Getting into the 21rst century with blogging

Yep, that's the way I want to "spell" first with a -rst!  After all, it's my blog!

This is a short blog to introduce my blog to the world!

On my blog, I've already written "about me" and two other posts--one of which has already appeared on Facebook and the other I wrote a couple of years ago (and updated a couple of weeks ago), when I was thinking about blogging--not really knowing what blogging was exactly.

Perhaps you are already familiar with blogs and read several or even blog yourself. Or perhaps you, like me, are new to blogging and to reading blogs.  I'm hoping that you will enjoy reading my blog!

If this has been set up correctly, this post should be the first one that appears on Facebook.  And from now on whenever I blog and hit the publish button, a link to my new post should appear on Facebook.

Some of my posts on my blog will be things that I write on the spot so to speak--inspirational pieces that life calls to me to write.  Other posts will be pieces that I've already written.  Since I have retired, I have begun to write my memoirs and want to share them with you.

If you want to follow my blog, which I hope that you will,  my "promise" is to post at least once a week.  So if you should check back at a week's end, say Thursday or Friday, you will find a new post!

I want to say as Emily Dickinson wrote in her "Letter to the World," that my blog is "committed/To hands I cannot see;/For love of her [letter--my blog], sweet countrymen,/Judge tenderly of me!" 

Why a blog?

Blogging--a funny word--actually it is short for web-log.  It’s a place where one may write entries on the world wide web.  One can keep a log, a diary, or a journal here.  My daughter, Ellen Mallernee Barnes, a professional writer, has a blog, where she writes about her life, family, interests, hobbies, etc.  Here's the link to it: blackandwhiteandlovedallover.

From his smart phone one day at lunch, my friend Brian read me my daughter’s blog entry from Tucson and Sedona, where her family was on a trip.  It fascinated me to hear about a day of her trip.  Of course, I had gotten texts and occasional phone calls from the trip, but the blog was much more detailed, and it had these wonderful pictures. Most everywhere I go now-a-days, someone comments on how much s/he is enjoying Ellen’s blog.  Her blog gets a lot of “traffic.”  And there are wonderful pictures on the blog.  So now I read Ellen's blog with regularity.

Since 1972, I had taught high school English in Cheatham County, Tennessee, and now I luxuriate in being retired.  But even longer than being a teacher, I have been a "contemplative," one who ponders on and meditates about all sorts of things.  I suppose my thinking deeply about things is what drew me to teaching English in the first place.  And certainly my contemplating hasn’t stopped with my not teaching.

In the first two years of my retirement, I wrote letters to the editor of our local newspaper South Cheatham Advocate on some local educational issues, and I wrote a few columns on such topics as growing older, being a grandmother, and adopting Kingston Springs as my hometown.  As a matter of fact, there was a year or so when I was still teaching that I wrote a regular column in the Advocate.  And of course, I used to share my writing and certainly my thoughts with my students.  Yes, I enjoy writing!

So my daughter Ellen gave me the gift of setting up a blog for me, and I propose to write regularly again.  This time my thoughts will appear at least once a week in this blog.  Because as I told my friend when I met him for lunch yesterday to celebrate his 60th birthday, "welcome to the no bull-shit decade!"  I, myself, am 64 now, and one thing that I want to grapple with on this blog is this "second half of life."  Our American society/culture has lots of rites of passage for the first fifty years of life:  graduating from high school (and college), landing a job/career, getting married, having children, getting that first home, getting that raise/promotion, starting your own business, raising children, having the children graduate, etc.  Then retiring.  So what are the "rites of passage" for the next fifty years or so of life, from 50 to 100?  So stay tuned, dear friends!

???????????? for hearts

Just the other day, I had a really bad day.  And later that day after talking things over with a friend of mine, she sent me a serious of questions marks in a text message, which looked like this:  ???????????????

It was late in the day so I didn’t text nor call her back to explain what those question marks meant.  But the next morning in yoga class, she was there, and I remembered that text from the night before and said, “I got a strange text from you last night; it was all questions marks.”

To which she responded, “Oh, you don’t have a smart phone!  I sent you hearts--all different colors!”  But my phone--a vintage phone--doesn’t have the capacity to transmit or receive pictures.  So her message was hardly what she expected it to be!

Isn’t that just like how it happens sometimes when we try to communicate something to someone and are misinterpreted or misunderstood?  Having been someone who has been accused many times in my life of being tactless or too direct, I wonder how many times, I meant one thing, but it was taken differently than I intended.

We don’t have control of how others receive us, do we?  And we are busily sending emails and texts because we don’t want to take the time to call, or we don’t want to “bother” someone.  Some people say that emails and texts can be even more often misunderstood than talking.

I have another friend who prefers to talk face-to-face when there’s something important to say or to hear.  She says that then she can watch a person’s eyes, facial expression, and body language to get the true meaning beyond the words.

So with technology and social media, we probably have even more ways to be misinterpreted.  Yet, accurate communication is even more important in our diverse world today.  Communication is the key to good relationships.  I want to be more aware of my words (and actions) and to slow down and to take the time to be as sure as I can be that what I communicate is not misunderstood.