While the Pizza Bakes

When I started this blog back in 2011 I thought I might do a post everyday for a week about Easter – didn’t finish that.  Then I thought I’d do something a newsy – comments on current events.  Then there was this little cancer thing that happened in my life and the blog went in a very different directions – personal essays, poems, woodworking, funnies, cat pictures, etc.

I’ve kept the original name, “Andrew’s View of the Week.” Likely I should have changed it to something else a long time ago.  Yeah, I often write about last week, but just as often I don’t go there.  Most of the time I just sit down and write something – I lack any sense of direction on these posts.

Still, a bunch of people read this stuff.  Weird.  Thank you.

I have given thought to refocusing and doing something more intentional with my writing here or at least change the blog name to something that is closer to what really gets posted – you know, mostly random thoughts with a touch of humor and occasional insight (well at least I’d like to think I sometimes have something insightful to say).

Over the years I’ve had different thoughts on what to rename this blog.  Once I considered changing the title to, “Grandpa’s Workshop” and focus on woodworking.  That’s when I started doing my sometimes, “Wednesday Woodworking” posts.  The reality is that I don’t do enough shop time to have much to say on shops.  Long time readers may have noticed the complete lack of shop posts in say the last five months.

Then there was the phase where I thought I just retell a bunch of my father’s old jokes and stories.  “My Father Said,” was the working title for that, but then I realized that I’ve already posted most the stories father told and likely I’d run out of material in eight months.

Yes, I’m in this blog for the long haul.  No idea what that means, but I like the sound of it.

Last week I was thinking I’ll just shift to an all gardening blog with the working title, “Composter Roaster.”  Yeah, moving along …

Then it hit me, a great title, “While the Coffee Brews.” Perfect, shows that I’ve limited how much time I write and hints that the thoughts and posts are somewhat random.  Just one little problem: I don’t drink coffee.  Except for my Saturday trips to Starbucks to get a latte which has espresso, a kind of compressed coffee.

Maybe, “While the Milk Steams”

Actually I’m a tea drinker and I have a number of readers in the UK so perhaps, “While the Tea Brews,” might work.  Although, I’ve noticed that the Brits seem to be drinking more coffee than tea lately.  Weird.

But then I decided that I should be honest.  I don’t write while brewing beverages and often my afternoon tea is normally long gone by the time I sit down to write on a Sunday afternoon.  Then I procrastinate by looking things up and waffling back and forth on what to write that day.

Then it’s time for me to make the Sunday pizza.  Yes, Heather and I have a pizza on Sundays.  It’s my night to cook and pizza is one thing I can be relied on not to screw up.  It kind of goes like this: I mess around with writing something and then it’s time for pizza.  I panic, get the pizza in the oven and have 16 minutes to fix up my blog post into something postable because when the pizza is done, we watch Monty Don and the odds of me completing anything after that is remote.

So, I’m thinking of renaming this blog, “While the Pizza Bakes.”  Cool right? Let me know what you think of that title in the comments.

But if honesty is the point here, likely I won’t change anything – you can’t rename a blog in 16 minutes …

Posted in General, Writing | Tagged , , , | 37 Comments

Friday Wisdom – A Journey

A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click.

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Garden

The most difficult task in writing a post is coming up with a title.  Sometimes that’s all I’ve got – a title and nothing.  Sometimes I start with a title and then write something unrelated to the title.  Sometimes I start writing and then say, “what is this junk?” and delete the whole thing.

This post has little to do with a garden or gardening. Oh, well I guess I could make the metaphorical leap from writing to gardening.  Ideas are seeds, a story grows and publishing is like a harvest.  I’ll let you write that essay.

Speaking of planting: A couple of months ago I sent out a few of my poems to some lit magazines. So far I’ve had two rejections and I’m still waiting to hear from two more.  I do need to send these to more publishers.  I do wonder why they are taking so long to respond.  Perhaps they’re just busy or just maybe I’m moving up the editorial chain and am seriously being considered.

It’s a new year, let’s go with optimism.

Speaking of a new year – it’s the time when I review things I’ve done and think about plans for the year.  I’ve been thinking about what to do with this blog but first I went and checked, turns out this will be my 853rd post since I started this blog in the spring of 2011.  If I keep my current posting rate, I might make 1,000 posts by the end of this year.  I don’t have plans to change how I post here, but I’ve randomly thought that it might be time for a change.

One change that has been going here in our house is actually about gardening.  Recently Heather and I discovered Monty Don, the UK gardening guru.  He’s best known for hosting Garden’s World and has a large following. We’ve also watched his series, Big Dreams, Small Spaces, where he goes around helping people create gardens in very small spaces.  I have to say that I’ve been quite inspired by his approach to gardening.

So inspired that I’ve been researching how to grow tomatoes and I now know more about mulch than I’ve ever known before.  We decided to do more in our garden this year and I’m looking forward to being more active there.  Yesterday I spent most of the day assembling a rotating mulching bin and testing the shredder.  Next week I’ll install the rain barrels and if the weather holds, might start building the new raised beds.

There is one interesting thing about Mr. Don that I’d like to mention: He’s a self-taught gardener.  He has a degree in English from Cambridge and describes himself as an “amateur gardener and a professional writer.”  He has published a number of books.

So maybe gardening is good for writing …

I’ll let you know.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | 34 Comments

Friday Wisdom: Lottery

If all those psychics know the winning lottery numbers, why are they all still working?

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