portrait_of_perplexity | Entries tagged with blogging

If anyone's read my introductory blog post you may notice I've temporarily skipped over the letter A (for Apps I've found useful for Spirituality and Self-Care). It was a longer post that I anticipated and is still underway, but it will be published when ready, never fear (spoiler alert - The Tapping Solution is my top pick).

Also if you read my intro post, then you may already have a sense of why I've not become a blogger before now. In short, I've felt that I don't have anything important enough to say.

I kept a diary as a kid - that is, I repeatedly started keeping a diary year on year (I always lost interest before the year was out). I recall it used to consist of the most mundane, "I fell out with my best friend today, we'll probably never speak again" / "today my best friend and I made up and after school we went into town..." content. Day in, day out pretty much.

There was only ever one thing of any importance that I recorded during that time in my life, and I won't speak of that as it concerns a suspicion that a friend may have been suffering physical abuse at the hands of a parent and that is not my history to write about.

So, I thought, what would be the point of writing a blog? I did begin one once, but it was soon deleted as it was just a list of my accomplishments in life and places I've travelled to. (Those things are fine things for me to remember, and may even be of interest to immediate family, but that's what photo albums are for - as a blog, there can't have been any appetite for that. And anyway, a blog which consists of just a few posts isn't much of a blog.)

I'm not any good at journalling, either - I literally cannot think of a thing to write. Last year I started a dream journal which I kept up with for a few months, but that's different (oh, and I'd given it up again by mid-way through the year).

So, what's changed? Well, I've begun exploring my spiritual side with more purpose, and so I've started reading one or two blogs written by others in the course of that. And there's a 'Recently Blogged' thread on the message board* I'm a member of, and I guess after a while I developed a bit of FOMO.

That's it! I'm still not sure that I've anything of any real interest to say, though as I write my next post is shaping up to be (possibly) on the topic of 'Calamity', so I suppose you never know.

🖳

*https://ecauldron.com/

[Originally posted 14/02/2020 - reposted 07/10/2023]

A mini-blog/reflective journal, from a self-confessed air-head.

  I'm not someone who appears to be capable of profound thinking, though a part of me has always wished that I were.

  I took a Critical Theory module at university (I can't recall, now, whether it was a compulsory module or one I'd selected myself); however, not only did I not really grasp what was being discussed in lectures and seminars, I didn't even understand what I myself was regurgitating in my own written assignments! Oddly, I do seem to recall getting reasonably good grades for that module - the art of writing what you surmise your lecturer wants to read, I guess (though it didn't serve me as well in all my other modules, unfortunately).

  After graduating, I recall borrowing a book entitled What Do You Say After You Say Hello. I tried reading it, and even made a real effort to get my mind around some of the concepts talked about in it. But I never finished it. (I also never returned it - if you were the lender and you happen to be reading this, I'm very sorry!)

  Some time after university I acquired some materials for an AS Critical Thinking course, and it was the same story. I read them, even tried getting to grips with the content. But eventually abandoned the exercise and recycled the papers.

  Latterly I've had another go, with Critical Thinking courses available from Future Learn. And I don't know whether age and associated wisdom are a factor, but the content of these do seem to have helped somewhat. It doesn't come naturally to me though, I have to work at it.

  I struggle and get left behind with high-brow conversations amongst intellectual friends. I can't keep complex concepts, particularly abstract ones, straight in my mind long enough to finish an article, nevermind get a good grasp on whatever theory is being talked about. I'm not ashamed of any of this, it's just a fact of how my mind works.

  So, while I'd like to write a blog containing reflections about life's 'big issues', this is actually going to be much more prosaic. If that seems as though it's something which might interest you for whatever reason, then read on and bookmark this blog.

  Taking inspiration from The Cauldron's Pagan Blog Project (which itself took inspiration from an earlier Pagan Blog Project*) I will be starting out with an alphabet themed series of blog posts - basically, in those original blog projects each fortnight throughout the year was devoted to a letter of the alphabet (my posts won't necessarily be pagan themed - some might, but by no means all).

  So, whilst I'd like the first handful of posts to be along the following lines:-

Altruism in the modern world
Bravado, and why it's unhelpful for mental health
Climate justice
Dogma, and why a big part of me rebels against it
Ecopsychology
...

...the actual topics will very likely be much more like the below:-

Apps I've found useful for spirituality and self-care
Blogging, and why it's taken me forever to start
Coming out of Covid-19
DBT, and why I think it'd be helpful for me
Energy management issues with a chronic health condition

For those readers who are still here, a little bit of background about me follows, below.

I'm a UK born and bred cis white woman whose family were initially working class but whose upbringing was decidedly lower-middle class thanks to my parents' hard work. I developed an interest in environmentalism early on in life, and later became interested in alternative spirituality. At university I studied English Literature. I now work in an office (because, as I discovered, English Lit doesn't qualify you for any particular career - but actually, I love my job). I live, as I have always done, in the South of England. I'm married, without kids (we keep cats instead). I like to believe I'm young at heart, and I think I'm a weird, contradictory mixture of cynicism and idealism.

(*So far as I can establish, both these blog projects appear to have petered out, but for me the basic premise still had mileage, and so here we are.)

[Originally posted 20/05/2020 - re-posted 07/10/2023.]

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

Portrait of Perpetual Perplexity

Entries tagged with blogging

Blogging, and why it's taken me forever to start

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