I've been taking my list of goals for the year seriously and I'm trying to be mindful of the items on it, in order to look for opportunities to advance them. (I think blogging three times this week -- so far -- is a fine example of that!) I realized that my blog anniversary is coming up, and it would be nice to have made progress on my "Get a new blog design" goal before then.
Last night I decided to take the plunge and made major changes to the layout. I figured that if I pay someone to do a full-blown re-design, I'll have to upgrade it on Blogger in any case, so might as well do that. I've been cobbling together bits and pieces of HTML on the original layout to keep things afloat for a couple years and it just gets harder and harder to make it what I want. That is simply not where my talents lie.
As you can see, if you've ever been here before, things look seriously different. I realize that it's not great just yet, there are still a lot of things that need to be tweaked. I'd let you tell me what you like or don't like, but the biggest problem I've encountered is that my comment function is not working with the new template. I'm sure it's an easy fix, but I haven't been able to puzzle it out on my own. I'm getting some help with it, but people have been coming to visit today and I wanted to thank you and apologize for not having comments working.
Because of this, I've added something now that I'd planned to add later: A link to me on Twitter. I've resisted doing that for a long time, but the reasons for doing so seem less relevant to me now. Twitter has become a huge part of my life and I want to integrate it into my blog. Over there to the right is a rather clunky-looking widget, which I hope to improve on, that will take you to my Twitter page. If you're not already following me there, I hope you'll come by and say hey. If you are, please feel free to leave your feedback there until I get the comments up and running. Because, let's face it, tweets are great but there's nothing to equal a comment left with a post.
So, technically, I've met the challenge of my goal because this definitely constitutes a "new blog design." But I'm not ready to cross it off because it's not the final version and it doesn't meet the spirit of the goal. So let's consider it to be struck through with a dotted line for the time being. I'll keep updating the progress over there in the Welcome message and I hope you'll come back to watch as things develop.
***UPDATE: For the moment, it's essentially back to the old template. But the header and comments are back up. (Thank you Emma!) But the Welcome message I mentioned is gone. This will be a work in progress. Thanks for your patience.***
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
January 13, 2010
January 10, 2010
The Year of Lists
Happy New Year! I figured that I'd let all the other bloggers do their new year posts first, so you wouldn't get overwhelmed.
OK, we both know that's a lie. As usual, I put it off because I don't do resolutions and I wasn't sure yet what I wanted to say for my first post of the year.
Finally, inspiration struck the other day, in Barnes & Noble, of all places. I took my mom there so she could get a 2010 calendar book for her appointments. B&N usually has so many and discounts them by 50% after Christmas/New Years, so we were hoping for a good buy. While she was perusing the selection (which was pretty thin by then, unfortunately), I checked out a few and hit gold. I found a rather unassuming-looking volume called Listography Weekly Calendar: Your Year In Lists.
I love lists. I think most people do. I don't make them as frequently or as predictably as some (e.g., the ubiquitous "My Top 10 List of the Year!"), but there's something incredibly satisfying about making and completing a list, some of the reasons for which I was amused to find here. The Listography calendar, while it serves as a conventional weekly planner, has the additional twist of giving you a topical list to complete each week, accompanied by a quirky illustration. As the back cover says, the lists "range from autobiographical to aspirational to holiday-specific" and I fell in love with the idea of the calendar guiding me to make lists to share here.
Because, let's face it, I'm not always good with the ol' follow-through here at The Ping. The only thing that I successfully did for an extended period of time was The Year of Living Generously, and even that had an element of failure because I felt I couldn't write about it after a certain point. (I did complete it, though, even after being laid off, and I'm pretty proud of that!)
The calendars topics are random enough to keep my interest (I'm hoping), amusing and relevant enough to make for some good posts (I'm really hoping), and already prepared so I won't have to struggle for a topic. The idea of that makes me a little giddy, I have to admit, so I'm encouraged that it's something I can stick with for a while.
As we've completed the first full week of our new year, it's time for the first list (hopefully the first of many!) in no particular order except as how they occurred to me.
List 1: My Goals For The Upcoming Year
OK, we both know that's a lie. As usual, I put it off because I don't do resolutions and I wasn't sure yet what I wanted to say for my first post of the year.
Finally, inspiration struck the other day, in Barnes & Noble, of all places. I took my mom there so she could get a 2010 calendar book for her appointments. B&N usually has so many and discounts them by 50% after Christmas/New Years, so we were hoping for a good buy. While she was perusing the selection (which was pretty thin by then, unfortunately), I checked out a few and hit gold. I found a rather unassuming-looking volume called Listography Weekly Calendar: Your Year In Lists.
I love lists. I think most people do. I don't make them as frequently or as predictably as some (e.g., the ubiquitous "My Top 10 List of the Year!"), but there's something incredibly satisfying about making and completing a list, some of the reasons for which I was amused to find here. The Listography calendar, while it serves as a conventional weekly planner, has the additional twist of giving you a topical list to complete each week, accompanied by a quirky illustration. As the back cover says, the lists "range from autobiographical to aspirational to holiday-specific" and I fell in love with the idea of the calendar guiding me to make lists to share here.
Because, let's face it, I'm not always good with the ol' follow-through here at The Ping. The only thing that I successfully did for an extended period of time was The Year of Living Generously, and even that had an element of failure because I felt I couldn't write about it after a certain point. (I did complete it, though, even after being laid off, and I'm pretty proud of that!)
The calendars topics are random enough to keep my interest (I'm hoping), amusing and relevant enough to make for some good posts (I'm really hoping), and already prepared so I won't have to struggle for a topic. The idea of that makes me a little giddy, I have to admit, so I'm encouraged that it's something I can stick with for a while.
As we've completed the first full week of our new year, it's time for the first list (hopefully the first of many!) in no particular order except as how they occurred to me.
List 1: My Goals For The Upcoming Year
- Take another trip to Los Angeles to visit friends
- Find or create a job that I can stand
- Get a new blog design
- Put together a disaster-preparedness kit
- Blog more regularly
- Find a volunteer position
- Complete some cross-stitch projects
- Pare down my possessions
- Drink more wine
- Take more photos and organize them
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