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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Every year between Christmas and New Years, we watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The goal is to get Aragorn and Arwen’s kiss as close to midnight on New Year’s Eve as possible.  We rarely succeed.  By which I mean that we don’t succeed at all.  Like we sometimes get stuck watching the Two Towers well into January.  We suck.

But this year, we made a commitment.  Watch at least one hour, but hopefully more, daily.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Do not allow life to get in the way of our goal.

This year, we succeeded.  Even though we had to take a few days off because the kids slept at my parents’ house, we timed it carefully and got the kiss in at 10:59 pm on New Year’s Eve.  I wanted to run around the house, screaming, because I was so proud of us.  Instead, I tiredly ate some M&Ms and said, “Well done, team.”

Sometimes it’s not the big wins.  Sometimes it’s the small victories.  What was your latest small victory?

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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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The day after Purim is usually a bit of a letdown.  There is relief because I pulled off all the costumes and presents, but there are also hours where I feel down because so much energy was directed at getting through the holiday, and now the holiday is over until next year.

I imagine that is what Christmas is like, too.  I mean, most people are off today, so that helps to extend the holiday feeling.  But all good things must come to an — albeit temporary in the case of annual traditions — end.

How do you get through the blues that occur after a big deal event has passed?  Any Christmas traditions for a soft landing?

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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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How is this for meta: a MicroblogMondays post about MicroblogMondays.

If you are looking for a resolution for this upcoming year, look no more.  You should make the commitment of writing in your own space on the Web at least 52 times in 2017.  One post each week; at least one sentence long.  There is no rule that blog posts must be 500 words.  I’ve seen posts that were one sentence or one paragraph, and they were just as thought-provoking as long pieces.  Ask your readers a question.  Tell them what you are doing at that very moment instead of putting those words on Twitter.  Anything.

Why do I think this is important?  Because I think posting things in your own space not only gives you the warm glow of ownership over your ideas, but it also makes people more circumspect.  It makes people support their thoughts with examples, provide links to sources, and unpack their feelings.  When it’s your own space, you think twice before posting.  When it’s your own space, you tend not to forward or link to other articles without checking them out first.

I think blogging in your own space helps keep balance with the quick-moving world of other social media sites.  It’s like the front porch to a house where people sit down to talk and listen.  People don’t quickly scroll past blog entries.  And I think blogging is even more important — especially first-hand accounts of the world — in this day and age of fake news and slippery facts.

So I’m just putting this out there: Go write in your own space in 2017.

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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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Atlas Obscura also had an article about bibliomania, a neurosis that afflicted people in the 17 and 1800s and caused them to spend all of their money collecting books.  (Or, in some cases, risked it all to steal books.)

In the case of bibliomania, it sounds more like any obsessive collecting — from rare comic books to Pokemon — but I clicked on the article due to the excerpt because it hit close to home.

I am a book hoarder.  I own more books than I could ever find time to read, plus I buy more books despite having stuff I’m excited about on my to-read list.  I hint to people that I really would love that book that they mentioned that they don’t want anymore.  I am about one step away from stealing library books like the first guy in the article.  At least the people in the article had an excuse — books were rare and hard to obtain.  Commercialization was supposed to be the cure.  But look at me!  I am a danger to all little free libraries in America.

Is there anything you collect without knowing what you would ever do with the collection?

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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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Spend any time on Donald Trump’s Twitterfeed and you’ll see him listing out various people and actions that deserve punishment.  Companies that move jobs out of the US will be punished.  People who burn the flag will be punished.  Reporters who criticize him will be punished, countries that won’t make trade deals he likes will be punished, and politicians who work against him will be punished.  He is really big on talking about punishments.

It’s easy to see the possible outcome of those punishments.  Tax companies that move jobs out of the US?  They can pass along the higher cost to the consumer.  Or they can have massive layoffs in the US in order to keep the remaining jobs on US soil.  Also, if you look at each punishment he lists, it’s rarely the individual or company that bears the brunt of the punishment.  It’s you and you and you (and me) as the side effects of those punishments trickle down to the rest of society.

We parent without punishment.  Josh and I are clearly on the anti-punishment side of the behavioural psychology punishment/rewards argument.  It’s a decision that stems from how I ran my classroom as a teacher: I educated without punishment, too.  To be completely honest, we also parent without rewards, unless you see the natural consequence of being a trustworthy, kind individual resulting in beneficial situations as an incentive.  But if I could only get rid of one option, I’d go with getting rid of punishments.

Based on your life experience, which do you believe works better: Rewards or punishments?

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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.