult. You'd think it would be a priority to develop medications in forms that animals will actually like to eat, like a flea med for cats that tastes like a piece of tuna or something.
Right? You would think…
DeleteI have often thought the same thing. It seems like there's a fortune to be made there for some enterprising person.
DeleteI do miss the old days of blogging, when it was new and fun , but toward the end of my time participating in the "blogosphere", it was becoming a chore. I was happy to move on, but now I pay the price of "free" social media service: it's not actually free when you're subject to algorithms and ads. I want to leave it, and probably should. - N
ReplyDeleteAs I said on FB yesterday, I am not leaving but instead doing a “quiet quit.” I need to check my book club group daily for updates, and I just go directly to groups, bypassing all the feeds and ads. Enough is enough! People are complaining all over the place that they see more sponsored posts than updates from friends, and FB doesn’t care that everyone is unhappy about it. Other Meta products, like IG and WhatsApp are much better and actually provide the experience they’re supposed to, even with some ads. I don’t expect never to see an ad!
DeleteRe blogging, it’s funny that Infidel says I post a lot. This is nothing compared to how much I posted on WP. I’m going at a comfortable pace for me, and some weeks will be lighter. It’s totally fine to post once a week or less. You’ll still get readers, especially if you link up with some of the music bloggers on your music-related posts!
I usually post a couple of times a day, but since my posts are mostly recycled stuff (videos, comics, jokes, etc.), they are a lot less time-consuming to put together. Back in the early days, when I still wrote my own stuff, I posted much less frequently. I also learned that very few people had any interest in what I had to say. If I hadn't switched to my current format I probably would have given up blogging entirely.
DeleteAs for FB, it was fun in the very beginning, but now that it has deteriorated into a toxic cesspool I avoid it as much as possible. I don't need the aggravation.
Publishing more than one post a day seems like an awful amount of work. But I guess some people like to do that. You've had quite the blogging journey.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to believe it’s been so many years!
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