the unexamined life is not worth living. and here, is where i scrutinise mine with surfeited glee.
This blog was locked up some days ago… for a couple of reasons. It just stopped giving me joy the way it used to in the past, and I wanted to know how much it would impact me if I removed it from my life entirely. Truth is, I don’t miss it all that much. That tells me that persisting in the decision will not inflict much pain on me, but I do miss the regular writing and typing exercises. And I end up with no personal space to pen my thoughts.
So I guess I’m back, for the time being.
60/250
Every few months, I find myself asking this question because obviously, I’m not a great blogger judging from the hits and I am not benefiting financially from blogging. Someone I know once said she thought only 2 kinds of persons blog – attention whores, or people who are very, very open. This may not be her exact words, but this is what I infer.
I beg to differ. Not that she’s entirely wrong; she’s just extremely narrow in defining bloggers. But, she’s entitled to her own opinion. I respect that.
Blogging does not come naturally to me. I still hesitate each time I’m about to hit the ‘Publish’ button. And I re-read every post I publish, often going back several times to edit my spelling or grammatical errors. I fear how every new post I publish reveals a little more about how inadequate or shallow a person I am. I fear how friends lurking in the shadows – reading every single post – judge me without ever revealing that they have been following my blog. I am exposing myself to the whole world yet I learn nothing of the non-bloggers who read my blog. This is not how an attention whore or an open person behaves.
Despite all those fears and discomfort, I persist. Why?
Because I blog for my soul. I love this quote ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ in part because I am trying very hard to find excuses to justify how I like scrutinising every single thing or event in my life. I’m decidedly proficient in English and a rather prolific blogger, but I’m far from being a good or engaging writer. I’m contented with the status quo because not many people I know possess equal proficiency in both English and Chinese. But languages, like many other skills, turn ‘rusty’ from lack of practice. Making sure that I will never forget how to write properly is one of the tasks I set out to achieve through blogging.
Writing soothes me, possibly more so than many other activities I equally enjoy doing. It gives me immeasurable pleasure to write and it outweighs the fears and discomforts blogging brings me. And writing helps me to focus. I am a very visual person, an extremely one at that. Seeing my thoughts visually helps me to concentrate a lot better including topics I wish to think more about.
And blogging helps me connect with important people in my life – my husband primarily. The nature of our relationship is such that we hardly can hold a conversation without getting angry with each other. This blog is one of the channels in which he gets to know me better. I hope he has, after reading my blog posts in the past few years.
Yet, if you realise it, all these aims could be achieved through writing a physical diary. I did keep diaries in my younger days. But I was becoming negative when I maintained a diary because I was venting my frustrations and anger in my entries. In comparison, I self-censor on the blog by choice. This blog chronicles my life, and I don’t want to become unhappy by reading past entries. This strategy has worked so far because I actually find it quite fun reading back.
It makes me happy to blog. I don’t dig the hedonism school of thought but there’s no harm in pursuing the intrinsic good from time to time.
24/250
It’s almost a month into 2012, and I’ve finally decided on the project I wish to embark on for this blog. I will admit, the thought of taking up a daily challenge again did cross my mind, but I know it will be mortally impossible since I would be returning to the work force very soon (hopefully sooner than later – finances are kind of running dry). And still I refused to act on it, till I missed 2 days of blogging and knew for a fact that my daily blogging project would have a blemish if I ever embarked on one. This sealed the fate of the blog for 2012. And for this year,I will be embarking on Project 250+.
250 is not as random a number as it seems. I intended to blog at least 3/4 of the whole year, and that adds up to 270 days. And then I thought about how adjusting to a new job is going to take a toll on me… so I adjusted downwards just a teeny-weeny bit. Hence the number 250. You will be seeing xx/250 at the end of every post posted in 2012 – that’s just to make counting easier, not some code.
I am likely to embark on another project for this blog, but this should be transparent to the readers, unless you like to read old posts instead of new. I am thinking of merging all my previous blogs onto this. That’s a lot of work to do, and I’m not even sure if I can locate some of the pictures anymore. Because it’s almost 6 years’ worth of blog posts, I think I shall just concentrate on migrating posts from my very first 2 blogs.
What about you, my friend? Have you decided on a 2012 project for your blog?
20/250
Honestly, if I had know that the fantastic folks at WordPress.com was going to prepare such an awesome report, I wouldn’t have wasted time writing the blog post on the last day 0f 2011. ’Tis the reason why I moved over to WordPress from 2006 and never looked back since.
This report threw up some surprises, like how most people were directed to my blog when they searched for local restaurant reviews. I hope my reviews have been useful in this respect because a local food blogger has totally lost my respect when I patronised a few of the restaurants she recommended and found that they were nothing like what she blogged about. My advice to you folks out there who are depending on food bloggers for reviews, especially in Singapore, never ever trust bloggers who accept invitations from restaurants or eateries to dine for free in return for blog reviews. Discernment is good, and I ignored mine because I respected them. Not so anymore.
Click on the link and read on if you are interested.
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
5/250
And today, my dear friends, is the final day of the 2011 Daily Post Challenge. Exactly a year ago, I made the commitment to post every single day. And today, I am proud to announce that I have completed my part of the pact. And a total of 387 posts to boot!
It hasn’t been smooth sailing throughout. In fact, there have been several occasions where I almost wanted to throw in the white towel. It’s not easy to stay on this commitment, and I’m not sure if I want to commit myself again for 2012. Perhaps not, considering how horrible some of my posts were. You know, I would rather not blog when I don’t feel inspired.
Since the topic is about 2011 in Review on c a d e n c i e s, here’s some of the more notable blog posts:
The Busiest Day – on 4 April 2011 with Weekly Photo Challenge: Light. It actually came as a surprise to me that this post would end up contributing to the busiest day on my blog because it was a very unassuming post and I wasn’t even trying to impress. Perhaps this is a sign that I should not try too hard.
Post with Most Comments - The Need. I think this was the first (and maybe only) time I whined about daily blogging on the blog, and the influx of comments (not that many, actually) encouraging me was so touching I swore never to whine about it again.
Post Most Favourited - it’s a tie between Weekly Photo Challenge: Sunset and Weekly Photo Challenge: Possibility. Incidentally both posts are photo-centric. Only goes to show that I take better pictures than write. That is not to say that I take awesome pictures. Still a long way to go.
My Favourite Post – this took a while because I went through all my posts in detail before deciding on my favourite. And with the internet connection I’m getting here in Prague… I could have finished applying several facial masks and then some. At this point, the honour goes to Redefine Perfectionism.
My Favourite Post on Sugar – has to be Sugar and Spice. This post always brings a smile to my face whenever I read it.
Most Meaningful Post – it’s a tie between Reaching for the Stars and No Problem Too Big. The former because it is a philosophy I live by and the latter because I try to remember these quotes when things are not going the way I wish they would.
Funniest Post – A ‘Knight’ in Distress. It was a really funny incident. Even funnier coming home to two dogs who were not locked in behaving like they were the ones being locked in.
My Favourite Childhood Story - definitely Life Lessons from Daddy. I love my cool Daddy, but only when he isn’t nagging at me.
My Favourite Series – definitely my series of childhood stories. Being a mischievous child as I was, I have no lack of stories to share. Just need to sit down quietly and organise some of the stories in my head.
The Series I Would Like to Pay More Attention to – air traffic control. I think this topic fascinates a lot of readers. And I actually enjoyed recounting some of the past experiences I had as a controller.
Series of Posts that Died a Natural Death – plantarium. They just kind of died from neglect (my bad, I know but I did say that I do not have a green thumb). I only hope those that I gifted the kit to had better luck with their projects.
Personally, many things happened in 2011 – I got myself baptised as a Roman Catholic, left my job in May for a year, lost Sugar, survived 2 months without the hubby and travelled on my own. Some of them were significant milestones I thought I could never achieve, but I did. However, I did not manage to get this blog profiled on Freshly Pressed. Yup, that was like my secret wish because getting Freshly Pressed is like getting a stamp of endorsement that my blog is worth something. Then again, I also worried about not being able to handle the attention should that happen. ’Everything happens for a reason’ or rather in this case… ‘did not happen for a reason’. I guess I’m not ready and it shows in the posts.
I was totally being myself on this blog – bimbotic, erratic, neurotic and eccentric – although I have to admit that towards the earlier part of the year, I tried to suppress some of those characteristics. Oh, but once the tedium of daily blogging set in, my true colors emerged, didn’t they?
Thank you, my dear friends, old and new, for being with me throughout the past year. And to my blogging buddies, I have this much to say… We did it!
Unfortunately, I don’t think I am up to another year of daily blogging. Yet weekly blogging is not frequent enough for my liking, so I am finding middle ground – how about twice weekly or more?
I really liked this picture. Could you find the cat in it? It took me about 45 seconds, and after you’ve spotted it, there’s no way you could ever miss it again.
Just back from the Japan trip and I prepared just enough posts to last me till yesterday, thus explaining why today’s post is so late. It’ll take me a while to settle down into things, but do check back daily. I’m not giving up on the challenge. Not at this point.
The tedium of daily blogging spells a new high for me, of late. This challenge has long stopped working its magic on me, but I pushed on because I made a personal conviction to see it through the year. My posts have been half-hearted, and it shows in the blog statistics and number of comments. People do stop dropping by when my posts start giving out the vibe that I would rather be doing something else with my time.
I admit that my heart is often not so much on blogging for enjoyment, but blogging to ensure that I have a post published every single day. You know… so that I don’t ‘dirty’ my perfect record. While I didn’t set out to be the most popular or effervescent blogger around the block when I first started, everyone needs a pat on the shoulder at times. To this, I am thankful for a couple of very supportive blogger-friends who are still reading my blog although I have long stopped reading other blogs, and only sporadically reading some of them.
And the blame game begins. I blame people and incidents for this change – Sugar’s passing took me some time to get used to, and then the hubby being away for a month also took some getting used to, he coming back meant that I should spend more time with him than on the Mac, and now that he is going to be away for another month again… meant that I should be sucked back in the vicious cycle any time.
At the end of the day, I’m not so much an imbecile to not recognise that I’m just giving myself endless excuses to justify my sloth and inaptitude in adjusting to changes.
This mind game I play with myself must stop! Today!
A Daily Post inspired post – Do you blog anonymously or as yourself? Why?
My simple answer is – I blog as myself because I find it too tiring to pretend to be, or not to be the person that I am. I’m bound to let slip one day.
Ultimately I blog because this is the way I communicate my thoughts to my husband. Well, kind of. I don’t do very well with face-to-face conversations, and I always end up sounding really dumb. I blame it on my introverted self who requires time to process thoughts; at least more time than most other people.
It’s not that I don’t talk with my husband. It’s just that, when we are home together, we are always busy doing our own stuff we actually spend very little quality time together. This is one of the main reasons why I like travelling with him so much – there are no other distractions like the TV or Championship Manager.
I don’t open up my blog address to all my friends, only to some very close friends whom I know will not judge me harshly because there will be days when I blog about topics that may offend them. In particular, I refrain from mentioning anything about my blog on my Facebook account because I blog about very personal things sometimes, and let’s just say that I’m not on that close terms with all my Facebook friends. If that isn’t a sure sign that I blog as myself, I don’t know what is.
I’m fine with a low readership on this blog because my objective in blogging is very clear. It was never to become the most popular blogger. I’m contented enough to have some friends reading regularly, and making some good blogging friends who find my posts sometimes worth reading.
Hello daddy!
Paris jie-jie and I have been groomed and
We now smell very good!
We are eagerly waiting for your return.
We missed you very much!
P/S. Paris jie-jie is having one of her ‘moments’ again.
Mummy said to ignore her, because she hates the camera.
XOXO,
Chen Belle-Belle
And oh, this is apparently my 234th post. Wicked!
What do you want to accomplish with your blog?
Bonus: Many blogs I see never explain to readers what the goal for the blog is, which makes it hard for people who stop by to know if they should come back. Write a post about your 3 goals for the blog, who you think the readers are, and what you’re offering them in terms of topics or themes. Then take a much shorter list of your goals, and include it in a sidebar widget.
This was the topic of the day on The Daily Post.
I’ve written in my “About” page as to why I’m maintaining this blog – it’s my personal space and I write just about anything and everything under the sun if I deem fit. I’m not answering this topic because I feel that there is a need to, but that it is an apt juncture to consolidate and decide on the future direction of this blog.
I maintain 2 other separate blogs – one for travel and another for my baking experiments. This blog solely serves as my personal journal of sorts, so I don’t give much thought to the contents of the blog. In retrospect, was there something I wish to accomplish with my blog?
And to a much lesser extent, blogging has become a habit for the past 7 years. And habits, as they always are, are hard to kick. So I won’t lie and say that I blog to achieve some selfless higher purpose. I blog for myself. Getting to know and interact with other bloggers (of diverse nationalities, may I add!) in the process is a pleasant bonus I weren’t expecting.
Oh, did I answer the question?!
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