Tag: Blogging101

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.

Continue reading “Echoes and Mirrors” →

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…)

Continue reading “And Every Color Illuminates” →

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.

Continue reading “Limping into 2015” →

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.

Continue reading “A Walking Pace” →

Dreaming of Readers

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Memoir, Meta-Blogging, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head3 Comments

Today’s assignment from Blogging 101 is two fold:

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

So without further ado, let me get part two of the assignment out of the way post-haste by admitting that, ever since I saw the phrase “Dream Reader,” this has been stuck in my head.

The dreaded earworm strikes again!

Continue reading “Dreaming of Readers” →

The Three F’s

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Memoir, Meta-Blogging, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself2 Comments

The Day 2 challenge for Blogging 101 is about editing your blog title and tag line. To me, it’s an additive exercise to yesterday’s “who am I and why am I writing” meditation — now just taken that one next step of distilling that mission statement to its essence in order to create a title and tagline that, to quote the assignment, “give visitors context and help them decide to stick around.”

Obviously, being as I am already 5 years and/or 6 months into the game, I have a well-established blog title,* and it’s one I’m not eager to change. The question of tagline, though, is wide open for consideration, and I’m happy to talk about both these elements after the jump.

Continue reading “The Three F’s” →

In Medias Manifesto

On By MezzoSherriIn Blogging Challenges, Flagrantly Feminist, Life-Long Learning, Meta-Blogging, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, Topics of Study2 Comments

Because I have decided that 5 hours of sleep per weeknight is just too much of a luxury, I have decided to enroll in another challenge over at WordPress’s Blogging U. Blogging 101 is intended for individuals right in the start-up phases of bloggy creation. This invitation to register articulates the deliverables in this fashion:

On Day 30, you’ll have six (or more!) published posts and a handful of drafts, a customized theme that reflects your personality, a small but growing audience, a good grasp of blogging etiquette — and a bunch of new online friends.

So, considering that I first founded JALC some 5 years ago, and revived it more than 6 months ago, I am either well behind the times or way ahead of the game on this one. Still, I think it’ll be a good exercise for me.

I’ve been in recent conversations about the value of design thinking, and the ways that taking the time to step back and question your automatic habits and questions can be a good way to unlock a more intentional creativity. I see the Blogging 101 container as a way for me to foster that sort of intentionality here on JALC.

So, here we go…

Continue reading “In Medias Manifesto” →