I was an errant equivocator today. Instead of writing I dilly dallied and delayed writing this post and other pieces while I contemplated moving this blog to triplebottomtimes.com (Don’t ask!) I even created a header for it.
But then as I usually do I quit doubting myself and the wonderful name I have here at reason creek. I just needed to make it look more bloggy and less corporate site-ish.
I used a couple images from the National Archives, one from sxc.hu and another from morguefiles.com, a few more images were from a recently rediscovered commercial set of clip art images that Hubby purchased for me a few years ago. Some of these I had to crop, add a border or remove a background, and in one case overlap a tiny image to make a long ribbon. Two were from a free digital scrapbook kit I downloaded when I was searching for backgrounds before I decided to just to it myself. I did some fill in with textures I had previously made from scratch or by just using my drawing program’s brushes as stamps.
Pretty good for a first attempt at a blog background don’t you think?
My Nuts and Bolts Infrastructure for a Research and Content Business
Do you ever get caught in a vortex? I do. Perhaps it comes from living in Arizona, but then again, I don’t live anywhere near Sedona, which as everyone knows is Vortex Central. Too many things to do, too many things coming at me, too many decisions to make about too many choices. Clients, book, blog– those are my real priorities. But all of these core areas of my life require me to do research – Everything Requires Research – and putting all these things together into a reasonable and sustainable form of work in the current world that requires that people like me be writers, graphic designers, marketing pro, and publisher. Arggghhhhh! Okay. I feel better now.
With the rate of information creation and flow reaching near singularity– inducing levels I sometimes feel like I will implode and fall in on myself. Friends and he blogging and e-business meet-up guru, Pablo, mentions this evolutionary likelihood every time I attend the monthly Meet Up. I also try to keep up with several streams of incoming information from (and I’m mixing apples and oranges here) BlogHer, Twitter, Facebook, Peace and Justice networks, Media Bistro, and a few feed readers that seem to find different information in different ways about the very same subjects.
I’m starting to get a handle on what I need to do to be successful, and if I stay focused, everything will fall into place this year. I have done my research, found my passion, know my limits, built and am continuing to build a great network.
So what I have put together thus far:
- Two new websites/blogs that target my business specifically, and the throughput for that business. While they are separate, they are complementary. Hill Research Services is the business and where I sell me and my creations. Reason Creek is the new, and one would hope, last, attempt to create a place for my writing.
- I have either imported or am in the process of importing most of my blogs posts from my various, and yes, sundry, blogs that I have had over the years.
- Build Peace, Late Boomers, Done Nesting, Cuppakona (from Geocities), Wildflower Woods (a Gene Stratton Porter blog) a
- and even a few from blogs that never really got off the ground such as Things in the Attic, and Casita Gaia
- then there are also a few things that were created for short term “runs” on Brazen Hussies.
- oh and there are my Second Life blogs
- my blog and my site on medical child abuse for adult survivors of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy
And I haven’t even gotten to my poetry or the subject essays I had on the old Geocities site.
I have settled on using themes from Elegant Themes. I love the newest themes there! The designs vary, there are new themes or templates and revisions of older ones being regularly released. I am using HostGator for hosting multiple accounts (use coupon code upacreekmarch2012 to get 25% off a basic account).
Now I just have to keep at it and put info on my older sites about these and get readers to transfer – that is the part I’m worried about.
As soon as everything on the site looks pretty, and works and plays well together, I will blast myself all over social media networks (twitter, linked in, facebook, pinterest, and on and on…) in a likeable, unobtrusive, curiosity inducing and semantic web friendly way. Wish me luck on that one!
What have I forgotten? Seriously, what do you see that I am missing? Leave a comment and let me know!
Fallopitarians, Universalists, and Revisionist American Religious History
I think my husband stumbled across a new term that I like. Fallopitarian. It comes from one of SlowPoke’s editorial cartoons. Seems that surreal absurdist argument is the only thing that comes close to describing the mental state of a small rather extreme group of patriarchal folks who really believe that they are better, more deserving, and closer to God than the rest of us, especially those of us who look different from them – any white, Godly, male who has been “chosen” to have wealth in this life to them is obviously better, purer, and far more deserving than others.
Reminds me of power hungry men throughout history both recent and ancient.
Militaristic men usurped the movement that was a small revolutionary sect of Jews who followed the teaching of a man who assaulted the money changers and was tortured to death a short time later who met in widowed women’s homes, and lived to teach an egalitarian message of love. Constantine brought Christianity to Roman Empire and the Council of Nicea expunged all texts that did not support the views that would solidify their positions of power. Political and religious rule came down through the ranks of men to the lowly peasants who if they were good would get a chance at a life without suffering, illness and hunger in another life. The feudal system arose and co-existed within the Holy Roman Empire and continued past the Reformation until royals in Europe bumped heads, occasionally losing theirs, with the Industrial Revolution that expanded the Guild structure of Middle Ages that was the beginning of the European Middle Class.
That in a nutshell was what I was taught by my father who as far as I can tell learned it from his Grandfather who was a Universalist and a minister in an Anabaptist-leaning Christian denomination. My personal belief structure is just as valid as any one else’s belief structure. While the “haves” in the current socio-political structure would like to think of the Agrarian population of the 1800s were bumpkins, and uneducated rednecks. But this is far from the reality of the valued placed on education and what served as a basic education in the primarily agrarian America of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Take a look at any of the reader series that were used as texts up until the early 20th Century and see what a minimally educated person was expected to know and be capable of doing.
Beliefs about the existence and nature of the soul and when it enters the body varies from culture to culture. This is not at all set in stone around the world. I have my belief and that is that the unique energy that each of us possesses becomes associated with our physical bodies at different times for different individuals. I also think that it leaves us at different times.
Why is this religious belief being given political clout? Our democratic republic is supposed to allow belief to stay belief and not taint our legislative processes.
Not Quite Success, But NOT Failure
Trying. I’ve been trying… It has been trying. And I am tired, but happy.
Lots and lots of life events in the last few months Important visit from the East Coast family branch was of major importance. My daughter graduated from college and I helped her move across country. I also visited family and the area in which I grew up for the first time since my mother’s death. Now my hubby and I are negotiating the new rules for the empty nest. So in keeping with my usual modus operandi of trying to do too many things at a time, I decided to participate in the February Nablopomo challenge on BlogHer. I wrote some good pieces but didn’t make the whole month challenge. My hosting company troubles ate up my “buffer” posts I’d stored up. Then taxes and converting our personal finance tracking software to a different platform did in the blog challenge. But our taxes are filed, and that is a good thing.
I write a lot, but I write in so many different places, I don’t think I can showcase my writing to its best advantage because it is so dispersed.
I tried having all my blogs be scraped and posted to my business site, but with Google penalizing multiply posted content, I don’t think that is such a good idea. This added to the dormant state of some of my blogs that makes me question whether it is worth my time to post new posts when I have new ideas to those that do not have an active, current readership. Plus the posting of personal blog posts on my business site just did not seem like a good idea, and I ended up censoring content I really wanted to share.
So I’m back in the search for how to blog my multiple passions, showcase all my writing, and still maintain some professional polish for my business.
I’ll keep you posted on what I figure out. How do you balance and present your different voices.
I Have a Say and I Participated
I posted a short personal video as part of ProChoice America’s I HAVE A SAY campaign to send videos about what birth control means to individual women to anti-choice legislators.
You can participate too. Just make a video on your computer. Upload it to You Tube and include the words, “I have a say” as well as your name (I just used my first name) and city (or state) in the title. Then go to the Coalition to Protect Women’s Health and fill out the form to include the video as part of “Share Your Story: I Have A Say.”