”What?”

WDP — Difficulty Saying Goodbye

Fandango11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
View all responses

I suppose my answer to this question is the phase that lasted for about 48 years was the most difficult to say goodbye to. That phase was my working years. I started that phase when I entered the workforce after graduating from college until I retired in 2016.

When I was working I never had a problem answering the question, “What do you do for a living?” I was always quick to answer and to go into whatever amount of detail about my work than the questioner could tolerate. I never answered that I was a husband and a father, even though being a husband and a father were important parts of who I was. I was proud of what I did for a living, ineas good at what I did for a living, and I allowed what I did to essentially define who I was.

So after I finally retired in 2016, when asked what I do for a living, I would hem and haw and finally say something like, “I’m retired now, but before I retired I used to….”

If pressed about what I do now that I’m retired, I answer, “Oh you know. This, that, and the other.”

Sadje’s Sunday Poser — How, What, Who

Fandango9 Comments

There’s an old saying that goes, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” That saying has been attributed to Mae West, an American stage and film actress, playwright, screenwriter, singer, and sex symbol. But who said it, in my opinion, is not as important as what was said.

That saying may be applicable for verbal interactions, where you’re communicating face-to-face or orally. But as bloggers, we depend upon the written word. That said, often how you “say” it helps communicate what you have to say. You can use humor to enhance your message. You can also be sure to use proper grammar, punctuation, and usage to ensure that your readers aren’t distracted, causing your words to lose, if not their meaning, at least their impact. So, both what and how you say (write) it, are important.

Now Sadje has added a new dimension to this familiar question by throwing in who to the what and how. She asks…

When you use a quote, what’s more important: who said it or what they said?

Again, in the context of blogging, I usually search for interesting, relatable, and sometimes controversial quotes to use for my responses to Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompts. Some of the quotes I use are from “anonymous,” in which case, “who” I’m quoting is unknown. But my objective is to focus on what the person I’m quoting said. I don’t really care who I’m quoting as long as what words I’m quoting resonate.

So, to answer Sadje’s Sunday Poser question, when it comes to choosing quotes for my blog, more often than not, it’s what they said that is more important that who said it.

One-Liner Wednesday — Children

Fandango9 Comments

Taught how to think

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

Margaret Mead, American cultural anthropologist

This is one of the biggest issues we have in our educational system these days. Children are not taught critical thinking anymore. They are taught how to memorize things so that they can pass standardized tests. We need to foster their inquisitiveness and spend more time teaching them how to think, rather than telling them what to think.

Written for today’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt from Linda G. Hill.

One-Liner Wednesday — Brevity

Fandango16 Comments

2E131322-2144-4A3D-A792-984B83EDC4B9My wife asked last week me if I didn’t “get” the concept of a one-liner. “Why would you ask me that?” I asked her. She then proceeded to point out how long my responses to Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompts usually are. “Way more than one line,” she said. “Does everyone who responds to her one-liner prompt do that?” she asked. I told her that most did not. “So why, then, do you?”

I explained to her that the reason my One-Liner Wednesday posts exceed one line is because I like to help people understand why I decided to choose whatever one-liner I chose and what it means to me.

“But it’s supposed to be a one-line response,” she said. “When you respond to a 100 word prompt, do you write 100 words and then add another 200 or 300 words explaining why you wrote the first 100 words?”

“No,” I said.

“Then you should limit your One-Liner Wednesday post to one line. To quote Shakespeare,” she added, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’m going to use that Shakespeare quote for my next One-liner Wednesday post.”

I think my wife will be very pleased when she sees how I’ve taken her advice.

What?

Fandango11 Comments

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Some weird shit has been going on recently on WordPress. I’m getting a bunch of comments, most of which are being tagged as spam by Akismet, but a few are getting though, that simply say, “What?”

They all have a similar URL. It starts “www.sexy.” followed by three to five seemingly random letters, followed by “xyz.” And I’m getting between 10 to 20 such “What?” cooments a day.

Is anyone else getting these garbage comments?

Also, last night at around 10:30 or 11:00 pm PDT, I was unable to save a post I had just written. I got a message saying that my draft post could not be saved and when I went to check my draft folder, the message on my screen said my draft folder was empty. When I checked my published posts folder, it said that it, too, was empty. Egads!

I signed off of the WordPress app, shut down my iPhone, and then signed back onto my iPhone and to the WordPress app, but this time I couldn’t get anything…even my stats! I thought I had lost my whole blog.

I checked other apps: Facebook, my newsfeed, Google, iTunes. Everything but WordPress was functioning as usual.

I waited about 40 minutes and tried WordPress again — and everything was fine. The draft post I had been working on was there. So were all the others in my draft folder as were all of my published posts. And my stats were showing again. Phew!

So did any of you experience a WordPress outage for around 40 minutes last night or was it just me?