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thepauser

~ “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren)

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Tag Archives: blogging

pauseRReport: Year One

31 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Creativity, Education, Goals, Social Media, Writing

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

blogging, creative writing, Education, social media, writing

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

At home, examining the light.  A description that fits for the last year.

The Pauser marked its one year anniversary just a few days ago, and I feel like celebrating!  Here are the big lessons I’ve learned this year:

  • Digital, schmidgital! People make social media interesting.  I have enjoyed the personal connections I’ve made more than any other aspect of blogging.  While my virtual relationships are not the same as those real-world, on-the-ground ones, the generosity, kindness, and encouragement you all have shown me has helped me grow, and to heal hurts that I hadn’t even been aware of.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.
  • Starting a blog was not that hard. I still don’t have the “bells and whistles,” skills my children have, but I can drive the boat.  Blogging is a testament to life being doable.  In year two, it’s time to learn at least one bell/whistle.
  • Blogging is a measuring tool. When I look back at some of my early writing, I can envision ways to make the writing more effective than it was then.  I also look back at some of the writing I did about my husband’s journey with prostate cancer and I think about the way the writing helped me to achieve some emotional closure.  Because I flung my words out into the universe, they became a kind of commitment to my soul, something I had to go back to when the downs came calling.  Those words, once spooled out, became a permanent record of all I have felt, all I have achieved, all I have hoped.
  • I’ve been fairly consistent with my posting, but I have learned that sometimes I just can’t keep up.  I’ve also learned not to worry about it.  The earth won’t stop spinning on its axis if I go a couple of weeks without a post.

Year One STATISTICS

Blog Posts: 86

Blog Views: 3027

Total Comments: 293 (Half of these are mine, because I always reply to comments. I’m Southern.)

Followers: 117

Top Three Posts:

# 3  Daily Discomfort: Frozen

# 2   Daily Discomfort: Love and Time

# 1  Daily Discomfort: Getting A Pedicure

The post with the most comments:

 DD: Mozart and the Beautiful Tears

Up Next:

EPSON MFP image

My editorial calendar for the year: It will probably change, but at least I’ve got a plan.

For year 2, I’ve changed the editorial calendar a bit.

Each week I’ll write a feature article based on a monthly theme.  I’ll also write once a week from a prompt I generate in a new way each month.  Each month, I’ll write an article for the paus(ed) category based on how to use that prompt generation in the classroom.

In September, I’m writing about the New Guard.  You know, my kids and their kids.  I have just learned from NPR that I am of the Old Guard.  I (and apparently many of you) am classified as the Old Guard because I am are still using Twitter.

I’ll also write from a series of prompts generated by my Personal Universal Desk.  It’s a cool tool.  I’ll write about how it works so you can use it too if you want. I’ll also write about how to use the PUD(makes me feel good just to put it into writing) in your classroom.

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pauseRReport: June 2015

30 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Writing, Writng Process

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

blogging, Blogs I like, writing, Writing Process, writing skills

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

Summer Talk: A Sneak Peek

I didn’t think I’d be able to write this week, but the coastal sun has driven us indoors for a few hours and I find myself with an opportunity to write. Yay!

June has been a great month here on thepauser. Again, the site has seen slow, steady growth, and I’ve noticed that posts are getting more comments, especially on this month’s most popular posts, The Red Bowl, and Larger than Myself?: A Riff on Inspiration. Overall, I feel much more comfortable in the blogesphere than I did when I started ten months ago.

Reflections:

  • My writing feels like it’s undergoing a sea change. For the first few months, it was a struggle to meet my internal deadlines, and there wasn’t much revision in the mix. I wrote, edited (checked everything for spelling and grammar mistakes) and posted. I’m not sure why, but now I feel comfortable holding off on a post for a couple of days after writing.  Sometimes I go all James Joyce on my first draft, knowing that I’m coming back to it. I’ve been able to pluck some gems out of that loose way of drafting.  It feels like I’m maturing as a writer.
  • Ten months ago, I thought this blog would be focused on my exploration of social media, but that really hasn’t been the case. Since I promised myself this blog would be a place to explore discomfort, I haven’t been pushing the boundaries enough. I need to return to some of the topics I’ve let drop. I fully intended to learn some html, and what pingback and trackback mean.
  • I’d also like to explore how social media has changed the way we respond to and think about important world events. I know that others have used their blogs as vehicles for voicing their opinions on society’s concerns, but I don’t know how I feel about using this blog as a platform. I need to reflect on it.
  • I’ve started to think about SEO this month.  Here’s why. I wrote a post months ago called Getting a Pedicure.  I don’t think it’s particularly good or even characteristic of the writing I’ve done, but every single week somebody reads this post.  The only thing I can think of is that the word pedicure is in the title and people see it in the search engine when they look for a place to get a pedicure.

Blogs I’ve enjoyed in the month of June:

Aunt Beulah: Parading Season

Bones Don’t Lie: Let’s Talk About Death (This chart is something a teacher could use to discuss the interrelationships between science and popular culture)

The Carter Library: Trying On Swimsuits with Miss Kentucky

In Other’s Words: Tiny Little Girl

The World Is A Book: 5 Photos, 5 Stories, Bill the Photographer (Amy is an amazing photographer, and this story is not to be missed)

Next Month:

In July, look for Summer Talk, a series of posts dedicated to the days of laze.  I’ll write about that metallic cup you used to drink iced tea and cherry kool-aid out of.  And the taxi ride you took with that interesting driver when you were on vacation, and the conversation you overheard while watching the boys of summer chase fly balls all over the outfield.  And the cool sensation of sticking your hot feet into water.

pauseRReport, May 2015: One Hundred and Six

01 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Reflection, Writing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

bloggers, blogging, pauserreport, writing

Great news!  I now have 106 followers.  In last month’s pauseRReport, I said I’d be happy if I had 100 by the end of August.  I’m so grateful for your support and encouragement.  I said in one of my posts this month that the time and space to write has been the greatest gift I’ve ever been given, and you all have really made that possible.  Every time I think about giving up, one of you “likes” a post, or comments on it in such a way that makes me keep trying.

My reflections for the month of May:

  • I’ve been working on my photography, because I know my posts need to have visual interest. I had a lot of fun playing with the aperture and shutter speeds on my Samsung when we visited Oakland for my son-in-law’s graduation.  I’ll be sharing more of those pictures with you soon.  A photography class is probably also in my near future.
  • As much as I want to be a better planner, to find focus in my work (as all the blogging experts advise), it feels better to relax and let it happen. Here’s a picture of my editorial calendar.  It’s simple, but adequate for now.

IMG_0810

My favorite blog posts in May:

  • 2 Helpful Guys: 4 Productivity Principles Everyone Should Know
  • Charlotte Hoather: Sir John in Love – In Pictures
  • In Other’s Words: Songs from the Valley
  • Life Lessons, a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown: Clouded
  • Windmills of the Mind: On Public Shaming, call-out culture, and Humiliation as a sport

Coming In June

In June, I’ll write about inspiration, continuing the series I started last week based on other blogs that have inspired me.

I also have a goal to revamp my “About,” page.  Thepauser is not really about what I thought it was about when I wrote my about page the first time.

I hope all of you are in a safe, dry spot with people who treat you right.

j

The Leap

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Decision Making, Essay, Personal Essay, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

blogging, Geronimo, Leap, Life-Changes, writing, Writing life

For the next few weeks I’m writing some posts inspired by the wonderful blog posts I’ve read in the last six weeks. About a year ago, I acted against type and made a huge change.  I’ve been reflecting on this decision a great deal after reading Geronimo: On Falling with Style from Lily at Such Small Hands.

For empty lakes, come storms.

For empty lakes, storms…

I quit my full time job.  Now I work part time at an interesting, fulfilling job and the rest of the time I devote to writing.  I work on my blog, and I’m also writing a novel.   I know that quitting your job to do other things may not sound like much of a leap, but it felt like a nighttime dive into Medina Lake, in which the depth ranged from iffy to barely adequate.  I was ninety percent sure I’d break my blooming neck.

I took a personality test once, and I got an “A.” When I looked at my results, I pumped a mental fist in the air.  I don’t like to get “B’s.”  That’s who I am.  My velocity has always been fifth gear. Until I made the leap, I was a stereotypical overachiever.  I made lists, and lists of lists.  I’d rather have a nasty zit than turn up late.  I bashed my way through parenthood, marriage, teaching, graduate school, and community responsibilities with the headlong purpose of one of those bulls in Pamplona.  I wasn’t always sure of my direction, but I headed somewhere, hard.

In the midst of charging toward each destination, I was already contemplating my next pilgrimage. I lived, not in the moment, but in the next moment.  And the moment after that.  For most of my life, I had the impression that being a good person meant working very hard and taking on large amounts of responsibility.  For me, restful equaled stressful, because good people are not supposed to enjoy relaxing.

This is the type of faulty thinking that starts in the tangled webs of childhood and can’t be laid on anyone else’s door but your own.  What I’m saying is don’t blame my mother, because we all generate our own excrement.

I can’t say exactly when the Gospel of the Churning Gut started to lose its appeal.  However, the need for change really became clear when Super Husband was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.  Cancer was the bull that gored me.  After a lifetime of making my own life hard, something truly nasty had charged through the alley.  My natural ferocity in dealing with life events, I knew, would afford no advantage.  I started to realize that other aspects of my life were equally out of my control.  I worked long hours, and spent a good part of my day with angry people. Those people were often angry with me.  I had trouble sleeping, and found myself sitting in my office with the lights off at least once a week, praying no one would see I was in there, begging for the shit storm to pass me by for just fifteen minutes.

I’d toyed with the idea of changing jobs before, but now I thought about stopping.  In January of 2014, I mentioned my idea to SH.  “I’ve been thinking about quitting my job.  I could work part time for a year, or not work at all.”  He surprised me by saying it was about time, and he’d be perfectly happy if I quit.  The rest of my family was equally supportive. I turned my resignation in two weeks later, effective the end of the school year.

My family was honest, I’m sure, but I don’t know if they understand how grateful I was for their sensitivity. If one of them had said anything to indicate that I was imagining the pressure at work, or dramatizing it, or that my income was critical to the family’s well-being, I don’t know if I would have been strong enough to quit.  I’d worked hard to get that job. I made good money.  People looked to me to get critical, important work done.  My ego was tied up in being a faithful employee.

Leaving after seventeen years was an admission that I had failed, that I could no longer rise above my current circumstances.  The wrenches: telling my boss, “I’m not happy,” writing the resignation letter, the two line response to that resignation, packing up my red and white enameled desk, thinking about how to make my home into a workplace, the child who said I was the only reason he made it to high school.  Parting was hard like an arm is hard when it hits the ground and breaks.

In just a couple of weeks, I’ll have been on my “pause,” for a year.  When I quit last May, I expected to return to the charge in the 2015-16 school year.  I thought if I could just disengage for a while, I’d be ready to return to the frenetic pace of my former life.  Now, I don’t know if I will ever be a charger again.  I haven’t changed a lot, but I’ve changed enough.  Enough to be happy, mostly.

I’ve been too glib about this leap, in my interactions with people, and here on thepauser.  In periods of time when I’m not working, I am home.  I have to sit in the stew that is Joni.  Total freedom is hard.  Instead of setting goals I can seldom reach (pre-Leap Joni), I just don’t set any.  It should feel freeing, but honestly, it feels slothful.  My internal timer, the one that rushed me out the door so I’d never be late, has blinked out on me.  Sometimes I fail to properly hydrate.  Or stop watching Netflix, or wash my hair every day.  I read poorly written literature.  In the car I listen to the Blue Collar Comedy Channel and switch to NPR when someone is riding with me. Occasionally I eat only slices of sharp cheddar cheese for lunch. I don’t jump on the treadmill every day. For an “A,” there are no small sins.

I have to constantly remind myself that I’m good enough, just the way I am. That everything doesn’t have to happen in a hurry.  I’m relearning the art of walking in my own humanity.  In my driven way, I thought it would take less time than it has. But in this pause, I’ve learned that I can only do so much of the driving.  Sometimes you have to let go and trust.

I’ve also learned about this space, here, on the page.  I have always written, but not with the regularity that I have in the last year.  I’m forty pages into a novel, and this is my seventy-fourth post since the inception of my blog on August 28,2014.  Time and space to write is the greatest single gift that anyone has ever given me. I needed this space, here, on this page and all the others, to internalize the quietude my soul so badly needed. I will not relinquish my balance again without a fight, and tapping on the keyboard at two in the morning has afforded me the courage to state so.

I have not made my last Leap.  The next, like all of the others before it, will be as terrifying as the last.  But in my next leap, I’ll have a sharpened number 2 Ticonderoga pencil.  I’ll have my journal. The scratch of lead against paper will be my mitigator, change agent and stabilizer.  I’ll carry spares in my bag for you, my fellow leapers, in case we meet on our next journey into the void.

Commenting on your blogs

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging

≈ Comments Off on Commenting on your blogs

Tags

blogging, wordpress comments

Friends,
I’ve been having an issue with the comments I post on your blogs. I’m in the process of trying to fix this problem, and hope to be able to tell you what I like about your posts soon. In the meantime, I am reading and enjoying.
j

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Charlotte Hoather on New Site:On Revision
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