Day: February 20, 2023

Blogging Insights — About Me

Fandango17 Comments

It’s Monday and Dr. Tanya is back with her weekly Blogging Insights prompt. Today Dr. Tanya wants to know our thoughts about About pages. She asks:

How important is the About page of your blog?

I think it’s important for every blogger to have an About page. In fact, I think it’s so important that I typically will not follow another blogger who doesn’t have one. I want to know at least a little something about the person behind the blog and the nature of the blog.

What constitutes the perfect About page?

I have no idea. The About page is an opportunity to tell others in the blogging community a little bit about who we are and what our blog is about. If an About page accomplishes that, then it’s perfect.

How often do you think an About page needs to be updated, and when is the last time you updated yours?

About pages are what’s called “static” pages. That means that they typically don’t change all that often. So unless something about you or you blog has changed over time, I’m not sure your About page needs to change.

My blog’s About page notes upfront that “My real world identity will remain a mystery.” I once had my identity stolen and it took many painful months to get that all straightened out. Consequently, I am perhaps overly guarded about revealing too much about myself, my personal life, and my family, which is why I blog anonymously.

I also explain that I have no particular niche for my blog. It is about “this, that, and the other.” And as my tagline suggests, my posts reflect my personal observations and perspectives on life, society, and politics. I try to infuse my posts, even those that cover deadly serious topics, with humor when I can. I occasionally throw into the mix some flash fiction.

Also on my About page, I reveal that I’m a retired, liberal, practical, and pragmatic septuagenarian. I also admit that I can be a bit cantankerous, as well as somewhat pedantic (i.e., fussy) when it comes to grammar, spelling, and usage.

Because none of what’s on my About page has changed since I created it in May 2017, I have never updated it.

Share Your World — 02/20/2023

Fandango13 Comments
Share Your World

Di, at Pensitivity101, is our host for Share Your World each week. Here are her SYW questions for this week, where she wants to know about our shopping habits.

  1. When food shopping, do you go with a list and stick to it, or buy on the hop? I type out a list on my iPhone and pretty much go by that list and stick to it. I will, upon occasion, make an impulse purchase, but that is the exception. Note that since I busted my hip last month, all of my grocery shopping has been done using either the Safeway or the Whole Foods Market apps for delivery to my doorstep.
  2. When clothes shopping, do you prefer to shop in a store or buy mail order? I buy almost everything online, including clothes.
  3. Do you like shopping for shoes? No, because I have narrow feet and it’s hard to find good fitting shoes. But I also buy my shoes online and most online shoe merchants have generous return policies, so I might buy three different sizes of the same shoe and keep the one pair that fits and return the other two.
  4. Do you enjoy shopping alone or with friends/partner? As I mentioned before, I do all my shopping online using my iPhone. If I’m buying something online I may hand my iPhone to my wife and ask her what she thinks of an item, but it’s mostly a solo activity for me.

Gratitude:

I am slowly but surely recuperating from my busted hip and broken humerus. I am hoping that by the middle of March I’ll be able to ditch the walker and get by with a cane and that maybe by May, with ongoing physical therapy, I’ll be close to back to normal. And I am continuing to be grateful to my wife for being by my side and helping me through all of this.

FOWC with Fandango — Attempt

Fandango15 Comments
FOWC

It’s February 20, 2023. Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “attempt.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.