Posts filed under ‘Administrative’
Unforsaken
Oh wee blog, I have not foresaken thee.
I am just swamped at work (typical) and now feel I have tried everything to get unswamped in my current role. As such, I feel comfortable that I’ve given it my best shot and will feel no regrets to leave. In the past I’ve made efforts to leave in a sort of angry ‘I can’t take this anymore’ kind of way. In contrast, I’m now working with folks to transfer to a different department within the same company. Initially, I think my workload will increase, but ultimately I think it will be better for me, my work-life balance overall, and my career prospects.
Also, I’ve been diagnosed with a reasonably serious illness in my spine. Serious in that it requires a series of day visits to the hospital for treatment (which I’m currently undergoing) and regular MRIs, but not that serious, in that it’s not degenerative or terminal or anything, although it might recur over time. Plus, it’s mild so far, so I’ll be ok… I’m not going to end up paralysed at this point! And hey, I’m re-using my hospital band… it’s loose enough for me to slip off my wrist, so I asked if I could just use the same one over and over and the nurses said I could, since I’m always the same person lol.
By the way, why do hospitals give you nasty sandwiches for lunch? I mentioned I was vego and I got egg and lettuce on white bread… none of which I eat, and all of which were particulary nasty versions of the foods in question. The woman who got them for me though was so proud to offer a meatless meal that I didn’t have the heart to not eat something… so I did some fancy bread slice switching so I didn’t have to eat the egg and then ate most of the disgusting lettuce sandwiches… I kinda hid some under the crusts though. I felt not eating crusts was kinda socially acceptable enough for me to leave them. I never even practiced food hiding as a kid, either… my mum had the eagle eye for food. I got served up peas for breakfast once because I wouldn’t eat them for tea. Mum won the battle but I won the war… she didn’t serve me peas again, but as a compromise, I had to eat lettuce (something green had to be on the plate!). I wonder if the copious amounts of eggs and lettuce I ate as a kid have anything to do with my complete dislike of them now…
Anyway, what with that stuff, Mr Teeny-bop’s birthday (including the last ever sleepover part of DOOM) and starting school, Yankee Elv’s on-going work woes and her own health issues, Loodle the escapee crossing a major road (fortunately in the middle of the night with much less traffic) and organising a bunch of extra stuff at work (such as the local company Clean Up Australia day), it’s been pretty full on.
However, just to show you that I haven’t forgotten you, and I’m still keeping up with all things weird and wonderful and environmental…
Check out these awesomely cool living root bridges! We have trees like this here in Brisbane so bridges like this would definitely be doable.
Root bridges in India
Living Root Bridges can tell you more about why they’re awesome…
Aussie ELV gets her Arnie on
I would like to make a confession. I forgot my line. It was some line out of a Terminator film. ‘Hasta la vista, baby’? Nope, not that one. Oh yeah, that’s right – it was ‘I’ll be back.’
Arnie says: 'I'll be back.' Sorry I forgot.
Sorry I forgot that. I did just disappear of the face of this blog without so much as a by-your-leave. I apologise. Look, I’ll say it now:
I’ll be back.
Too little, too late huh? Well, how about we start over, with a clean slate? That’s kinda how I’m going to be approaching this blog.
You see, I took an unexpected break because it was break from the blog or break from work, and this blog doesn’t pay me. I was so keen when I started blogging here. This blog was going to be a success, it was going to have a wide-audience, and there would be comments and discussion. It would give me the chance to start writing again, about stuff I was interested in, instead of just reviewing other people’s work (which is what I do for a living). I was going to foster this blogging ecstasy by posting everyday! To help motivate myself, I made categories and set up a schedule. I was going to be in blogging heaven! It was going to be sweet!!
Except it wasn’t. What happened instead was that I burned out. I felt stifled by the categories. Having to write a Spotlight every week was so much work. I found myself looking for easy things to write about, instead of stuff that I was really interested in. The Weekly Round-ups were a repeat of what other sites are already doing, took ages. I doubted myself. I spent more time struggling to write than I did trying new things I could write about, which meant I had nothing to write about, so I spent ages trying to think of something. Can you say Catch 22? Sometimes I struggled to fit what I wanted to write about into the three Rs, so I’d just write about boring stuff. It was hard to find pictures to include, and I had to include them, cos in my mind blogs without pictures are boring. The only thing I liked was Friday Feast, and that’s only because I already had those recipes typed up so it meant a day off. I felt like I was preaching rather than sharing or questioning. My writing felt flat. Discussion didn’t really happen the way I expected it to. I became obsessed with my blog stats. I discovered that roughly the same number of people turned up at the blog whether I wrote that day or not, regardless of what my topic was. More people got to this blog using the terms 90s cartoon and stuffed capsicum than any kind of eco anything. I’m not even going to go into some of the weird search terms that have lead people here. Clearly some people are kooky. My attempts to boost readership only worked temporarily for the particular post I linked to, then my readership would drop sharply again. I only had two people RSS-ing. I felt like a blog-tastic failure.
Basically, it all got too much. Too much pressure, which I put on myself. I’m not blaming anyone else for this. I think I just approached this blog the wrong way. I mean, when you start thinking in terms of taking a day off from something that is supposed to be fun, then you realise you lost the joy somewhere. Eco Lesbo Vego was never supposed to be a chore. I tried slowing down but it didn’t work, so I just had to go cold turkey. Absolute. Complete. Stop.
Lately though, I’ve been missing it (what ‘it’ was supposed to be), so I wanna give Eco Lesbo Vego another try. This time though, things will be a bit different.
- No schedule – I’ll write what I want, when I want
- Categories are ok, but they’ll fit what I write, as opposed to me trying to fit my writing into them
- New categories might pop up to fit new stuff I’m writing about
- No pressure to write every single day
- Write to make myself happy, about topics that interest me
- Write when I have time
- No such thing as a day off – blogging will no longer be a chore!
- Only check my blog stats once a day at maximum (preferrably less often – and yes, this should indicate how obsessed I was getting)
- Weekly Round-up will be less structured, less news obsessed, and might disappear altogether… we’ll see
- Maybe the blog will end up more lesbo and vego, instead of mostly eco – but it will all still be related to the environment. But don’t blame me if the odd picture of Marlee Matlin, Lucy Lawless or Jennifer Beals recycling or digging in their garden occasionally appears…
- Less obsession with building readership
- More time doing new stuff, rather than writing about it.
So that’s my new deal with myself. I guess we’ll see how it works out.
P.S. Thanks to everyone who did check in on the blog regularly, comment and was generally supportive. Without you guys, I would have burned out way earlier. I really appreciate your support and hope you’ll give this gig another chance!
Eco Lesbo Vego is go! (next week)
Eco Lesbo Vego is still in the set-up phase. Sadly, I have a full-time job and (happily) a social life, so I can’t get it all done as quickly as I’d like.
The blog should be up and running by the end of the week.
In the meantime, take a look at the Bio page to get an idea of who’ll be blogging at you with you come next week.
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