The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 42,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 16 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Thanks so much to my top five commenters!
The premise of Just Jot It January is simple – jot something down, anywhere you like, every day in January. It was a concept I came up with last year in a fit of desperation, really, to keep up my writing momentum of November’s NaNoWriMo and the now-defunct “Every Damn Day December.”
I’m thinking about perhaps posting actual prompts this year to help everyone along with ideas on what to post, should their jotting for the day be on their blog. At the moment I’m considering three prompts, each lasting 10 days with the final day as a day for us all to just jot out our collective back-patting.
So, with January just three days away, I’m wondering who’s up for joining me this year. Hands up, bloggers! It’ll be fun!
There’s even a neat badge! Rules will be posted January 1st, 2015.
P.S. I’ll still be hosting One-Liner Wednesday and Stream of Consciousness Saturday.
It seems to me that we all must consume things. We eat, for instance, consuming the nutrients we require to survive. But yet, the word “consumed” has so many negative connotations. Being consumed is, at the moment I write this, the most complete thing I can think of. By complete I mean absolute. It goes against the grain of thought for me, because I don’t believe anything is absolute.
The feeling of being consumed is to me almost absolute. Consumed by guilt, consumed by the feeling that I must do something – writing for instance – is so overwhelming that it feels … consuming. The all-consuming feeling that falling in love brings; it permeates every thought, every action.
Of course there is also being consumed, like the pie right down to the last crumb. Is that not absolute?
With one word – with one prompt of my own making – with one blog post I have managed to skew my philosophy on life. How does this happen?
You witnessed it here.
This post is part of SoCS. Click here: https://lindaghill.com/2014/12/26/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-december-2714/ It may change your life.
Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions
Before I went to Japan I dropped in to my local cell phone provider’s store to inquire about a package deal that would allow me to use my mobile in the event I couldn’t get online while I was away. They were offering a deal that included something like 40 minutes talk time, 150 texts and 20mb of data for $70. I asked what would happen if I wasn’t able to use my phone in Japan and was assured that it wouldn’t be a problem – if I didn’t use the service, the company would refund the $70. What could I possibly lose? So I went for it.
Today I called the company to let them know I hadn’t been able to connect to a wireless provider while I was in Japan and could I please get my money back. No, I was told. There was no way they could refund the money. They don’t do that. So I asked to speak to a manager.
Armed with the fact that I have 6 phones on my plan, and have been with the company for about 20 years, I formulated my response to the next guy I was to talk to while I waited on hold. After five minutes my speech was at the ready. The gentleman who answered was polite – he said he’d check in to the matter, and would I please hold for a moment longer. Eventually he came back and told me that they don’t normally give refunds for travel packages, and the store shouldn’t have told me they do, but he would make an exception for me since I was a long-standing customer and he agreed to remove the $70 charge from my bill.
Now call me suspicious, but I wonder why I had to go through all that. The store told me I could have my money back. Was all the tension-building just a strategy to make me believe that the company is, in fact, wonderful and cause me to tell all my friends to go to them because they are kind and forgiving if you’re loyal?
I smell a rat.
Hello and welcome once again to the Friday prompt and reminder for SoCS! Another Christmas is over and done with. Depending on where you are in the world, Boxing Day is upon us and with it, sales galore. I, personally, try to avoid the chaos that is shopping the day after Christmas – but today I have a child who is chomping at the bit to spend his Christmas money. What do I do? Full report at 11. With that in mind…
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “consume,” however you wish to use it. Enjoy!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page and check to make sure it’s here in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours. Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
7. Have fun!
Merry Christmas! and a Happy New Year to everybody!! I hope you all enjoy your holiday!!!
Venus Fort, Palette Town, Tokyo December 17/14
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
Have fun!
Every once in a while I find something that changes me. Often it’s a thought, an idea that will niggle its way into my consciousness and take root. Often it doesn’t last; I’m relatively sure this won’t either.
This particular change in me was brought on by my vacation. I woke up this morning at 5:40 and I decided to get up. Just me, on my own. I was tempted to go back to sleep: sleep is a rare commodity for me. But today I felt like I needed the solitude that followed me around for eleven days in Japan.
It was strange, being alone with so very many people around. An experience unique for all of its sameness – because really, aren’t we all alone? When I consider the fact that at any given moment, I am the only one who observes what I am observing from my perspective I have a profound sense of being alone in the world. When, in Japan, I took that thought one step further to realize that all the people around me have grown up and experienced the world in a foreign setting, with few of the same cultural experiences, I am taken to a new awareness altogether. I don’t believe I really lived until I had this feeling – and it’s one I truly revel in, as long as I feel safe. From what I’ve seen and how I felt, Japan has one of the safest societies on earth.
And so one of my most treasured experiences while I was there was walking countless times across the street in Shibuya, Tokyo, amidst hundreds of people crossing in every direction.
panoramic view of Shibuya crossing
Ah, the humanity.
Life-changing. For me.
And yet for so many it is simply life. Routine. They come out of the Hachiko exit where the famous statue resides on the 
entirely indescribable side of the train station (there are two “south” entrances on different sides of the building) and they go to work, or meet a friend, or… or… whatever. I was simply wandering around this vast part of a vast world, all alone. No one I knew knew exactly where I was at that particular moment in time.
Just like when I’m having a coffee at 5:45am, all by myself in my living room.
I love it.
Now that I’m present and accounted for–I’m back from holiday–I have no excuse not to blog. 😀
See what I did there? The above sentence is a culmination of all three wonderful SoCS prompts presented to you by my three lovely guest posters. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them all for filling in for me while I was away.
I’ve learned a lot from each of my guest posters, but none more than Helen Espinosa. Here’s a lady who has been through so much in her life and yet has managed to keep a positive outlook. Her brave dealings with cancer, during which time she relied on the love of her family is so inspiring. Helen has shown me what it is not to give up, and to live life to the fullest; her philosophy is one I aspire to. Please visit her blog often. You can find Helen here: https://helenespinosa.wordpress.com/
Pav. What can I say about Pav? An English teacher by day, a dedicated dad and husband, a tireless runner, and an author any chance he gets, Pav has a unique sense of reality. His humorous posts are a never ending experience in eyebrow-raising entertainment, spackled here and there with a lesson in what it is to be a little bit of everything all the time. Any time you need a smile, go and read Pav’s blog at http://pavorisms.wordpress.com/
For our last but not least of the SoCS prompts, we were blessed with Leigh. Speaking of busy, Leigh Michaels defines the word. Mom to five incredibly lucky children who have survived the foster care system, she seems to be a full-time everything, including the author of no less than four novels. To me, she is a lesson in what it is to give of oneself – inspiring doesn’t begin to cover it. Visit Leigh here: http://www.authorleighmichaels.com/ to read her blog and find out where you can purchase her novels.
So with that I’d like give my warm appreciation to you, Helen, Pav, and Leigh, for taking time out of your own busy schedules to keep SoCS going for everyone while I was away.
Please join me once again in paying tribute to three incredible bloggers!!
This post is, in part, a SoCS post.
Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions
“You can’t go home again.” ~ Thomas Wolfe
“Except from a trip. From a trip you can go home again.” ~ Me.
(Getting on a plane in 12 hours. Will be home in 10 hours. 
)
P.S. I’m not online (this is a scheduled post) so I’m counting on all of YOU to visit all the pingbacks in the comments. 🙂 Thanks!
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Make it either funny or inspirational.
Have fun!
It may not be an historical event for anyone but me, but we all have times like these, don’t we? There are things that mean the world to just “me and me alone.” Today I had one of those events. And whether anyone else cares or not, I am recording it here for my own sake.
Today, I made eye-contact with this man:
The one on the right
I’m one drop closer to the end of my bucket list.
