I’m about to celebrate my 2,000th tweet. And I’m pretty stoked about that. I love twitter. I miss my tweeps when enforced absences keep me from checking my tweetstream. I know that I can’t write as fluently, coherently or beautifully as fionawb did in her post about her use of twitter, but I can and do echo her sentiments. And I’m pretty stoked to be hitting this 2,000th milestone!
Tweet on!
:p
You may or may not know, I have another (current) WordPress blog, over at www.bloxhammarketing.wordpress.com – current because I also have other, inactive WordPress blogs. But let’s not get in to that here.
I started blogging for Bloxham Marketing in November of last year, thinking that ‘If I want to grow my business, why not do a bit of the “practicing what I’m preaching” kind of thing.’
Initially, my entries were similar to these here on hmmm… – as in, they reflected on the happenings of my work day. What campaigns I was working on, what successes I’d had with getting free advertising, etc etc. Which was all well and good, but I didn’t really feel as though it was working as well as I’d liked.
So I started reading other marketing blogs. Lots of them. And using a Bloxham Marketing twitter account, separate to my @KRidwyn account, to follow a ‘marketing’ crowd rather than a friends / Library / education / tech crowd. And what I found surprised me. There are marketers out there who are FULL ON!!! I thought I was pretty intense, but they take the idea of ‘marketing’ to a whole new level. And I don’t want to be like that. They seem so insincere, so money-focussed, so self-promotionary (I know. That’s probably not even a word.) But there’s no real substance there. No relationship to build (even though that may be, exactly what they’re pushing!) because they’re just so in-your-face about sell-sell-sell. Yuk.
Some of the ideas though, I liked. I liked the idea that I could use my blog to help others. My clients, for a start, could learn more about the techniques behind what I do, through the topics I could write about. “If I’m suggesting that they get blogs, and update them regularly, then perhaps I could help them to do this successfully by giving them hints / tips etc on my blog,” was what I was thinking. And this gradually developed.
I also like the idea of series-writing. Where my readers could get a more in-depth look at a topic because I could expound my ideas over several posts, rather than cramming all my advice into one entry. This concept also gives me posts to tweet about – and to continue to tweet about in the months ahead, as the content won’t date too much.
So I think I’ve found a happy medium. At times, I’ll series-write. At the moment, I’m part-way through a series on “How to Create a Headache-free Yearbook“. I’ve also written a series reviewing ifttt.com; “Website Design“; “Enhancing the High School Library“; and “Planning for Successful Blog-Writing“. I’ve interspersed these with one-offs, such as “6 Lessons The Big Bang Theory can teach us about Blogging” and “Why I’ve left Pinterest“. I’ve also, on occasion, written reflective pieces on what was happening in my work day – announcing my upcoming presentation at LEQ’s Digital Marketing PD; tweeting the #iPadexplore mini-conference; and creating CoverPhotos for Facebook Page timelines, to name a few. And I’m happy with aiming for three posts a week (Mon, Wed, Fri) whereas my aim here on hmmm… is for daily entries.
So, that’s it. Ceridwyn at work. Just thought I’d share.
Oh – and happy birthday, Mr 3!
I love my kids. To bits. Deeply. And forever. But man! It’s good to get a night out occasionally!
Last night was such a night. I left the “Mummy!”; “Mummy!”, and the “Mummy!” to Daddy for a bit, and escaped with a great friend to the movies.
It was raining. I didn’t care. I got wet. I didn’t care. It was dark, and cold. Again, I didn’t care. I was out, and I was in excellent company, and I had no kids.
The movie was hilarious. “This Means War“, the latest Reese Witherspoon rom com, a little like the ‘Spy vs Spy’ of my older brother’s Mad magazines, back when I was a teenager. But funnier.
I think my taste in movies has changed over time. Although I have NEVER been able to handle horror movies – they don’t do anything for me at all – I used to quite like thrillers. Romantic comedies were alright, and I cold happily pay the money to see a kid’s movie, but my favourite were action flicks. Anything with Bruce Willis; later on Vin Diesel, or Jason Stratham. Now, not so much. Yes, action flicks are still great, but I can’t do too many thrillers any more. Maybe it’s that I see enough tension in my day-to-day life that I don’t relish it in what little time I give myself for leisure time? I’m not sure. But now, it’s more the superficial light-hearted “escape” that I seem to prefer, as evidenced by last night’s choice. And the time before that it was “What’s Your Number” – another click flick, escapist, triviality.
Still an’ all – last night was great. I got home and the kitchen was a mess, toys covered the floor, and life returned to normal, but I knew that for a couple of hours I had escaped. And been rejuvenated. Which was wonderful!
Again, another interesting piece from my first-ever blog…
Imagine you’ve just spent the last few years of your life writing a novel. You’ve researched it; poured out your thoughts, ideas, and plans; agonised over characters, settings and plot devices. Finally, after countless hours of Herculean effort, it’s finished. YOUR work. YOUR effort. YOUR blood, sweat, and tears.
Should you have the right to feel some sort of ownership of that novel? Or those words? Phrases? Characters? Ideas? In my opinion, I yell out a resounding ‘YES!!’ (Of course I would, I’m an aspiring novelist.) However, there are many that wouldn’t.
Put a photo on flickr, and anyone can ‘tag’ it. Okay, that’s normal practice. Maybe, if the photographer hadn’t wanted their photo tagged, they shouldn’t have put it there. But they did, so they should accept the ‘standard practice’ on these types of sites. But what then, when it comes to something other than a photo? When it comes to something like that novel you’ve worked just so darn hard to create? Is it then fair that others can ‘tag’ this? Your work? I guess it’s all well and good if the tags are suitably reflective of the main ideas espoused: ‘historical novel’; ‘character-based’ etc etc. But what if it gets tagged ‘a piece of crap’?! How would you then feel? Because this is indeed a possibility – once ‘out there’, on the net, you have relinquished all control over your work. Completely. It’s enough to make you, the author, want to quit.
And another disadvantage? Finding your novel again! Say this piece of work that you had sweated over was ‘Les Miserables’ (which makes you, of course, Victor Hugo). Say hundreds of years have passed; hard copies of your novel have fallen into disrepair or worse. The only copies that exist, dwell in whatever the future’s version of ‘online’ is. But unfortunately, they’re impossible to find, because everyone has ‘tagged’ your work with classifications that are personal to them.
This system called ‘folksonomy’? I don’t agree with it. I can’t change it; and I know that I have to live with it; but I don’t like it. I’m with Daniel Pink on this one… “On the great library shelf in the sky, Melvil Dewey cannot be amused.”
At 6.15 this morning, I called the childcare centre. I wanted to check what was meant to happen over school holidays.
Whoops. My younger two kids were expected, and I was going to be charged for the day. So what the hey – I’m paying; they like going; so let them go!
Upshot: Miss 6 and I get six hours together. Alone. (Wow. That hasn’t happened in, like, a millenium!) So. Movies? No. Shopping? No. Her choice? “Let’s do some collage, Mummy!!!” (Great…)
I couldn’t be bothered driving all the way home, only to drive back out to pick up the younger two again, so “doing some collage” involved buying cheap craft stuff from the closest $2 shop. We then wandered over to Caboolture Library, where Miss 6 chose for us to sit in side-by-side carrels for our collage creating.
Hours later, she was happy. I was happy. We headed off to collect the younger two, trailing paper covered in glue, matchsticks, butterflies and flowers.
What an unusual day. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?!
(All photos were taken by Miss 6 on my iPod. They’re un-edited. Not bad, hey?! I especially like the way she chose to do an extreme close-up of the chair cover. I guess the pattern, and the colour, intrigued her?)
I have been despondent for a couple of days now. Strange, considering it’s end of semester and there’s definitely a light at the end of the tunnel. Considering that the school won its display at the Caboolture Show, and the playgroup display that I can claim quite a lot of the responsibility for, came second in its own category. Considering that tonight Miss 6 did a screen test for her new modelling agency, and the Australian director (who was conducting the screen test) was so impressed he said, “She’s only 6? Wow! She’ll definitely get call backs with what she just did!”
So some things in life are going well. My brilliant mother bought me a Galileo thermometer for my birthday, which now takes pride of place on my kitchen windowsill (pics to follow when my camera is actually working again), Miss 3 is almost fully toilet trained (OMG that has take just SO darn long!) and Master 2 is having fun saying his new word “Mar-mee” and seeing my delighted reaction.
So yes, some things are good. My final assignment will be completed, and submitted, by the time my head hits the pillow. A good friend is visiting tomorrow for a ‘craft morning’. And also I get to go NOWHERE (boy do I LOVE those days!). My family is (almost) all healthy, the weekend is approaching, and the holidays after that.
So what the hell do I have to be despondent about? Just because I’ve crossed paths with three people that sucked the energy out of me this week? Three people, all in their own little worlds and with no forethought over their words or actions, decided in their own little ways to impact on my little world so abruptly and rudely? Honestly – why can’t I get past this?! It’s (insert swearwords for rest of sentence).
Sorry, readers. I know I’m behind in #blogjune, but I’m kinda over it all right now. Thanks for letting me vent. And I’ll try to blog in a better frame of mind tomorrow. When my final assignment’s done and dusted.
I have a brilliant Mum. Yes, I really do. I love her to bits.
Tonight, at the drop of a hat, (well, not literally! It was more like a phone call, and no hats were involved at all… so I wonder where that saying comes from anyway?!!) Mum agreed to come around and babysit Numbers 2 and 3 for me so I could finish off my Information Retrieval assignment, due Thursday.
How cool is that!
I love my mum. I’m so glad I have her. Thank you, Lord, for giving me to my mum almost 37 years ago! (And while I’m at it… please, Lord, help me to finish this assignment!)
So yeah. I. Love. Mum.
The end.
(LOL Sorry; I’ll write longer when the assignment’s done, okay?!)
My day started as most seem to recently. Late to bed due to working on hubby’s computer (SOOOOOOO can’t wait for mine! Each day brings it closer!!!), then up sometime in the middle of the night to a child with a nightmare or who’s fallen out of bed, then up again sometime around 2.30ish to turn off that talkative toy which has decided to ‘speak’ and wake me up with its annoying electronic voice, back to bed but can’t sleep because my brain has woken up and is buzzing, then up again within the next 30 minutes to an hour, to start working on the computer before I lose access for the day. Sleep deprivation? What sleep deprivation?
This morning though, I have been pleasantly surprised. I don’t always give Google Reader a quick glance over first thing, but am glad I did so this morning. Bun-toting Librarian was also up late last night, and posted a blog that both inspired and challenged me when I discovered it in my RSS feed earlier. And because today looks like it’s going to be a pretty full-on one for me (think: three, possibly four, meetings as part of my new ‘marketing’ career, and all of them with my 3y.o. and 1 y.o. at my feet. Gonna be fun…) I thought I’d share with you all, dear readers, how lovely a start to the day it was. A friend made a comment the other day that really resonated with me. In response to the obligatory greeting ‘How are you?” he said, “Well, I woke up on the right side of the ground this morning…” – well I’ve got one up on that. Not only am I on the right side of the ground today, but I’m happy, healthy, surrounded by a wonderful family, working in a fantastic new job and being intellectually stretched by my wonderful lecturers at QUT. And add to that, being inspired by @fionawb this morning. And all before breakfast! It’s going to be a great day… can’t you just feel it?
Have a lovely one. dear readers!
— Ceridwyn
Due to last night’s extreme lack of sleep, and this morning’s early rise to get Miss 6 off to her first day of Year One, I find myself sitting down to blog with no real clear idea of where this will end up. But that’s cool. I’ve been tagging stuff ‘random thoughts’, but on reflection, have noticed that they weren’t particularly random. So, using the (supposed) words of William Wallace made famous by Mel Gibson, “That’s something that we shall have to remedy then!”
Today is this blog’s one-month-and-one-day anniversary. Which makes me officially onto my ‘P’ plates, I’ve decided. Which brings me to some random facts about my travelling experiences, and some random thoughts about the same…
Well, that’ll do for now. More randomness tomorrow, I wonder? Have a lovely rest-of-the-day, dear readers!
It’s been a big day. Woke up to discover my dream job for 2011 had been advertised on Monday, with submissions of applications by close of business YESTERDAY! (That’ll teach me for having a husband and two daughters all having birthdays this past week, and so not turning on my computer as much, won’t it!)
So I applied anyway. And then felt depressed all day. Youngest is teething (and whingy), middle child has a rash over her entire back from the neighbour’s over-chlorinated pool (and MEGA whingy) and eldest is… well… she’s just too like me on every day of the week, so we butt heads anyway. A LOT!
Hubby has been out at a staff retreat for the last few days, so he arrived home tonight. Just as I discovered a colony of ants were playing at falling out of the lovely home they had made in my cathedral ceilings, all over my lounge room. Over chairs, over cushions, over the inevitable collection of toys that accumulates throughout the day. Over literally everything. Yay. But thanks to my lovely twitter support group, a #virtualtweetup, and a pretty massive #sugarhit, I feel as though I can focus enough to blog for the day.
Hmmm… that’s right. My topic: momentous event in my life number four. The first time I felt ‘released’ from the emotional prison that was suffocating me. And again, I should probably fill in some details as to how I arrived in that prison in the first place. So settle in… this may take a moment or two…
Well, as I mentioned in an earlier post, once upon a time, I helped to lead a cult. Really? Yes. Really. In my second year of my B.Ed at Griffith, Mt Gravatt, I was sitting on the grass near the bus stop when a girl several years older than me walked up and, out of the blue, invited me to a Bible study. Shocked? Yes! Because how was she to know that, not 30 seconds earlier, I had just finished praying that I might be more committed to my Saviour, and that I would find the way to do this.
Long story short, I ‘studied the Bible’ with her – and her fellow “church” members – for the next ten days, a couple of hours at a time. (Wow! I must have had SO much free time on my hands back then!) By the middle of the studies, I could see where they were heading. Verses from the Bible had been chosen, and were studied in detail, in such a way that the proof was irrefutable – I was NOT (as I had thought all my life) saved, I was NOT a Christian, and only by joining this “church” would I then become a Christian, and be saved. Tell me tell you – I fought this and fought it! What they were saying was absolute anathema… but in all of it, I had to keep going back to the Bible. Seeing the words. And agreeing with their point of view, even though I didn’t want to, because, really, there was no other explanation. So I joined. And a few months later, moved out of my parents, into a “sisters” house, renting with other girls from the “church”. By Semester One of my third year, I was ‘in deep’. I had virtually lost all contact with my non-“church” friends, and my family. By the end of that semester, I was one of the two Interns. As in, the leader of the “church”, Jordie Barham at that time, and his wife, Paula, had one assistant (Intern) each, and together, the four of us led the whole of the Brisbane “church” – almost 200 members at that point in time. I had decided to postpone Semester Two, in order to devote 22 hours per day to my ‘work’, and I joked how I would tell my parents that it was just for the rest of the year, rather than (as I had planned) for the rest of my life.
But by September, I was completely burnt out. I had not yet succeeded in ‘being fruitful’ (converting someone through to “church” membership) and the Internship was stripped from me and given to another. A month or so later, I feigned illness on Sunday morning, and while everyone else was at church, put through a distress call to my parents. They picked me up, drove me around to the three different “sister’s houses” I had lived in and left possessions at, and then took me back to their house, before the others in the “church” were any the wiser. And then we all ignored the phone, which rang off the hook 24 hours a day for the next 4 days or so.
Still, I had left physically, but not left mentally or emotionally. I knew that when I had left their “church”, that I had walked away from my salvation. That I had turned my back on God. That I was going to hell. And I remained utterly convicted of that fact. Nothing could convince me otherwise. After all – I had seen it for myself, in the black and white words of the Bible.
I finished Uni and got married. I then fought constantly with my husband, as he, a Christian, couldn’t understand how I could be that ‘stubborn’ about my opinion. And then the inevitable happened. After just one and a half years of marriage, we split up.
A week later, he came back. To find me as unrelenting as ever. I KNEW that I was going to hell, and nothing he could say or do would change that. He virtually begged me to go to marriage counselling. I agreed, but with the attitude that ‘nothing will change. They can’t convince me otherwise. I know it. I’ve seen it.’
So anyway, we went to counselling. Another couple, Graham Ballam and his lovely wife, the Baptist pastors at Victoria Point (where we were living) had one session with us. Just one. And then said, “You (two) don’t need marriage counselling. No – marriage counselling won’t work. Instead, you (Ceridwyn) need counselling. To get this wrong way of thinking out of your head. Because you’re wrong. What you believe. It’s wrong.”
My response? Sure. Bring it on. We agreed that I would go through ‘studying the Bible’ with them, each and every session, and I knew, I just KNEW, that by the end of it, I would have convinced them that they too, were not saved, not Christians, etc.
So it started. And it continued. And for every SINGLE verse, I explained the verse how the “church” had explained it to me. And then we would go back to the original meanings of the words themselves, in Hebrew and Greek, to the nuances of the verbs, to see whether the explanations provided by the “church” matched up with the reality of the original Hebrew and Greek words. And while the majority of them DID match up, there were one or two discrepancies. Maybe just in the ‘present continuous’ form of the verb being used, rather than what I had been taught, but it was enough. I saw a chink. A glimmer of light. And that was the beginning.
It took the best part of a fortnight. Hours and hours of debate, intense scrutiny of those same Biblical passages that had so convinced me of my hell-bound future. But it was worth it. By the end, I could smile. I could feel a peace that I hadn’t felt in years. And I felt, again, some hope. Again, just a glimmer… but it was a start. A release. I emerged from that prison a stronger person for being in there – and even more convicted of my God, and my salvation. So although I had endured quite a few years of being ‘bound and gagged’ (to quote the title of one of my brother’s movies), there was an end. A wonderful, wonderful end. Which, as it always does, resulted in a new beginning. Phew.
Well, that’s probably it for today. And I’d say that long enough too wouldn’t you agree?! Thank you for reading, and I’m heading back to say goodnight at that #virtualtweetup now…