I’m not sure if anybody even reads this blog anymore. Life has been far too busy for me to write as often. I think I posted once per year for the past couple of years. I’m proud this version of it has been running since 2004 [1]. I plan to do much more writing this year.
I recently read an article about effective blogging. The entire article talked about how to write better articles faster. In summary, you set a topic, plan a strategy/outline, and fill in the blanks. Sounds like the same strategy I was taught to use in writing class in school – makes sense because it worked back then and it should carry over into blogging as well.
You see, by planning how you will write the story, you greatly shorten the time-consuming process of editing and re-writing to make it all fit together nicely. Turns out having a plan really does work. So did I make a plan before writing this? No.
This blog has no strategy. No sales motive. It’s literally my journal for the world to see. The World of Brian, if you will.
Moving on…
The most exciting things in my life lately (besides my family and working from home) have been wood projects. We refurbished our wooden kitchen table, built shelves in the garage, and are now working on a workbench. After that, I plan to build a standing wall-desk in my office. The best part is – I make a 3-D model of everything I want to build first, then execute it. It’s tons of fun to build projects this way and it’s the highlight of my weekend. Actually – spending free time with my family is the highlight, but read on, we do this together.
Speaking of weekends, ours usually goes something like this: we go to the local farmers market and buy overpriced vegetables, then we come back and relax while eating lunch and put the boys down for their nap. Then we work on a project together (lately, the wood projects in the garage). Sometimes we babysit the cousins and that is usually tons of fun – the other day we played a game of catch with a few tennis balls. Very simple, but with kids that age it was an exciting game filled with lots of laughter.
I love the simple things in life. A tasty meal. A good conversation. A long walk on a sunny day. Noticing big white clouds in the sky. Hiking at night under a full moon. Watching the stars. Even having a clean kitchen countertop is oddly satisfying.
Learn to value relationships more than things. The world is not always “this or that” – it’s ever changing and growing; breathing. Embrace the breath of life.
Moving on…
We’ve been watching BBC’s Sherlock Holmes on Netflix recently. I love the shows so far. Just finished series 2 and looking forward to finishing the final 3rd one. I’m also hoping we can get to the movies soon and watch Logan. It’s hard to plan babysitting for twins. Luckily we have family close by to help. Marvel movies have been pretty awesome and I’m looking forward to the next ones.
Well that’s all for now. I’m up late blogging because I can’t sleep, and it’s working. I feel tired now.
Until next time.
- In 2004 I switched from an HTML/PHP based custom “news about me” website to using blogger.com. It was when I finally hopped on the bandwagon and started calling what I was doing “blogging”. Though later I switched to WordPress, I’ve kept my blogging history since then. The articles I wrote from 1999-2004 are not online anymore. I have a copy of them on my hard drive an haven’t gotten around to re-publishing them.