Tag Archives: life

I’m Back

Posted on by
8

I’m done neglecting this blog, at least for a while.

Shame on me. After blogging regularly here since 2003, I stepped away for more than 3 months. I can feel the air of neglect here.

Understand that my blog has always been a place where I share my thoughts, opinions, and ideas, as well as providing an account of what I’m up to. It’s not as if I have nothing to write about. I do. I’ve been keeping crazy busy this summer, with plenty to blog about: boat trips, new client jobs, writing for hire, exploring artistic endeavors in my studio, and even an unexpected road trip. I’ve been keeping very busy. But what I haven’t been doing is making time to blog about any of it. And that’s a failure on my part.

Continue reading →

Follow Your Dreams

Posted on by
9

A blog post I felt I needed to write that is mostly already written for me.

Lately, my brain has been stewing over the situation faced by an acquaintance. Without going into too much detail or identifying him, I’ll just say a few things to set the backstory for this post.

My acquaintance — I’ll call him Joe — is recently retired in his early 60s. He’s married and his wife still works, but she is set to retire in spring. They’re financially secure, living in a nice home in a nice neighborhood. They have friends and family and are involved in a community organization they like.

Joe has some rather serious health issues and they are definitely slowing him down. But he also has a personal goal that means a lot to him. He started taking steps to achieve that goal, despite a total lack of support by his wife and family — in fact, they actively oppose him. In a way, I was part of the steps he took, providing assistance and training to the best of my ability in the circumstances. But when I recently followed up with him, he indicated that he was going to give up on this dream.

And that’s what I’m stewing over.

Continue reading →

Why I’m Not Blogging as Regularly as I Used To

Posted on by
3

I think there are two reasons this time, one familiar and one new.

Let’s face it: I’ve been blogging at An Eclectic Mind since long before it had that name. My first blog post was way back in 2003. The blog had my name back then, Maria Langer, and it could be found at MariaLanger.com — where it can still be found; try it! I wrote about the things that were on my mind. For a while, I wrote computer-related how-to content, but I eventually broke that out and put it into a site called Maria’s Guides which I’ve since allowed to die. I wrote a lot about politics. I wrote a lot about my work and my play. I wrote a lot about my crazy divorce. I wrote a lot about social media. I wrote a lot about building a new life in Washington State.

Heck, I just wrote a lot about anything that was on my mind.

And that’s what I personally think a blog is for. At least this blog.

There are no ads here. No tracking. No annoying pop-ups begging you to subscribe or send me money. It’s just the blog of a writer — a person who has always written — sharing what’s on her mind.

If you come here often to read my latest and actually like a lot of what you read, great! I’m thrilled to have you here!

But if you stumbled in here unknowingly and have concluded that this blog is crap and a total waste of your time, well, just go away and don’t come back. It doesn’t bother me.

And if you think that’s harsh, well blame social media. (Also understand that “go away” is not what I originally wrote.)

Continue reading →

On Wasting Time Preaching to People Who Won’t Read What You Write

Posted on by
4

I read and skimmed the latest Joan Westenberg blog post and am left wondering two things: are most people as clueless about what’s important in life as she seems to think they are and why is she wasting her time writing pieces they’ll never read?

Although I usually enjoy Joan Westenberg’s blog, reading the first quarter of today’s post reminded me that a lot of people just don’t get it. She’s describing people I know exist — people who focus their lives on trying to impress others or follow the advice of social media “influencers” rather than pursue what really matters in life. I can’t understand or identify with these people and I have to hope that they aren’t as prevalent as she makes it seem.

Continue reading →

Stop Making Excuses. Make a Plan.

Posted on by
2

In which I attempt to encourage you to follow your dreams and try to tell you how.

Personal Philosophy

Lately, it seems like I’m on a personal philosophy kick — I keep writing blog posts that reflect the philosophies that drive my life. This isn’t new in this blog, but it does seem concentrated these days and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to avoid thinking about what’s going on in the world around me? And I’m doing that by looking inside myself?

The reason doesn’t matter, though. What matters is that these things are important to me. I feel a real need to share my thoughts on these matters, hopefully to help others who are lost or without focus.

Remember this: there’s only one person in your entire life that you can always count on to take care of you: yourself. Make yourself the best you can be and you’ll have a great person you can rely on for the rest of your life.

Like most people these days, I spend time socializing on social media. In my case, it’s Mastodon, a system remarkably like Twitter in the early days, where you can post short “toots” with text, images, links, and/or polls and then discuss them with the other folks who have seen them. There are lots of differences between Mastodon and other social media, and because that’s not really what this post is about, I’ll skip a deeper discussion. Let’s just say that because there’s no algorithm determining what you see, you see all of the toots posted by all of the people you follow, as well as the conversations between the people you follow, even if you’re not involved in that conversation.

Continue reading →