Professional amateur or amateur professional?

I have been thinking about the point of this blog recently, ever since I browsed a book about blogging last week. The book, Blogging for Creatives by Robin Houghton, had lots of tips and ideas for making a really comprehensive blog that marketed yourself as a brand. That got me wondering if that was my desire for this blog. Did I want to turn this into something very businesslike and make it a self-promotion tool? Or am I content creating a (hopefully) well-edited, but quick, basic and personal journal that happens to be on the web? For the time being, I have decided on the latter. I greatly appreciate anyone who chooses to read my posts (and I like seeing the stats creep slowly up), but I don't feel the need to court subscribers and guest writers or stick to a theme or have a purpose. The one tip I did take from the book was that adding images to posts makes them more attractive. So, when I can I will try to include a picture with a post to break up the text. I've never done it and I can't think of a relevant picture for this post, but I'll have a go anyway.

My cat, perhaps the most professional amateur ever.

Two boosts to morale

There has been a very unsettled feeling at work for the past week. I don't know that the students have picked up on it, but the office staff and teachers have been keeping to themselves. It all started when a teacher was dismissed, seemingly without warning, last week and asked to leave campus that same afternoon. A brief, generic email statement was the only notification we got. Today I stumbled, almost literally, onto two good cures for low morale. First, I was walking through the back hall to the office to pick up a print. I went past the film studio, dodged a student, turned into the connecting corridor that leads to the backdoor of the copier room and almost bumped into a student in his jocks. He glanced at me and laughed, I covered my eyes and kept walking, then had a laugh about our crazy workplace with one of the office ladies. Second, I opened the pack of snakes from the bottom desk drawer. Maybe it's the sugar buzz, or the sweetness, or the silliness of sitting in a library in a college eating a gummy snake, but it helped lighten the mood.

Something nice

I've decided to try and do something nice for the Earth everyday for a week. I suspect they'll probably also end up being healthy for me too, an added bonus. This week is inspired by riding home on my bike last night and trying to distract myself from the cold by thinking, which started with wondering why I was riding in the cold. Also, some of the ideas and inspiration comes from Michael Pollan's In Defence of Food. So yesterday's good deed was riding to work on a hand-me-down bike. Today I'm getting our week's fruit and veggies from a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program. Tomorrow I plan to have only one computer turned on at a time, which means making sure my home computer is off before I go to work, then turning off my work laptop before using the desktop computer. Thursday will be public transport day. Friday will be meat-free and, if I can manage it, packaging free. Saturday we're having people over so we've planned classic (electricity-free) games and   homemade food. Sunday we will probably eat leftovers and garden. I'll see if I can think of anything more inspiring to add to the weekend. Hopefully by writing this down I'll stick to it all week (the anonymous internet will hold me accountable).

Long distance help

My grandmother had a serious fall recently and is bed-ridden, unable to eat properly and shaken up by the experience. I want to help, but I live too far away to visit or make her smoothies. So I was thinking: what could I do, what have I got to offer at a distance that is uniquely mine, meaningful and helpful? I realised she might be feeling bored some of the time, especially in the evening when people are done visiting for the day. My plan is to send her links to interesting websites that I find (not just LOL cats, she knows where those are) and stories I've written. I will offer entertainment from across the sea. If she doesn't like my stories, she can edit them or whinge about them, which possibly has as much value as her mindlessly taking them in. I sent the first instalment last night, now I'll wait and see if she like the idea too.

Online world is for sick people

I've been sick for a few weeks and now that I'm on antibiotics I'm feeling worse than I did when I was sick.  However, I realised something positive about the internet and its lack of direct, personal contact. I can talk to lots of people without spreading germs. It takes less physical energy to keep up-to-date with friends, do the weekly shopping (which I haven't done online yet because I'm not that far gone) and watch a movie if you do it via the internet. Also through the wonders of the internet it's not as boring being sick nowadays, I think. There's access to endless amounts of reading and viewing in all genres at all times of the day. And, like this moment, when I don't feel like reading or viewing because my brain is functioning fairly well because I haven't taken any medication yet, I can write!

Tribute to my grandmother

I'm missing my grandmother tonight. It's the strangest, most random things that make me think of her. At work when I hear the room deodoriser puff, it reminds me of the automatic bug repellent dispenser my grandmother had over her kitchen counter. Although she died in her mid-nineties of 'natural causes', the sound still makes me wonder about cancer rates from ingesting bug spray with food. When I hear someone give a command to a dog, I immediately picture her keeping my dad and uncles, her horses and dogs, and us grandkids in line with a sharp, Victorian-era schoolmarm reprimand. Realising I'd spent most of today staring at a computer then a television screen made me miss the feel of the thick stationary I would have used to write to her. Then that makes me think of her satiny soft hands holding my letters as she reads them. It's made my winter night cosier to spend time with her in memory.

Two sides of terrible

One: a young woman in my writing class shared the first chapter of her novel with us – terrible (in my humble opinion). I think bad writing is something most people instinctively recognise like bad singing or bad coffee. It might have been redeemed had it had plot rather than characters ('Mary Sue's to be precise) running around doing drugs and engaging in meaningless sex; it could have been more readable if there some 'show' amongst all the 'tell'; maybe if the sentences had been in a consistent tense I would have found something nice to say. It failed all these tests. But my point is: she, the young author, probably didn't think it was terrible. She is very enthusiastic and passionate when she talks about books and writing. This work did not seem representative of her – completely unlikable work from a very likeable person. (I don't know that I knew right away that my first attempt at a novel was terrible, but I didn't show it to too many people so maybe I had an inkling. Now I know it is and it will stay safely in my writing box.)

Two: I've been feeling sick for a few weeks. It started out low-level, but has ramped up in the past week. I keep wondering if I'm in terrible pain or just moderate or everyday pain. I don't think it's too unbearable, but to someone else (my doctor when he asks, for example) it might feel more or less severe. The really shitty thing about this pain is that it's sucked my empathy for my students' issues (and beginning writers, you might argue), and it's drained my energy and creativity so that I'm not much more than a roommate to my husband at the moment. Part of me wants it to hurry up and go away, but then I wouldn't know the cause; and part of me knows I need it to last long enough that they can find the issue, then fix it. Terrible.