WordPress

WDP — Time to Unplug

Fandango9 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?
View all responses

I usually spend an hour or two on my iPhone from the time I get in bed until the time I actually go to sleep. I spend that time mostly on WordPress, either catching up with posts that bloggers I follow have published earlier in the day or drafting posts I plan to publish the next day.

So how do I know when it’s time to unplug? Well, one clue is when my eyes get so tired that I can no longer focus on what’s on my iPhone’s screen. Another is when my eyelids feel so heavy that I can’t keep them open.

But what is most common is that I fall asleep in the process of drafting a new post and start to dream (sometimes about what I was writing, but other times totally unrelated). Then I will suddenly wake up and realize I was in the middle of writing a post. It can often be quite fascinating when I read what I wrote as I was in transition from wakefulness to being asleep.

What do I do to make it — unplugging — happen? I turn off my iPhone, turn off my night table light, shift into a reclining position, shut my eyes, and go to sleep.

Image credit: Bing Image Creator.

Sunday Poser — Addicted to Stats

Fandango4 Comments

For this week’s Sunday Poser, Sadje has asked…

How often you check your blog stats? Does it make a difference to you, if people are visiting your blog more or less?

Okay, I admit it. I check my stats throughout the day. Hey, they’re right there on my home page every time I open the app. As you can see from the graph above, my stats bounce up and down from day to day with what seems to be little rhyme or reason. Some days I publish more posts and get more views, but other days more posts yield fewer views. Go figure!

Does it make a difference to me if more or fewer people are reading my blog? Well, it won’t change what I write or how I write. But I will confess that it feeds my fragile ego when my number of views are higher than when they are lower.

There are two other sets of stats I look at, but generally only on a weekly basis. One is my iPhone’s screen time stats. It apparently shows me the number of hours per day that I spend looking at my iPhone’s screen. Here are last week’s stats:

That’s a lot of hours per day, isn’t it? Assuming I get eight hours sleep and 16 hours awake, I’m spending about 68% of my waking hours looking at my iPhone’s screen. And of that, 47% is on Jetpack (the WordPress iOS app).

The other iPhone stat I look at is my battery stat. I’m not sure what it measures, but it’s different than my screen time stats:

According to my battery usage stats, I average only 9 hours and 25 minutes looking at my iPhone’s screen, almost two fewer hours than I do according to my screen time stats. But in this case, 55% of my time is on the Jetpack app!

Bottom line, yeah, I’m a big time stat checker.

Blogging Insights — My Blogging Backstory

Fandango2 Comments

For this week’s Blogging Insights prompt, Dr. Tanya has asked what our “blogging backstory” is. She wants to know:

Why and how did you begin blogging?

Blogging is an important, integral, and meaningful part of my life. I first started blogging in 2005 and my plan is to continue to blog as long as I am mentally and physically able to do so.

With that said, just yesterday, Lorraine, aka blindzanygirl, asked us in her blog, “Why Do You Blog?” My response to her question is essentially the answer to Tonya’s question about why and how I began blogging. So rather than reinventing the wheel, I’m going to copy and paste my response to Lorraine’s question yesterday as my response to Tanya’s question today.

I started blogging in 2005 when I mentioned to a work associate that I enjoyed writing short stories and also writing letters to the editor of my local newspaper, a number of which had been published. He suggest that I should consider blogging. So I did. First I blogged at Blogger. Then, in 2009, I migrated to TypePad. In 2013, I switched to WordPress, and by then I was addicted to blogging.

By 2015, I had become so preoccupied with blogging that my work was suffering, my marriage was suffering, and I knew I had to reassess my priorities. So in April of 2015, I abruptly quit blogging.

I retired at the end of 2016. By then my wife and I had also sorted out our issues. And with the insanity of Donald Trump having been elected POTUS, I was itching to get back to blogging in order to express my outrage.

So on May 14, 2017, I published my first post on This, That, and the Other.

That is my blogging backstory. I still like to express myself creatively by writing short stories (flash fiction). I still enjoy writing letter-to-the-editor-type post wherein I share my opinions, views, perspective, and outrage. But most of all, what keeps me blogging is the ability to interact daily with a wonderful, supportive global community of bloggers who encourage me to keep on keeping on.

Why Do I Blog?

Fandango16 Comments

Lorraine, aka blindzanygirl, asked us today, “Why Do You Blog?”

I started blogging in 2005 when I mentioned to a work associate that I enjoyed writing short stories and also writing letters to the editor of my local newspaper, a number of which had been published. He suggest that I should consider blogging. So I did. First I blogged at Blogger. Then, in 2009, I migrated to TypePad. In 2013, I switched to WordPress, and by then I was addicted to blogging.

By 2015, I had become so preoccupied with blogging that my work was suffering, my marriage was suffering, and I knew I had to reassess my priorities. So in April of 2015, I abruptly quit blogging.

I retired at the end of 2016. By then my wife and I had also sorted out our issues. And with the insanity of Donald Trump having been elected POTUS, I was itching to get back to blogging in order to express my outrage.

So on May 14, 2017, I published my first post on This, That, and the Other.

So why do I blog? Well, I still like to write short stories (flash fiction). I still enjoy writing letter-to-the-editor-type post wherein I share my opinions, views, perspective, and outrage. But most of all, it’s my ability to interact daily with a wonderful, supportive, and global community of bloggers who encourage me to keep on blogging.

What about you? Why do you blog? Click on the link to Lorraine’s post at the beginning of this post and let her know.

WDP — Social Media

Fandango15 Comments

How do you use social media?

The short answer to this question is that I don’t use social media at all.

Despite the image I selected to use at the top of this post, I’m not anti-social media. Well not really. Hey, if you’re into social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, or TikTok, that’s fine. Whatever floats your boat. Me, though, I am not active on any of those social media sites.

My wife has a Twitter account and she almost always gets angry when she reads the tweets. Who needs that? My kids have Facebook and Instagram accounts where they post a lot of photos, but they also send those same photos to us via email because they know we aren’t on those social media sites anymore.

Some might argue that WordPress is a social media site, but I disagree. It does have a social aspect to it via the exchange of comments. But it’s primarily a blog hosting site that allows us to express ourselves through our posts. The community aspect of WordPress is icing on the cake.