Category — Microblog Mondays

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Until I read this New Yorker article, I hadn’t realized how much I missed eavesdropping and how it wasn’t present in my world for the last 16 months. The random things you overhear while you’re waiting somewhere or sitting too close to people in a restaurant or passing on the street.

As it says, “The best lines provide several little thrills at once: a sketch of character, a hint of story, the joy of feeling like you understand the rest. Like a Norman Rockwell painting, they’re obvious yet mysterious, conveying too much and too little in a single moment.”

More than seeing people or eating in restaurants, I miss coming home with little snippets, like the first date A Half Baked Life and I overheard between a man and his date, explaining how he shot himself in the foot (in the bathtub!) to collect insurance money but now he is missing a toe.

What are things you’ve overheard?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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My Sweet Dumb Brain suggests that we need to have a pandemic postmortem. While that phrase feels a little too on-the-nose for an event that is continuing to kill millions of people, the impulse behind it is sound. What did we learn from this experience? What do we wish we had done better? What would we do exactly the same?

That is the piece that may be missing for me as we move back into the outside world: that discussion of what we learned. I did this in my bullet journal months ago. They were all practical things, such as lemons keep forever and can be used in so many dishes. Always have a lot of lemons on hand in case we have to go back into lockdown.

But there are the emotional lessons learned. We need structure in our day, and if it’s not there through obligations, we need to create it. We need very little to be happy. Beorn makes everything better.

But I think I need something bigger; pausing with family and friends to talk through the last 16 months.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Today marks the day when I’ve been writing this blog for 15 years. Almost a third of my life. Life math like that blows my mind. A third of my life has been spent recording my memories and thoughts in this space. Next year will tip the scales into the over category: from just under a third to just over a third. Consistently—I think my longest break has been five or so days? I’ve done that twice.

Back in the old days, I would have used my blogoversary to note lessons learned, but they really haven’t changed much over time. Set up time in your day to open a blank blog post. Write something down. Hit publish. Do it again the next day and the one after that. Give yourself a break or two in the week so you don’t get burned out. Keep this going for 5,475 days.

It’s a happy accident that this post falls on a Monday—on #MicroblogMonday, when I encourage you to write in your own space. Whatever you post on Facebook today, also post it on your blog. Do the same thing tomorrow. And the day after that. Speak with people in both spaces: the immediate response and the slower discussion. It’s just about owning your thoughts; keeping record of them in your space.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I love this idea so much. Book fairies are people who finish a book and decide to pass it along. “They pop an official book fairy sticker on it, which reads ‘take this book, read it & leave it for the next person to enjoy’, and they might even add a ribbon to dress it up as a gift. When they’ve prepared their gift, they will hide it in public to be found…”

It’s kind of like a free little library, except you have this opportunity to leave a letter to the person who will find the book folded inside the pages. (I guess you could do that in a free little library, too.) To explain why you’re leaving it for them to find, or what you hope they get out of it. I don’t think I’d do this with a book I wanted to get rid of; who wants a gift like that? But I’d leave copies of The Phantom Tollbooth around town and hope it changes another person’s life.

What book would you leave to be found?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Back in college, there was a daytrip that I never got to go on to a place called the House on the Rock. I didn’t have a car, so it’s remarkable that I managed somehow to get to the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum (twice!). But I never got to House on the Rock, and people would talk about it all the time.

It felt like all the cool kids got to go. And I was not one of the cool kids.

And then I forgot about it, entirely, until I read that Atlas Obscura article and all of the feelings came flooding back. How was I so close yet so far? Why couldn’t one of the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum trips be turned into a House on the Rock trip?

It’s kind of funny to still feel the same away about it when I literally forgot about its existence for the last 20+ years.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.