Tag Archives: television

Treadmill vs. Walk in the Park

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Pros and cons.

I joined a health club recently. Wickenburg has an excellent “exercise center” that’s part of the Physical Therapy department at the local hospital. It has weight training equipment, elliptical exercise machines (is that the right name for those things?), stationary bikes, and treadmills. Just about all of it is computerized, so you can set goals and quantify many activities. The place is clean, there’s good music playing at a volume that’s not too loud to override it with iPod earbuds, and there are even televisions with captioning so you can read what’s being said onscreen.

Best of all, the members are an incredible mix of people, from the 20-year-old, skinny as a rail (as I was at that age) to the 40-something-year-old-who has had about five hundred too many cream puffs in her lifetime to the 90-year-old who comes in on a walker. I fit in nicely with this group, since I’m middle aged, overweight but not dangerously obese, and just enough out of shape to have to really work at my exercise regime, which is still in its infancy.

The treadmill is part of that regime — the warmup part. I start with a 20-minute session on the treadmill, using one of its built-in programs and setting the speed to about 3 mph. The programs change the machine’s incline, so I could be walking on flat ground for part of the time and climbing a hill moments later. Not a big hill, mind you. But one that’s enough to get your heart beating, which the machine monitors for you. In fact, if I enter my age and weight into the machine, when it gives me my heart rate, it’ll also tell me whether my work out is for weight loss or cardiovascular. I try to keep it in the cardiovascular range. I want to break a sweat, but not get soaked.

When I first thought about treadmills, I thought they were pretty dumb. After all, why use a machine to go for a walk. Why not just go for a walk? But I realized, after using a treadmill for about a week, that it does have some benefits over just walking. I thought I’d summarize them for people who have never tried one and, like me, wonder why they should.

TreadmillWalk in the Park
You can set a speed and stick with it.You don’t really know how fast you’re walking or whether you’ve changed speed.
You can monitor exact distance, speed, incline, time walked, and calories burned.You can’t easily monitor exact distance, speed, incline, time walked, and calories burned
You can do other things while you walk: watch TV, listen to music or podcasts, read a book or newspaper (a bit tricky), or talk to a companion.There are a limited number of things you can do while you walk: listen to music or podcasts or talk to a companion.
You’re breathing “conditioned” air, which may or may not be of a good quality.You’re breathing “fresh” air, which may or may not be of a good quality.
While you’re walking, there’s nothing to look at but the room you’re in, the view out the window (if you face one), and the people around you.While you’re walking, you can see a wide variety of things as you walk past them.
You can do it in any weather, at any time of the day or night (dependent on access to machine).You can do it in any weather, at any time of the day or night (but you probably will avoid hot, cold, rainy, and dark).
There’s nothing to interrupt you while you’re walking.You can be interrupted by friends and acquaintances you pass along the way, traffic, or obstacles along the trail.

 

This is all I can think of right now. The conclusion I’ve reached from all this is that a treadmill offers an efficient way to walk for exercise. Efficient is good if you’re pressed for time and want to make the most of every minute. That’s me. Right now I’m walking at 3 mph (average) for 20 minutes as a warm up for other exercise, including weight training. During that time, I can burn about 75 calories (no Hostess Cupcakes in my immediate future) and get my heart rate up to 130+ beats per minute. But if I didn’t want to do weight training and wanted to base my workout around a good, long walk, I could easily choose a more difficult program at a faster speed and for a longer time, I can just push a couple of buttons, pick a good playlist on my iPod, and have at it. Nothing will interrupt me and I’ll get the workout I want.

If you live in Wickenburg and have been considering the hospital’s exercise facilities, I highly recommend it. It’s moderately priced — I paid $300 for 6 months, but that includes the “setup fee” to introduce me to the weight machines (and them to me via programming). A longer membership is cheaper per month; a shorter one costs more. But the way I see it, what’s more important: money or my health? I know I won’t walk or exercise regularly on my own. And I know I don’t walk as fast when I’m out with my walking buddies as I do on that machine. So I’m getting a lot of exercise each 90-minute session at the “health club.”

I must be. I slept 10-1/2 hours straight through last night.

And a side note here: I also started the Atkins/South Beach diet. I know they’re not the same, but they’re close enough for my purposes. I’ve lost 8 pounds in a week. Still very overweight, but starting to get back to the point where I can wear most of my jeans again.

And the way I see it, every pound I lose is one extra pound of passengers I can take flying. With some of my passengers so big they fully extend the seatbelt before fastening it around their midsections, somebody has to lose weight.

Podcast Stuff

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Maria Speaks Episode 31: Podcast Stuff.

This episode marks my return to Maria Speaks after a two-month break. It covers my change in podcasting technique, a new video podcast I just created for Flying M Air, and the podcasts I subscribe to.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 31 of Maria Speaks: Podcast Stuff.

I just spent the past three hours redoing the Maria Speaks podcast. I used to publish it with Blogger and FeedBurner. Now, since my personal Web site is blog-based using WordPress, I cut Blogger out of the picture. It took me three hours to create or modify blog entries to embed my thirty existing podcast entries on this site. Well, twenty-nine. One of them covered an eBook I no longer distribute, so it didn’t link to it.

I developed this new method of podcasting — new to me, I should say — to reduce the amount of work required to publish a podcast and keep all podcast information together. I used to use a WordPress plugin called podPress, but I removed all references to it and disabled it today. Keep it simple — that’s what I decided. And the technique I worked out is relatively simple, utilizing an existing WordPress blog and FeedBurner. I wrote about it in an article to be published soon by Informit.com. When it comes out, I’ll link to it on the Aritcles page of my Web site and create a podcast based on its content.

For some reason, my “Maria Speaks” podcast has more subscribers than ever. That makes me wonder, since I haven’t released a podcast episode since September, and that episode was a bit more commercial than I like. This time last year, I was releasing one or two episodes per week. I ran out of steam last December and have been releasing them far less frequently. Still, my subscriber numbers have been climbing steadily. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it did convince me to release more content. The way I see it, when all these new subscribers start getting the new content, they’ll either like it and stick around or not like it and leave.

In the meantime, I started a new video podcast in October for my helicopter charter company, Flying M Air. I have literally thousands of photographs taken throughout the southwest, in places I fly to. I also have photos taken by my husband and by professional photographer and Bigfoot Hunter, Richard Noll.

Rick accompanied me on a test run of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. The deal we struck was that in return for all all-expense paid trip, he’d let me share copyright on all the video and still images he took. While he has the ability to sell these images as stock photos or use them in other projects, I have the ability to use them in marketing material to help sell the excursions and in articles I plan to write for publication about the trip. It was a win-win deal. Richard took lots of pictures from the air, which is something I simply can’t do while I’m flying. He also took video images with something a few clicks better than the little Canon digital video cameras I have. I’m still going through the over 1,000 still images and 3 to 4 hours of video he left on my MacBook Pro’s hard disk before departing back to the Seattle area.

I decided to turn my library of photos into video brochures for Flying M Air’s tours, charters, and excursions. The result is “Come Fly With Us!” (subscribe), which currently has three episodes. Another episode will be released Monday. (That’s one of the good things about my new podcast publishing technique; I can schedule a publication date and time. This makes it possible to record several podcast episodes at once and release them periodically over time.)

Part of the learning experience for creating this new podcast was finding legal music to play while the images were showing. I wasted a lot of time looking. Some sites promoting “royalty-free” music for podcasts required that you buy the songs to use them. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the songs were sold at iTunes prices or even a few bucks, but they were asking for $25 or $39 dollars per song. I use each song on just one video podcast episode and plan to release new titles once a week until I run out of material. That music was simply over my budget.

The much hyped GarageBand.com promised royalty-free, free downloads music. But the vast majority of artists didn’t allow free downloads of their songs. And since I was looking for relatively mellow instrumentals — you know, mood music — I had trouble finding what I wanted there in the first place.

I finally wound up on MagnaTune.com. I heard about it during an interview with the site’s founder, John Buckman, that Miraz had referred me to. MagnaTune predates iTunes by about two weeks. Although it has a limited number of artists on board, it offers very reasonable licensing of its music for podcast use. I’ve been getting tunes for my “Come Fly with Us!” podcasts from MagnaTunes since then and giving credit to the artists at the end of each video. I hope they sell some music.

Speaking of music, if you’ve been listening to Maria Speaks for a while now, you may have noticed that I changed the “theme song” for this podcast. The reason: I had a one-year licensing agreement with FreePlay Music for the old tune, Floater. Last year, when I bought that license, it cost $25/year, which I thought was reasonable. When I went to renew, the price had gone up to $100/year. I guess they decided to cash in when podcasting took off. That’s above my budget for a free podcast that doesn’t even earn any advertising revenue, so I decided to find a new tune. The new tune is is a segment from a nameless bit that I got off a public domain music CD I acquired back in 1996. I spent about an hour yesterday going through the one thousand plus songs on that CD set to pick this one. I’m not sure how much I really like it, but I do need something for my opening and closing credits.

The main topic of this podcast episode was supposed to be a quick discussion of some of the podcasts I listen to regularly. So let me dive into that for a few minutes.

I want to start off by telling you what I don’t listen to. I don’t like podcasts that mix discussion and “Garage Band” music. For example, I used to listen to a podcast about words hosted by two guys who seemed to guess more about word origins than actually research them. They’d pick few words or phrases and do a 40-minute podcast about them. The way they’d stretch out that podcast is by inserting a few Garage Band songs into it. Trouble was, their taste in music was nothing like mine, so I found myself having to fast forward through the music filler to get to the discussion meat. Fast forwarding is not always easy when you’re listening on an iPod and driving in traffic. When I realized that the content I was interested in wasn’t that good to begin with, I dropped the podcast. Ditto for the writing podcast some woman was doing. I wasn’t listening to hear music. I was listening to hear content. If the content was music related, the music would make sense. But it wasn’t and it didn’t.

In general, I don’t listen to music podcasts at all. Finding new music is low on my priority list. So if you you think you might find some tips for new and exciting music podcasts here, you will be disappointed.

What I do like listening to is podcasts that can enlighten me, teach me new things, or make me laugh with intelligent humor. I listen to podcasts primarily when I’m driving or flying, although I do have a i-Fusion speaker thing that makes it easy to listen when I’m working in the kitchen, making dinner or tidying up. So if I can be trapped in a place doing a relatively mindless thing and listen to something that’ll expand my horizons or make me laugh, I’m pretty happy.

That said, here’s a brief summary of some of the podcasts I listen to. You can find links to these podcasts on the transcript for this podcast. Go to www.aneclecticmind.com and click the Podcast link in the navigation bar to find it.

First on the list are a handful National Public Radio (or NPR) podcasts. There are 355 of these podcasts and I’ve tried at least 20 of them. I listen to five of them regularly.

  • NPR: Story of the Day is a daily selection of a story from NPR’s programming. These stories are wide-ranging in topics: business, war, travel, entertainment — you name it.
  • NPR: Business Story of the Day is a daily selection of a business story from NPR’s programming. Stories cover anything business related, from Silicon Valley news bits to global oil production information and lots of stuff in between. It keeps me informed about the business world.
  • NPR: Satire from the Unger Report is a weekly podcast of satire by Brian Unger. It’ll make you laugh — and think.
  • NPR: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! is a weekly radio quiz show about the news. It has a panel of three celebrities (no, not the kind in People magazine) and call-in contestants. The questions and answers lean toward the comical, so the show is extremely entertaining.
  • NPR: Sunday Puzzle is a weekly podcast of word games with an NPR host, Will Shortz (of the New York Times), and a telephone contestant.

I’ve tried other NPR podcasts, but eventually lost interest in them. And as I prepared this list, I noticed a bunch of new ones to try out. So I might report on some additional podcasts from NPR in the future.

I also listen to American Public Media (APM) Future Tense. It’s a great podcast with short episodes about technology topics.

I listen to three PBS podcasts:

  • American Experience is a podcast with short episodes about historical topics. Recent episodes included the Gold Rush and New York.
  • NOVA is a podcast of brief stories from the NOVA science television show.
  • NOW is a podcast of rather lengthy stories form the NOW news television show. Sometimes the stories interest me and I listen to them. Other times, the stories don’t interest me and I just delete them.

I also watch a NOVA video podcast, which I find excellent. It combines science information with video and still images in a 2 to 3 minute podcast. I like some episodes so much that I save them as movies on my iPod so I can show them to others.

Speaking of video podcasts, I also subscribe to a number of others:

  • GARY-PAUL TV is a video podcast of weird stuff published by Gary-Paul Prince of Peachpit Press. My favorite episode, which I’ve saved as a movie for future viewing, is “Drinking and Driving Texas Style.”
  • Comedy Central: Stand-Up is a video podcast of stand up comedy segments. I only like about half of these, but the ones I like arae really good, so I keep checking in.
  • National Geographic Video Shorts are short video segments from National Geographic television shows.

I also used to enjoy a video podcast called CockpitCast, which showed video out the front window of various commuter jets as they landed at airports in western U.S. cities, but there hasn’t been a new release in a long time, so I don’t know if the pilots are still doing it.

Another aviation podcast I enjoy is Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase. Betty is a flight attendant who loves to travel. She brings along her tape recorded and gets stories from other flight attendants, pilots, and people at the places she flies to. The stories are great but the audio quality is pretty bad sometimes. Still, I think it’s worth a listen. My favorite story? The one where a passenger who died of natural causes during a flight was not declared dead until after the flight was more than halfway to its destination.

For tech news and info, I’ve been trying two Wired magazine podcasts:

  • Wired Magazine is a podcast of short pieces from Wired magazine columns.
  • Wired News is a podcast of short news stories from Wired magazine.

I also subscribe to Slate magazine‘s Daily podcast, which includes interviews about Slate’s online pieces as well as audio versions of some of Slate’s online pieces. It gives me a chance to “read” Slate without having to visit the site. Of course, I only get a small portion of the thoughtful gems available online. I used to subscribe to Slate’s Explainer podcast, but have given it up because the topics weren’t all that interesting to me. You might like them, though, so check them and out see for yourself.

I subscribe to the WordPress podcast because of my interest in WordPress software. I admit that I’ve downloaded all episodes and have listened to just three of them. I think the podcast is good, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to them.

The same goes for the Podcasting Underground podcast. Good, informative stuff, but I have to be in the mood to listen to information about podcasting.

For politics, I listen to a pair of real left-wingers. Sorry, but I am not a conservative at all, neo or otherwise.

  • Real Time with Bill Maher is an hour-long podcast of Maher’s HBO television series. He does an interview and then discusses one or more current political topics with a panel of three that usually includes one celebrity entertainer and one political figure. His panels always include someone sitting on the right, so both sides are represented. While I don’t agree with everything I hear, I like to hear the various viewpoints on current political topics. New Rules is a much shorter podcast that includes just the New Rules he lists at the end of his show.
  • MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a collection of Olbermann segments from his MSNBC Countdown television show. Olbermann is a Bush basher — do doubt about it — and it amazes me that he says some of the things he says. It’s a real example of the First Amendment in action — if Olbermann said these kinds of things just once in a place like North Korea or Iran or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, he would have been shot dead for treason. But in our country, we’re allowed to voice all kinds of opinions. Olbermann’s aren’t the kind that’ll ever get on Fox News. My favorite bit? The count of times our president said “Stay the course” after Tony Snow told the press he’d only said it eight times. Classic reporting.

I also started listening to Penn Jillette’s weekday radio show on FreeFM, PennRadio. Penn Jillette is the big, fast-talking guy from the magic duo of Penn and Teller. An atheist (his Nevada license plate is the word “ATHEIST”) and libertarian, he definitely has some non-standard views of politics. But he also covers non-political topics. I don’t enjoy all of Penn’s podcast episodes — I probably delete about half of them without listening to more than a few minutes — but I like enough of them to keep my subscription. One of my favorite episodes was his interview of Phyllis Diller (who I didn’t even know was still alive). Ms. Diller had some fascinating stories to tell and I was especially touched by Penn’s patience when her memory failed her more than once during the interview.

And finally, one of the first podcasts I ever subscribed to, podictionary. This daily podcast, with 2 to 5 minute episodes, discusses the origin of a word or phrase. A weekly digest version is also available. Many, many thanks to Charles Hodgson for his dedication to the subject of word history.

Now you know what I’m listening to. What are you listening to? Share your comments and suggestions with me and other listeners by posting your comments on the transcript for this episode. Go to www.aneclecticmind.com, click the Podcasts link in the navigation bar, and scroll down until you find the “Episode 31: Podcast Stuff” entry. Or just use the Search box to search for the number 31. Then use the Comments link at the bottom of the entry to read other people’s comments and add your own.

And as always, thanks for listening. More later.

Fan Mail

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Why I find it so embarrassing.

Every once in a while, I get an e-mail message that’s clearly categorizable as fan mail. The messages are usually the same in tone: “I can’t believe how much you’ve accomplished! I try to do some of the things you do and can’t manage to succeed. How do you do it?” The only thing they don’t say is “You’re my idol,” but if you read between the lines sometimes, it’s there.

I’m embarrassed by all this.

I’m a pretty normal person from a pretty average background. Lower middle class parents, not much money in the family. I got my first jobs at age 13: paper route, babysitting, fence painting. Because there weren’t too many things handed to me, I quickly learned that if I wanted something, I had to work to get it. So I did.

(Personally, I think this is why America is doomed. With so many parents handing out things to their kids, kids don’t build healthy work ethics. They’re lazy and unmotivated, concerned more with what they’re wearing than what they’re learning, and someday they’ll be running this country. Hopefully, I’ll be dead by then. But I digress.)

I think the only thing that sets me apart from other people is that I’m driven. I see something I want to achieve and I do what I can to achieve it. I work hard almost all the time. As I finish one project, achieve one goal, I’m thinking of the next.

Back in college, I took a management course where they discussed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. At the top of the pyramid is Self Actualization, the need that must be filled after all others are filled. The trouble is, if you fulfill the need for self actualization, there’s nothing left. So to remain happy, self actualization must always be growing and changing, like a moving target. That’s the way I understood it back in my late teens. And I think that’s what drives me to this day — the need to always have something different to reach for and achieve. I think you can say that I live for challenges.

But are my achievements that incredible? I don’t think so. I admit that I’m fortunate in that I have a good brain and decent health (although the health thing has been a bit questionable lately), but there’s nothing special about me. I’m not a genius. I don’t live on four hours of sleep a night (I wish!). I’m not rich. I just make the most of what life’s dealt me.

People marvel at my achievements as a writer. I’ve written 60+ books and hundreds of articles since 1992. Do you think that’s because I’m the world’s greatest writer? Of course not! It’s because writers generally don’t make much money, so if you want to earn a living as a writer, you have to produce an awful lot. I learned how to work with editors and publishers to deliver what they wanted when they wanted it. My mind has the ability to take a task and break it down into its most basic steps — this is natural to me and I don’t know why. My writing skills make it easy to communicate the steps of a task to readers — my writing skills come from years of reading and writing. I don’t let ego get in the way of delivering what my editors want. By reliably producing year after year, I got into a position where I didn’t have to look for work anymore. It looked for me. I kept producing. And I still keep producing.

People think it’s incredible that I fly a helicopter. It’s not that incredible. It took me a year and a half of part-time lessons, driving 180 miles round trip each lesson day and thousands of dollars, to build my flight time and to get my private helicopter license. That’s not an achievement — it’s perseverance and the willingness to throw large sums of money at what I thought would be a hobby. If I’d quit doing my other work for a while, I could have completed that training in three months. But you’re not independently wealthy or supported by someone with deep pockets, you have to work before you can play. And, for the record, just about anyone can learn to fly. Helicopters aren’t harder to fly than airplanes, either; they’re just different. Anyone who says they’re harder to learn is using that as an excuse for not really trying. Unfortunately, they are more expensive to learn. And that’s usually the stumbling block that stops people from learning.

You want to achieve something? Go out and do it! Stop making excuses, stop procrastinating, and for God’s sake, stop watching crap on television — the eternal time-waster. Only when you dedicate yourself to your goal, fitting each task of its achievement into your regular work and family schedule, can you make it happen.

If you keep at it, the achievement of one goal will surely lead to the next.

And please, stop embarrassing me with fan mail.

Back from Surgery

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What a pain!

Most folks didn’t know I had surgery scheduled for last Wednesday. Although you might think I write in this blog about every aspect of my life as it unfolds, I don’t.

I didn’t want to write about it. There were too many unknowns. The huge lump in my abdomen could have been anything from a fibrous growth to a nasty bit of cancer. Surgery could have required removal of just the growth or removal of some important stuff it might have been attached to, with all kinds of reconstruction within. I could have come out of surgery and been back to normal in a week or two or the surgery might have been the first awful step in a slow spiral down to a painful death.

So I guess you can see why I didn’t want to write about it.

Surgery was Wednesday and it was the best case scenario all around. The growth was a hefty six pounds in weight, but it wasn’t attached to anything important. They took it out and, while they were in there, they took out a bunch of female parts a 44-year-old woman doesn’t really need anymore.

I was in the hospital for two nights and three days. I shared a room with a woman who was going through pretty much the same thing I was — but worse. I think she lost more parts.

The worse thing about the experience was the pain. We’re talking pain that just won’t go away. Pain when you move. Pain when you think about moving. I was screaming when I regained consciousness in post-op. They asked me, on a scale of one to ten with ten being the worse, what was my pain? Ten! I screamed at them. It was a question I’d hear over and over during my hospital stay. The answer ranged from four to eight after that initial ten.

They had me on three different pain killers. One was a device literally stitched into my wound area. It leaked out a novacaine-like substance to deaden the pain on contact. The other was morphine attached to an IV going into the inside of my elbow. I had a pain button and when I was in pain, I’d push the button. A bit of morphine would go into the drip. Of course, this was limited to one little bit every six minutes. If I pressed it every minute, I’d still get it just every six minutes. It made a reassuring beep-beep-beep sound every time I pushed the button, whether morphine went in or not. The third painkiller was oral and although it had a different name, it was based on morphine, too.

So it’s no wonder I couldn’t keep my eyes open in the hospital. I was doped up with morphine for three days straight. I felt pretty stupid bringing an overnight bag with two books and notebook in it. I couldn’t focus my eyes on anything long enough to see it, let alone read it. I listened to podcasts for a while, but even those put me to sleep.

Days and nights blended into each other. The clock on the wall showed five minutes later every time I looked at it, no matter what time I looked at it. The night nurse must have been bored the first night because she came in to do a survey at 2 AM and tried taking me for a walk at 4 AM. (I was too nauseous for the walk.) To make matters worse, the pre-op nurse had screwed up my IV by putting it in my elbow instead of my hand and the IV machine required a reset every 2 to 45 minutes. All day and all night. Every time it needed the reset, it would emit a loud beep-beeeep. I quickly learned how to reset it myself so I wouldn’t have to wait for the nurse. Not only did it keep me up, but it kept the woman on the other side of the curtain awake, too. When the nurses caught me resetting it, they weren’t happy. But I wasn’t happy listening to that thing beep for ten minutes while I was waiting for one of them to show up. Besides, the pain button didn’t work unless the IV machine was working.

Anyway, I’m home now. I dosed up with some morphine before leaving the hospital (I’m not an idiot, you know) and spent most of the ride from Banner Good Samaritan Hospital to Wickenburg in a state of semi-consciousness where my only thought was, are we there yet? I managed to throw up nothing — it’s when you go through the motions but nothing comes out — after a nice hot shower. Safeway brand Tums and Sea-bands (which I’m still wearing) helped out there. Yesterday afternoon was a drug-induced confusion of watching television through out-of-focus eyes and drifting off to sleep. Finally, I could stand it no longer. At 8 PM, I took the heavy-duty pain killers and went to sleep. I was up again when those wore off at midnight and managed to stick it out until 2 AM before taking another dose. Then slumber until 6 AM, our normal wake up time.

This morning, my coffee wasn’t very good so I switched to tea with some lightly toasted and buttered bread. It’s my first piece of really solid food since Tuesday night. Now my job is to get into some kind of ritual that’ll let me get on with my life while I recover.

Blogger or Writer? Not Both?

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An article and podcast from a former blogger.

I listened to the podcast first. It was in my iPod after updating yesterday, among the other Slate Magazine Podcasts. Its title sent a chill down my spine, “Stop Blogging, Start Writing.”

But the interview with the author left me with the sneaking suspicion that her “last entry” was just an attempt to get some publicity. She sounded like a giggly airhead. She admitted that she had trouble “following up” with potential assignments. Hell, she claims she’d been contacted by “several” New York publishers interested in books, yet she’d managed to come away without a single contract. Not much of a professional writer, if you ask me. Any unknown who sits around waiting for a publisher to play the ball for her doesn’t deserve to succeed as a writer.

Good things may come to those who wait, but book contracts don’t.

Still, the idea of blogging taking up too much creative juice, leaving nothing for other writing, remains with me. I looked up the article that led to the podcast interview:

“Why I shut down my blog” by Sarah Hepola. She seems to echo many of my sentiments, but spoils the piece with her last sentence:

Now, if I could just turn off the TV, I think I could finally get started.

Blogging and television? No wonder she doesn’t have any time to write! Or maybe that was some kind of joke? Ha-ha?

I don’t think that author will stay away from blogging for long. It’s rather addictive — at least I think so. Something interesting happens to you and you want to write it up in your blog, partially to remember it and partially to share it with others. You learn something new, something that could help others and you want to share it in your blog. You have a deep thought or a revelation of major importance and you want to shout it out in your blog pages to see if anyone else agrees or wants to argue with you about it.

But I do agree that blogging sucks something out of a person. That something isn’t lost, though. It’s just stored away for the future.