Tag: blogging

Not really feeling it

On By MezzoSherriIn Books Books Books, Memoir, Meta-Blogging, Pop Goes the Culture1 Comment

I’ve been a very lazy blogger this week. Took Wednesday off—the dog was all snuggly in my lap and I didn’t have the heart to displace her. And honestly, most Wednesday nights, Mr. Mezz plays D&D with his friends, so I might just plan for that to be a semi-regular night off while I dog-sit.

A picture of our dog, Cinnamon, lying right on top of my calf and foot as she sits in my lap.
See how she lies down right ON my foot? “You’re not going anywhere!”

And then I took last night off, because…

Um…

What the hell were we doing last night?

I know we watched something on DVR together, and then I watched Grey’s Anatomy on my own. But what was it we watched together? It was more than a regular length TV show.

(This is not a great sign about my current headspace.)

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200 Feet at a Time

On By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

There’s a metaphor I’ve been exceedingly fond of for quite a number of years. It’s an image that helps pop the balloon of any expectation that you need to have your entire journey mapped out in detail before you’re able to progress and grow and live and all that juicy stuff.

It’s this simple truth. When you’re driving at night, it’s not like the car headlights are showing you the entire route from Point A to Point B. They’re just showing you the next step on the road. But one after the other, seeing each next step a couple hundred feet at a time—well, that’s enough to get you wherever you need to go.

night-driving-black-and-white

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February Recap and Looking Ahead

On By MezzoSherriIn Books Books Books, Health at Every Size, Life-Long Learning, Memoir, Meta-Blogging, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study5 Comments

So, with the end of another month, time to milk another post out of the ongoing process of monitoring my progress on all these reading challenges. (One, two, three.) As with January, I’m going to do a small snapshot report on where I stand in regards to my initial reading plan, and where there’s been changes.

And, in light of the new diagnosis and research project I have going on, I’m also going to be putting some thought into a change of direction for the rest of 2019.

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A Reel Conundrum

On By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging, Pop Goes the CultureLeave a comment

I’m trying to decide whether I’m going to start adding film “reviews” to the content I create here on JALC. I learned a little bit about film analysis back in grad school: it wasn’t my core field, but I certainly had to have a side specialization in film/video/TV in order to do the lit/cultural studies hybrid work I most enjoyed.

So, even though I’m not even remotely deep enough in hubris to pretend to be the next Roger Ebert or anything like that, I do like to think I’d be able to come up with cogent film posts in a similar way to the posts I’ve been writing each time I finish a book.

But I’m sort of wrestling back and forth with whether this would be a valuable addition to JALC, or a version of mission creep.

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Two Strikes

On By MezzoSherriIn Memoir, Meta-Blogging, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

Well, as I feared and/or predicted, my dive into super-busyness did interrupt the blogging streak.

I’ll admit, I was kind of impressed with myself for getting Friday’s post up from the hotel room after a 4.5 hour drive from Boston to NYC. (Plus the last-minute housing crisis we had to negotiate, but that’s a story for another day.) But then, after a busy Saturday out-and-about, we decided to do something a little different and go out on the town!

Admittedly, it was to a game bar, so our #nerdcore rep remains intact. Still, after several hours of bar food, games and G&Ts, I just sort of forgot about blogging until we went lights out at around 11:30.*

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Echoes and Mirrors

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Flagrantly Feminist, Life-Long Learning, Topics of Study3 Comments

Now that the weekend is here, I can catch up on my Blogging 101 assignments. A few of the  assignments I haven’t posted about are “under-the-hood” ones: find new blogs, connect with people in the discussion boards, play around with the visual theme of your blog. I’ve done the first two and at some point I’ll make time to play a bit with the visual design here on JALC. During that Baltic cruise, I actually took a lot of landscape-orientation “texture” photos (things like a lacquered wood floor in The Hermitage, or a ceiling mosaic from the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood) thinking precisely of their use-value for Facebook and blog headers. Now if only I would actually take the time to download those July photos from my camera’s memory card to actually sort through them and start using them…

But one of the assignments was a post topic: the suggestion to

publish a post for your dream reader, and include a new-to-you element in it.

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And Every Color Illuminates

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Memoir, Meta-Blogging, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance3 Comments

Today’s post is a Blogging 101 “two-fer”: I’ll be playing catchup on the first two assignments for the challenge — a task made rather a lot easier by the fact that I completed these same two assignments back in September.

Taken as a pair, the assignments are basically a gesture of announcing one’s bloggy self to the big wide world, first with a statement of your intended focus/goals for blogging and, next, a revision of your blog name and tagline to bring it into alignment with said focus and goals.

(Tonight’s title, by the way, stems from my inability to roll with the inevitable Destiny’s Child reference and my insistence on looking to different musical inspiration…)

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Limping into 2015

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Memoir, Meta-BloggingLeave a comment

I’m not one for making New Year’s Resolutions. But I’ve built up a handful of New Year’s traditions over the decades.

There’s the cliched gestures of celebrations — a good bottle of champagne, watching the countdown on TV, a shared kiss with Mr. Mezzo as one year turns to another. There’s also more idiosyncratic and introspective rituals — journal-writing, drawing a Tao card to discern the theme/intention for my year.

But however cliched, common, introspective or idiosyncratic, I have an entire bushel of New Year’s traditions that’s been a little bit off-track.

Because I slid into 2015 in much the same state I was recently bemoaning from so much of my 2014 experience: sick.

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NaMo: Yes, No, Maybe So?

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Meta-Blogging, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study1 Comment

Mr. Mezzo has been spending the last week making preparations for his imminent descent in NaNoWriMo. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, NaNoWriMo is a (mostly) virtual event in which a bunch of writers band together and pledge to write a 50,000 word novel during the course of November. (Hence the name: NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth.* This will be the second time he’s done it, and I’m wondering if I should maybe do something of my own in solidarity.

Now, I’m not crazy enough to do NaNoWriMo. For starters, there’s the fact that I live in a Newtonian universe where time and energy are finite resources. I still have those two classes I’m finishing up, plus choir, plus the fact that I’m just now beginning to pull myself out of the black hole I recently fell into. More importantly than those practicalities is the fact that I don’t currently have a strong idea for a book. I know I’ll write one someday — but this day is not that day. (Or “this month is not that month.” Something like that.)

But NaBloPoMo? That’s a entirely different kettle of tea.

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A Walking Pace

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Memoir, Meta-Blogging, The Voices in My Head4 Comments

Clearly, I took a little blogcation over the weekend. I wish I could say it was because Mr. Mezzo and I were having a romantic getaway weekend (though we have one of those scheduled for October), or even because I was at one of my hard-working spiritual retreat weekends (though I have one of those scheduled for October, too).

The truth is just much much more mundane: I simply couldn’t get my head in the game.

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