Monday, September 24, 2007

Okay. More than two months since my last post. I think one of the things I dislike about blogging is that it isn't interactive enough. My life isn't exciting enough, and my thoughts and insights are not profound enough, to justify sitting here putting them out into blogland as if the fate of the Nation rested on my shoulders.

I enjoy feedback, dialogue. I like being told something I said in a website was smart, or outrageously funny... heck, I even get a kick out of a good fight once in a while!

That just doesn't happen in a blog. It's a monologue that gets thrown out into cyberspace in a perennial echo... and for all I can tell doesn't make a spit bit of difference anywhere, to anyone.

So - what is happening in my life the past two months?

Early August, I fell getting out of the bathtub. My left foot hit the linoleum and just k-e-p-t o-n g-o-w-i-n-g.... Honey, I couldn't do splits as a preschooler! Let's just say it wasn't a pretty sight - and for the life of me, I couldn't get my right foot off the floor of the bathtub! The scary thing was when I felt something rip (and heard it too - that is ONE GROSS SOUND) and I realized the phone was half way down the other end of the house and I was completely and totally alone. But I was able to eventually pull my right foot out of the tub, stand up and hobble off to bed. Then I got out of bed, went to the kitchen, got an ice pack out of the freezer, too the last of my post-oral-surgery hydrocodone and went back to bed. I was able to sleep, and a friend helped me look up on the internet and verify that I had a pulled hamstring...

The next day, Saturday, I went to housesit for friends going out of town. Steps going in to the house from every door. Steps up to the showers and bedrooms. My knees took a beating, compensating for the hamstring injury. I'm still recovering from that.

I have a couple of photos from the Eucharistic Congress in Charlotte, which was this past weekend. That was a real treat - I sang with the combined choir on Friday night, had a solo in the dona nobis pacem of the Mozart Coronation Mass - a very nice experience overall.

Got to see and meet Father Benedict Groeschel - he was the Friday night speaker, talked about Eucharistic Adoration. When I download his photo I'll post more about his talk.

I'm not singing with the Master Chorale this season, but decided to try to cultivate a local social outlet so am singing with our local county choral society. The music is not nearly of the same calibre (that will be another post - I had to pick a horrible year NOT to sing with the NCMC) - but again, it's a local group and will give me an opportunity to meet people in my own community. I need that.

Okay - Josh, if you pop back in, I'm back LOL - God bless you, dear friend! and bless you in your seminary studies.

2 comments:

William Eunice said...

I read your blog on occasion :)

I have been blogging for about 2.5 years with little or no fanfare. It doesn't bug me all that much. Occasionally though I manage to get tons of traffic. The following posts did it for me.

1. I am from Louisiana and I made a post about Hurricane Katrina the day afterwards that ended up getting picked up by a popular political web site.
2. I made a criticism of homeschooling. I had several hundred people look at that post.
3. I stirred the hornets nest regarding Regnum Christi and ReGAIN. I don't recommend that. Not much dialog from that crowd. Mostly long screeds that are time consuming to respond to and boring to read.
4. Thankfully someone in Louisiana started a blog where he summarizes the Louisiana Catholic blogs every day. I get most of my traffic through that now.
5. Our most recent birth story has generated a lot of traffic as well.

What do these have in common? I have no clue. I don't want you to get discouraged by not having much feedback. Feedback is a function of traffic and with a blog you can better control your traffic. How? Mostly commenting on others blogs. I have learned that when I take the time to post a few comments on others blogs they visit. They link and that gets you more traffic of they type you want. Honestly you are best to pick high traffic blogs that get a few comments instead of ones that regularly generate hundreds of comments daily. They key is nurturing relationships with people whose feedback you are most interested in. People like to know you are interested in what they have to say.

Also if you are looking specifically for more traffic of a more general nature I recommend doing a Catholic Carnival post.

Elisabeth said...

William Eunice - I am grateful for your comment, and your encouragement. God bless you!