Tag: blog (Page 1 of 3)

I Should Have Read The Alert Before Pushing The Button.

30/07/2025 / Maureen / 12 Comments

Some days just don’t end well. Not that today has ended yet, but I’ve certainly written off most of it already.

I was full of vim and vigour this morning so I washed the kitchen floor. Well, that led to discovering I needed a new cover for my swaffer-stick thing that I wash the floor with. Two microfibre cloths later, a bit of sewing, and I had a new cover made. It doesn’t look too professional, but it does the job, and let’s face it, nobody else is going to use it so it really doesn’t matter.

By the time I was done with the floor fiasco, it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch; I settled for a large glass of water. Armed with my trusty laptop, I perched myself comfortably on the balcony, and figured I’d start my blog for the day.

I should have read it first!

Something strange happened, although I didn’t think it was strange to begin with. An alert popped up before I started writing. Without thinking, I hit the install button, assuming I was updating a plugin. But apparently not. I still don’t know what the alert said, but it obviously had nothing to do with plugins. Nope. It seems I changed the theme. Not that I could say what theme I had been using because I change them so often, but suddenly things looked very different. And that made me think, hmmm, I wonder which theme is best for a simple blog? AI to the rescue; I asked ChatGPT. The answer was Hemingway. Another button-pushing minute later, I’d installed Hemingway as the theme.

And I still hadn’t started writing.

Installing a new theme is one thing, but wondering how to make the font bigger universally, without manually changing each block, is something else. I know there is CSS that will do it, but I’m not up to that part of my coding course yet. So, good old YouTube and a wasted couple of hours later, I’ve added a new plugin that at least puts the Font Family and Font Size within easy reach, right up there with the Block Editor icons. I still have to select each block manually, and I’m still getting used to Hemingway again (I know I’ve used the theme before), but here I am, writing, at last.

The lessons learned today are:

- Read alerts before pushing buttons

- Stop procrastinating, and get on with the coding course

- Just write the blog!

- Worry about finer details like themes, later.

My website is still doing quirky things, but I’ll tackle that another day.

Fun? What Fun?

08/07/2025 / Maureen / 2 Comments

Today’s blog post is supposed to be about something that is fun. Normally, I could come up with a lot of things to write about on that topic, but not today.

Life was sailing along smoothly: no problems, not too much to worry about. nothing much out of the ordinary, until a few days ago.

I can’t even remember what day it happened. Was it Sunday? Yesterday? Actually, it could have been even earlier than that because time seems to have stood still.

Whatever day it was, by mid-morning I realised something was wrong. My usual allergy to just about anything that moves outside my building was in overdrive. I couldn’t stop sneezing, and my head hurt every time I coughed, which was too often. And by that night, the reality sunk in. Somehow, I, who never gets sick, had a cold.

My bedroom lamp turns itself on (with the help of Alexa and a Smart Switch) at 9 pm every night. I beat Alexa that night and was in bed by 8 pm, which is a recipe for disaster because I normally only need 5-6 hours sleep a night. If I’m asleep before 9 pm, I’m going to be wide awake at some crazy hour of the morning. And that’s exactly what happened, Not that my sleep until then was peaceful, but there I was, wide awake at 3 am.

I lost count of how many times I trudged to the kitchen for a glass of water, followed by trips to the bathroom (because that’s what happens when you drink a whole lot of water). And so, the next day, and possibly the day after, depending on which day it all started, have been no fun at all. My constant companions have been a box of tissues, my water bottle, and a bucketload of feeling sorry for myself.

Between coughing, sneezing, and sleeping (yep, me who never sleeps through the day), my blog posts were the furthest thing from my mind. Until now. Perhaps I’m coming out of the doldrums and moving back into some kind of ‘better’. Not 100% better, just a whole lot better.

This blog is about how not to have fun – it’s simple, just catch a cold.

Healing, With Nature’s Gift for Body and Mind

06/07/2025 / Maureen / 12 Comments

I sit on my balcony, while my fingers tap out the words of this blog; my laptop poised precariously as I recline on my comfy bench seat. The sun above hangs in a perfectly cloudless blue sky, a distinct contrast to the grey sky of a few hours ago..

The ocean beyond the highway in front of me mirrors the blue of the sky above. Whales, on their migration north, mark their presence as they breach close to the horizon.

It is winter in my part of the world, the East Coast of Australia, but winter here feels more like autumn.

The dramas of yesterday are gone; vanished as quickly as the flash of inspiration recently lost on a busy day. My mind is focused on my writing; there is no room for worries, at least for a while. Even the noise from the busy highway between my balcony and the ocean can’t take away from the absolute bliss of being under the warm winter sun.

My body absorbs the Vitamin D; my mood is elevated; my soul is calm.

My body and mind heal naturally on this perfect winter’s day.

Inspiration: Here One Minute, Gone the Next

03/07/2025 / Maureen / 18 Comments

Does anyone else do that? While you’re plodding through an average day, a thought flashes through your mind and you think, ‘now there’s a great idea for a post in the Ultimate Blog Challenge (UBC)’. You open your laptop to start writing and a little message pops up to remind you of an appointment the next day, which prompts you to check your emails for any updates about the appointment, which takes you to the list of groceries to buy on the way back. Before you know it, you’ve moved so far past your website and blogging, that when you do get back to it, you have no idea what the brilliant idea was (the idea you thought about all those hours earlier). Not only that, but now it’s time to think about dinner, and the chores that are still not-so-patiently waiting to be attended to.

When you finally open the laptop again, you stare at the blank page that was supposed to be your next blog post, and wonder, ‘What will I write about? Wait…, what was that brilliant idea I had for my next post?’. No matter how hard you try to remember, it just isn’t there. No doubt the elusive idea will wake you up at some unreasonable hour through the night or early morning: should you get up and start writing, or trust that you’ll remember that little gem of inspiration next time?

And with that, you roll over and go back to sleep, confident in your ability to remember.

And that is why this post doesn’t contain anything to do with that precious little gem of inspiration, whatever it was.

And That, Sadly, Is A Wrap!

01/05/2024 / Maureen / 2 Comments

When I awoke this morning, the calendar had flipped over to a brand new month. April 2024 slipped away silently on the other side of yesterday’s midnight, and was replaced by May, on this side of yesterday’s midnight.

So, why was April’s demise such an issue?

Paul Taubman works hard to deliver scheduled opportunities for those of us who blog, to do more blogging. Paul runs the Ultimate Blog Challenge (UBC) on a regular basis and invites bloggers, like me, to participate. It’s easy – you just have to write a blog a day for a month. April was one of those months.

I love writing, but pin me down to write on-cue, and something in my brain goes ‘ping!’, and I scuttle off to finish all those unfinished, unrelated, useless projects that have been waiting way too long. I recognise the value of writing every day, but having to write every day is a whole other story.

And life doesn’t help any. As soon as I commit to filling up the empty spaces on any of my websites, invitations come flooding in for coffee, lunch, movies, and any other social activity you can think of.

April 2024 was no different.

All the good intentions in the world won’t save me from an invitation to go to Dracula’s on the Gold Coast (Australia). And that’s what happened. Well, that’s partly what happened.

To start at the beginning, I technically have over two-hundred distractions within arms-reach, without having to drive anywhere. I live in a small community with approximately two-hundred-and-seventy like-minded seniors who no longer have to get up early to go to work. That means we all have not much to do, and all day to do it in. Well, that’s what people think retirees do. The truth is, there is always one more cafe to visit, one more lunch at The Balcony that serves the best fried rice on the planet, or one more committee to join. If I had to get up early to go to work now, I wouldn’t be able to fit it into my busy schedule. And trust me, I don’t need much encouragement from any of my two-hundred plus neighbours to drop everything and head to town for a coffee, milkshake, or fried rice.

And that’s where April disappeared to:

too many milkshakes at The Austral
too many lunches at The Balcony
and a night at Dracula’s

Throw in a couple of committee meetings, and that’s one month all sewn up.

Remember the milkshakes of the sixties?

The sixties were the best years to be a teenager. Milkshakes were made and served in large metal containers, and filled about three tall glasses. We didn’t have twenty-four different flavours – just chocolate, strawberry, caramel, and vanilla – and malt didn’t cost any extra.

The Austral is a retro diner with bench seats and sixties milkshakes. Any invitation to go to The Austral is responded to with ‘Yep, I’m ready, let’s go!’. My all-time favourite is chocolate with double malt (you can never have too much malt), even though malt now costs extra, but who cares….

And Dracula’s?

The invitation to Dracula’s was a bit out of the ordinary, but some family members who live on the north side of Brisbane were spending a few days on the Gold Coast, with a night at Dracula’s as a feature event. Well, the feature was all mine. Their feature event was a music festival featuring some pretty good bands, including Blondie, and Alice Cooper. Yep – that’s a real feature. But Dracula’s was a feature for me because I’d literally lived across the road from it for a few years, but never went.

Dracula’s, as the name implies, is about spooky things, including a ghost train ride from the front door to the inside dining area. The train ride is supposed to be scary, so camera’s are poised to capture the look of terror as you arrive at the destination. The video (with accompanying screams of terror) then rolls across the big screen towards the end of the show.

My daughter-in-law checked on me as I stepped off the train to see if I was okay. I reminded her I’d been a teacher for over twenty years so nothing scares me (except thunder storms…). And yep, the video footage proved that a few gory scenes and scary noises didn’t faze me at all. I’d seen worse than that on any given day in a school yard at lunch time.

The show was great!

I’m not sure if it was a senior moment or not, but I had trouble working out the theme of the show. Actually, it probably was a senior thing – I kind of remember that raunchy stuff from a long time ago (just saying… not an invitation to psychoanalyse my current lifestyle, or ‘lack of…’.). The death-defying trapeze acts needed no interpretation – they were absolutely amazing.

And that, sadly, is how the April Ultimate Blog Challenge came and went. I posted a total of nine new blogs out of a possible thirty, some days posting two in one day. On the positive side, my blog has nine posts it wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t taken up the challenge, but on the negative side, it should have had thirty new posts. But given that very few people read my blogs anyway, does it really matter?

Actually, yes it does!

The purpose of my blog is to improve my writing skill, whether anyone reads it or not. And the cringe-worthy writing of my earlier days compared to now, proves I’m on the right track.

Will I take up a future blog-challenge? Yep, undoubtably. One of the nicest things about the challenge is reading, and being inspired by, the blogs of other writers. And for that reason, the UBC is worth embarking on – even if my blog tally falls short of the monthly expectation.

Will I try to be more disciplined next time? Yes, definitely, but whether I succeed or not remains to be seen.

But the Ultimate Blog Challenge…

… Is so worth it!

January Ultimate Blog Challenge Sunset

31/01/2020 / Maureen / 4 Comments

Living in the Southern Hemisphere can sometimes be problematic. But it can also be a blessing. As the sun sets on the January Ultimate Blog Challenge for 2020, I might get away with squeezing an extra blog in… maybe.

In the Northern Hemisphere, I’m hoping it is still the 30th January. Here in the Land Down Under, it has been the 31st January, all day. So if I go by the date in the Northern Hemisphere, the challenge doesn’t end for a while yet.

So, how did I go?

Well – better than I expected, but still not up there with the winners.

By my quick calculation, this post will bring me up to twenty two posts out of a possible thirty-one. Hmmm… not good, but not as bad as I thought I’d do.

I think I started out well, and somehow just fizzled out toward the end. Perhaps I need to pace myself better.

Was it worth it?

Definitely!

Each time I sign up for the challenge, I learn something new. And the January Ultimate Blog Challenge didn’t let me down.

Each blog I wrote gave me a different experience. Sometimes the writing flowed and was easy; other times it was laboured and hard. And in the process I worked out what my niche is, by discovering what it isn’t.

When I narrowed down what my niche is, I had a major breakthrough on a possible theme to focus future blog posts on.

Getting in touch with my writing style gave me an insight into what works for me.

When I found my style, it was like finding my rhythm. And my fingers tapped out the rhythm on my keyboard. It might not be your beat, but it is mine. And I’ve always marched to a different drum.

Staying true to my style is where the January Ultimate Blog Challenge has taken me.

All I have to do now is marry my style, to my my newly-found (possible) niche.