Milestones should be celebrated

I've spent some time this morning going through some of my old posts and cleaning up my post labels and it's been a bit of work. I knew they were getting out of hand when the list of labels was way longer than the list of posts I've written. So I've chosen a handful of labels to help section out the blog. I'd love to have a custom blog with tabs to clean these things up but for now I'm doing this, a little at a time. I'm just hoping that I'm not clogging up your reading lists with old posts.

In a little under three years I've published over 300 times and it's been so much fun to do. And speaking of posting milestones one of the blogs I follow has an amazing giveaway to celebrate a handful exciting milestones both for her blog and her facebook page. Click on the picture below to find out more!

Hey! you're out there

I was feeling a little discouraged today. I think the cloud cover and the quickly setting sun behind the cloud cover has a little to do with it. I was just going to update with a post written a few weeks ago about something non-time sensitive but has still been playing in my mind. Instead I'm writing this little ditty.

So I went into the Edit Posts option in Blogger and clicked on my lists of posts to find the draft I was thinking of and there they were. I had noticed a a few postings back that I had received a comment from Shawn Michel de Montaigne on a post called so much to do and I was pleased. No I was ecstatic, my first blog comment, Woo Hoo! Today while browsing my posts I saw more comments that have recently popped up over the last month on various postings and I've missed them until now.

I've been keeping track of the stats of my posts using Google Analytics and I know that people are visiting the site but I'm not 100% sure about what all those stats mean and how to use them. I basically look to see where my visitors are coming from and how many repeat visitors I'm getting. I also like to track the clicks on my links and photographs to see how well they are working to drive traffic to my shops. I started posting to help promote myself and my art and I realized that I really enjoy writing down my thoughts and sharing them with the world at large (or at small as the case may be)

I know people are finding me here and reading but it's hard to gauge whether I'm connecting with these readers or if I'm just typing to a large empty room, so to speak. It's so nice to finally see that there is a connection being made and to see what you think about my thoughts and posts. So to all those comments that I've missed up until this very second:

"Thank you."

Minor Revelations

So I was sitting at the Italian coffee/gelato place by my place, waiting (but not really,'cuz I didn't think anyone was going to show) for some other mom's to have coffee/tea/gelato and some chat. I was reading Douglas Copeland's Hey Nostradamus and it hit me.

Why am reading books that are physically violent to me? Well not really, books are inanimate objects and incapable of any sort of autonomous actions but I digress. Perhaps saying that "it occurred to me" would make more sense.

What occurred to me? Well every once in a while I have a moment of the most deepest and profoundest thought. Mostly these moments revolve around bologna sandwiches and the addictive nature of chocolate and caffeine. Sometimes these moments center around the most paranoid of fears and other times they are actual philosophical revelations, that stop me in my tracks for a while to think about my deeply flawed personality or is that my intense genius?


Well since I'm no genius and I'm pretty sure that my personality isn't anymore flawed than anybody else that I know of; that last statement isn't very apt either. To get to the point; I stop what I'm doing and stare off into space while I investigate the thought, trace it back to it's origin and either discard it or tuck it away for further inspection.

What was this profound thought about? bologna? chocolate? Not this time. A few posts ago I mentioned my vivid dreams. Sometimes they are so vivid that I have had moments where I've had to stop and wonder if some strange thing I'm remembering actually happened or if that was something I had dreamed about.

The same thing happens when I read. In grade three I was punished for not hearing the teacher announce the end of reading time. I was so absorbed in the book I was reading (I'm thinking it was Tolkien, but not Lord of the Rings) that I hadn't heard the teacher, hadn't noticed everyone taking out their math books and missed most of the lesson. It was an honest mistake. that teacher didn't like me for some reason, not sure why because I remember really liking her. But I digress, back to the subject.

I get so involved with the narrative, the plot, the characters in some books that I start to identify with them. In a not so much crazy out of touch with reality kind of way; these things become a part of my personal experience. I sometimes have to stop myself in a situation and separate my personal experience from those which only happened between the covers of a book.

In the case of literature, I suppose I am the ideal reader. We all hear the literacy propaganda (and I'm not saying it's bad propaganda) talking about how reading can transport you to new worlds and ideas. I'd like to think that everyone feels that way when they read a good book but I wonder if anyone has the same experience of reality twisting with narrative that I do.

As for my brilliant insight? You didn't think I was going to share my findings on the meaning of life, the universe and everything else did you? The Answer is 42, the question still remains a mystery

It soothes a savage beast

One of my all time favourite books is Nick Hornby's Song Book, in it he writes about how music affects his life, how the different songs evoke certain feelings and thoughts. He writes like an old friend telling you what's been going on for them. In one portion of the book he writes about how pop songs work as a puzzle that we have to listen to over and over in order to solve it before we can move on to another song.

With some bands the whole album becomes a puzzle; which is what's happening with Keane's new album right now. I've been playing it on repeat for two days and there seems to be no sign of flagging interest. With a new Depeche Mode album being released soon I would normally be playing old favourites in anticipation, and I'm sure that I will be soon.