I'm back!

I was not successful with my goal to post every day in November but I did learn a lot.

1. I discovered that I have something to write about every day.

I thought that this was going to be the hardest part - finding a topic to talk about every day. But in fact, and especially with the low minimum word count, I found that I didn't get to the pre-planned topics. Instead, I wrote about what had happened during my day, things that I was thinking about, news, etc. I was surprised by the fun and discovery of my every day life and delighted that I had thoughts to share about it.

2. I realized that I really need to take more time editing before I post.

This was partly a side-effect of the low bar I set when I decided to blog every day. My minimum word count meant that as soon as I met that count, I felt finished. Even if I was in the middle of a thought or hadn't carefully explained the experience or story. When I re-read some of the posts I was disappointed in their abrupt endings, poor layout, and bad readability

3. I decided that blogging every day is unnecessary.

I'm not trying to sell something to you. In fact, the number of daily emails that I get from sellers makes me quite certain that sending content *new* *you've got to see this* *everyone on your block has one, why don't you* every single day doesn't actually work from a marketing point of view. Plus, if you're a subscriber, you don't really want to see my blog popping up in your email every day - we all have email overload. Consistency but not overkill is what I'd like to have.

4. I need to set a specific time of day to write.

Too often, I would get to the end of the day and realize that I hadn't written anything; hadn't even thought about a topic. This stressed me out at the end of the day and ultimately reduced the quality of writing too.

5. I would like to spend more time on the aesthetic of my blog.

I focused just on the content and didn't create a look for the blog. Most of the 'also read' blogs are years out of date. Just in general, I need to update what the blog looks like and links to in order to make it a happy place with fun and interesting ideas to explore.


So I've decided:

I'd like to set a new goal of updating once per week, I'm aiming for Tuesdays. I'm keeping the word minimum to 200, but with a goal of at least 500.  I don't have many subscribers just yet, but hopefully once I'm consistent, I will find like-minded people who are interested in what I'm saying.

In truth though, I think what I really want out of this blog is a record and a memory of the beauty and fascination of life and all the amazing things I get to experience.  I'd like to be able to look back and find joy in memories made clearer because I put the time into writing about them.

Listening to: Best of Star Wars playlist on Spotify
Feeling ⛸⛸⛸ - This freezing rain makes me ice skate on my back porch!

Not a post about the elections

I won’t write about the elections in this blog except to say - GET OUT AND VOTE! - instead I will respond to one of the prompts from JOTU course:

Does the discovery that we live in a constantly expanding universe change the way that you think about life on Earth? What questions does it raise for you?

Some of the science that is explored in this course has really blown my mind. I particularly liked Brian Swimme’s raisin bread metaphor to understand the universe expansion. According to Hubble and other scientists’ measurements, the universe is constantly expanding. In fact, every single point of the universe is the center of that expansion.

Think about that - each one of us, each planet, each star, actually is the center of the universe.

But how does that work exactly? Swimme’s metaphor helps us to understand: imagine that you or the planet Saturn are a raisin in an unrisen, unbaked loaf of bread. As the loaf rises and bakes, it expands. From the perspective of a single raisin, every other raisin is moving away, expanding away from the raisin. No matter which raisin you are, the other raisins are expanding away.

It is an interesting philosophical point as well. Think of all the controversy about changing the idea of the Earth as the center of the universe. Galileo, Copernicus, many other early astronomers faced derision, expulsion, and even execution because of their ideas that challenged the religious and powerful thought of the time. It is still true that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth, however based on this idea of expansion, it appears that we could actually say that the Earth is the center of the universe.

It also places the individual human contemplating these ideas in the center of the universe. What a concept! Recognizing how tiny we are while at the same time discovering our centrality.

Listening to: Spotify’s playlist Rock your Rights

By the way, I link frequently to Wikipedia. I think it’s a great resource, and I make annual donations to the Wikimedia foundation. I hope you will consider making a donation too!