Life in progress

Category Archives: advice


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One-Liner Wednesday – Because seriously, no one wants to be around me

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You know you’ve finally made it to the party of life when you get insulted by a fortune cookie. Thanks, Confucius.

 

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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. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), 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.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

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.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds!

4. Have fun!


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One-Liner Wednesday – The First Lesson in Relationships

Realizing you’re taking your grumpiness out undeservedly on your loved ones is the hard part. Apologizing is easy.

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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. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), 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.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

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.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds!

4. Have fun!


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Just a quickie

I was on Twitter a moment ago and saw that #1lineWed is trending. I didn’t know this was a thing! I wonder if it predates my One-Liner Wednesday prompt… does anyone know? Have you heard of it before?

Anyway, to get more exposure on your One-Liners, make sure you tag your posts #1lineWed! I’ll add the suggestion to the rules section next week. This is so cool!


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One-Liner Wednesday – Morning Logic

…from my best friend, John:

If “I think, therefore I am,” does that mean I don’t exist before coffee?

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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. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), 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.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

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!


by 28 Comments

One-Liner Wednesday – Throw ‘Em a Pool Noodle

You can’t save someone who lacks the desire to have an active role in his or her own rescue.

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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. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), 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.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

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!


by 27 Comments

One-Liner Wednesday – Keepin’ it simple

You will not achieve what you want by focusing on what you don’t.

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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. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), 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.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

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!

 


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Y is for Yielding – it’s a two-parter!

To yield – to give under the weight of something. How relieving it is to yield. We live in a world where we feel we must harden ourselves to most things. Never give up, never give in is our motto most of the time. We fight the system, we advocate for our kids, we push and push ourselves to do better, get more done, find more time, improve ourselves and our way of living… the list is endless.

But how good is it to yield to sleep at night? I find myself wishing often not to give up, but to have a chance to give in, just a little and not fight quite as hard, yet giving just a bit feels like defeat.

“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”
― Bruce Lee

Yielding is a way to survive. Thank you, Bruce Lee.

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On a completely different note, I can’t leave this post without mentioning what I found in my thesaurus. One synonym in particular jumps out at me. “Quaggy.” Yes, “quaggy.” I’d never heard this word before five minutes ago. So I’ll look it up. From dictionary.com:

quaggy
[kwag-ee, kwog-ee]

adjective, quaggier, quaggiest.
1. of the nature of or resembling a quagmire; marshy; boggy.
2. soft or flabby: quaggy flesh.

I’ll never view Family Guy quite the same again. Giggidy.


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Have or Thinking About Getting Your Own WP Domain? A Little Advice.

For a long time I sat on the fence, wondering whether or not to switch my account from “.wordpress.com” to a “.com” site. In fact, I paid for my own domain long before I actually switched over. I had a few concerns, but my main one was whether or not the links I already had out on the web would lead back to my site after I changed the address. As it turns out, they do. I can still ask people to drop by lindaghill.wordpress.com and they’ll show up here at lindaghill.com. Which is wonderful! But… (There had to be a “but” in there, right?)

When I was doing research for my article about dying before scheduled posts are published, entitled “Blogging from the Grave,” I asked in the forums whether my site would still exist if I failed to pay for it, i.e. if I die. The answer was yes. All of my content will just revert back to my old lindaghill.wordpress.com address and will be here forever as long as no one deletes my account. However, all the links I leave behind which lack the “.wordpress.com” will either go nowhere or they will go to whomever buys the domain after I allow my payments to lapse.

My point is this: if you own your own WordPress domain and you want your links to last forever, don’t leave off the extra part of the address! Just a little thing you might have missed when you paid…

Edit: Now that’s interesting – I added the “.wordpress.com” to my link for the “Blogging from the Grave” post and I didn’t get a pingback on it. Could that explain the mystery of why sometimes pingbacks don’t work? (This edit is also an experiment.)

Edit2: YES! The pingback worked that time. Double the advice in one post – pingbacks don’t work if the address isn’t precise!


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K is for Key

What is the key to writing a successful blog? I had a comment on my Priorities post of Saturday which asked, Why do good bloggers always contemplate leaving.. (thank you Celona’s Blog). The truth is, I’m not really sure what it is that makes a “good blogger”.

Although one might argue that a blog is made up of its content, I don’t believe that’s all it is. I think it’s the amount of caring that goes into it. The grammar and spelling could be fair rather than excellent, the photos could be mediocre instead of professional, and the artwork may be less than fantastic, but if there is an abundance of passion, knowledge and love for whatever it is that a blogger does, others can see it.

The secret to producing a great blog is also the communication that goes on between the blogger and his or her audience. The very translation between the blogger’s life and how it relates to the experiences of the reader can make or break the connection that keeps the reader coming back.

As a noun, some of the synonyms of “key” are code, cue, interpretation, and solution. “Cue” is also an important answer to having a successful blog. When we cue responses we keep our readers engaged.

As an adjective we have influential, and leading. How do we influence and lead? With passion and caring.

Do you feel as though you have these things covered on your blog?


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I is for Impermanent

Impermanence: what better way to explain life? It’s a wonder that the word impermanent even exists; nothing is permanent. Unless you’re talking about a hairdo of course. Hair spray only goes so far so if you want it to stay that way, you’re gonna need a perm.

But I digress. As I do. One of the synonyms for impermanent is “ephemeral.” It’s a word that’s stuck with me since the summer before I first went to high school. A group of people got together to do a stage production of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and somehow I got involved. We didn’t have a script, we just adapted the book. Quite brilliant for a bunch of high school kids when I think back.

Anyway, there was a line in the book, and in our play, that went, “That which is in danger of speedy disappearance,” as an explanation of what the word ephemeral means. The line was delivered to (not by) a boy named Charlie who later became a friend. We hung out together all through high school. He was in the foster care system and sometimes moved from place to place – for a while he lived at my house. He was the youngest of, if I remember correctly, four. All of his sisters had left home and had their own lives. His mother was schizophrenic.

After high school, Charlie went out on his own. He moved to Toronto and had several different jobs. Then we heard he’d been living in a tent. It came out later that he was schizophrenic, like his mother. He hung himself to death before his thirty-fifth birthday.

Charlie always struck me as someone who was ephemeral. From his frequent moves between foster parents, and his very upbringing, leaving his home and his sisters who were all unable to care for him, to finally his departure from life.

Elusive, fleeting, unstable, transient, perishable, evanescent… mortal.

The very theme of The Little Prince. If you haven’t read it, I strongly urge you to. There’s a lesson there which needs to be learned.