Category Archives: Words

Enjoying the Extra Writing

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Since I started blogging again this year, I have noticed I’m enjoying the writing part. Keeping a daily schedule has been good and bad.

My Process

I have spent time first coming up with blog post ideas and then outlining them. Once I have done an outline or two, I start putting in a bit of the content as the first draft. Then on my walk’s I tend to work through ideas and figure out what I want to say. It’s been helpful getting the thoughts down in my head before typing them in blog posts.

Keeping the posts between a couple of hundred words and maybe 500 or 600 words has been helpful. My old style was to write long posts of a thousand to fifteen hundred words with code examples, etc. Doing these took many hours, a few days, or even weeks.

I still need to finish a few of the longer blog posts I started a year or more ago and get them out at some point. But right now, I’m working on writing every day and putting something new out.

Posting Every Day so Far this Year

It’s been interesting attempting to make sure to post everyday. The issue is more what else do I have or need to say at a given time.

Posting every day so far in January, it’s been nice to talk about what was happening on a given day. Or to recap what happened on a given day. Like the weekend lazy Saturday post a while ago or on Thursdays about Wednesday’s Inauguration.

So here’s to seeing how long I can keep writing/posting every day.

Might Slow Up on Posts

I’m not sure if I want to keep it up because of the time it has been taking. I think I could use the time to learn more modern CSS and JavaScript to help look for a front-end coding job.

Between outlining posts, thinking what I want to say, and writing the first draft of posts. Then coming back to posts to edit/finish them and then one last check before posting takes time. Even these shorter style posts are taking anywhere from an hour to three hours.

Or it might be a mix of code learning and blog posts, with some of them being about what I have learned.

Other Activities

I also need to keep time for my 100 Day Project wine bottle shape drawings or adding restaurants to Gotta Eat Here. Doing so helps for when it’s safe to travel. I want to have plenty of places to eat when I’m away.

I want to add some features like a map of all the places for a given location on a separate page. Doing it this way as not to slow up the downloading of the main list of restaurants. The maps feature needs more research for the best way to add them without cost to me.

I would like to make the website a progressive web application, too, at some point.

Doing All the Things

So here’s to making time to both write, learn to code, etc., while still getting time to relax too.

My Friend Tony

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Today I met on Zoom with 15 or so friends during an hour-plus lunch to talk about our good friend Tony. Who passed away the Sunday before Christmas.

It was interesting when we all went through things about Tony. Some met him at the Maryland Renaissance Faire. Others knew him from a class they took together many years ago. Others met at a wine store like I did pouring wine. Or at the Washington Wine and Cheese organization or through each other. Or they were  invited to his annual pig roast.

I could go on for a few more blog posts about the pig roast and how this group helped put it on year after year.

Even though there were some tears for many. It was happy tears remembering our friend Tony, a kind soul and a wonderful human being.

The best part was how everyone talked highly of Tony and had many stories. But we had to whittle it down to one or two stories. So we could get them all in before a lot of us had to go back to work.

They talked about his knowledge of words. When he was in high school the librarian, I think it was in study hall, used to make him read the dictionary from start to finish. Or his knowledge of wine and great food.

So here is to keeping the memory of our dear friend Tony going with more of these gatherings. Be they virtual for now until it’s safe to gather as a group.

P.S. At some point earlier today, I realized I had spent more time with most of the people on the Zoom call than my family (my dad, brothers, sisters, and their families) since moving to DC 18+ years ago. Make sure to spend time with family and friends when you can, even it’s on Zoom or the like.