Sauntering Vaguely Downward

[This is cross-posted from the Dreamwidth community threeforthememories, which is great and you should all join it. You have until next Monday 24 January if you want to post three photos to it that define your year last year, and no time constraints on enjoying everyone else's posts. I think it might actually be years since I've either promoted a community or cross-posted from one. Yikes.]

1. Telstar (RIP)
   
   This is - was - our beloved cat Telstar, just before he turned twelve in June of last year. We had no idea that we only had a few months left with him at this point, as his decline was very sudden. Losing him is an event that will forever be associated with 2021.


( ”+2” )

I have made it an entire month into the project without missing a day! Huzzah!

And now for some meta-observations.

1. Making this a public endeavour has enabled me to put aside time for writing out my thoughts every day.
   
   
2. I no longer feel like I'm missing out on recording things about the children. I have had this constant low-level hum of guilt ever since I went back to work full-time, a sensation I'm sure many people are familiar with, about not spending enough time appreciating the little steps they make in their development. Speaking of which, Humuhumu is very proud of having moved from the "red books" (Stage 2) to the "yellow books" (Stage 3) at school.
   
   
3. I no longer feel like I have to "steal" time from what little the bloke and I have in the evenings to write posts, because mostly I'm sitting down next to him and announcing that I'm going to spend 30-45 minutes writing my daily project post, and he's cool with that and answers work e-mail or reads about the rugby or watches something that I'm not particularly interested in on the telly.
   
   
4. Writing daily posts has made me better about commenting on other people's posts. I feel like my Circle is becoming more active as well, even though I haven't added any new subscriptions this month.
   
   
5. Writing daily posts has also had the curious side effect of making me better at communicating regularly by other means. I've been reaching out to people via e-mail, text and phone with greater ease and timeliness.
   
   
6. At some point I will miss a day, and I am ill-prepared to make peace with that eventuality. I must spend a little time getting my brain to calm down about the prospect.
   
   
7. I'm going to have to declare comment amnesties on some older posts, as the slowly increasing backlog of unanswered comments over this past month demonstrates to me. My apologies. I don't like doing this much, and I need to learn to be better at admitting I've failed at completeness.
   
   
8. Thank you all for reading.

I feel the need to spend time thinking positively about my community, and all the lovely people in it.

Please leave a comment if you would like me to tell you something I admire about you.

(Livejournal is down. It went down right as I hit Post on a long entry to a community. ARGH I SHOULD KNOW BETTER TYPE IT UP IN GOOGLE DOCS FIRST, NANILA.)

Anyway, today's recommendation is for a Dreamwidth community. It's the first one I've created and it's called bitesizedreading. With co-admin ironed_orchid's help, it's been modeled after bitesizedcleaning. I made it because my novel-length reading has declined dramatically since having children and with increased responsibility at work. I was so busy shaming myself for "not reading" that I was failing to notice that I actually spend loads of time reading, it's just that it's focused differently now and tends to be more, well, bite-sized: articles in Nature and The Economist (though I rarely consume an entire weekly issue), instruction manuals, labels on the washing, chapters in non-fiction books, e-mail and of course daily social media catchup. All this counts! It's worthy of recording, and of cheerleading. As the community intro says:

This community is intended to provide a way to remind ourselves that all reading, whether it's short stories, articles in magazines, fanfic, Dreamwidth posts or the instructions on a packet of instant noodles, counts as reading. Sometimes we have the energy to read an entire novel in a day. Sometimes we don't have the energy or the time to expend on getting into lengthy written works. Here, we celebrate the reading we've done without passing judgment on the word count or the content.

Please join in!

(This entry is not cross-posted to BLOOMIN' INCONVENIENT LIVEJOURNAL.)

The 3W4DW festival ends today, and I'm pretty pleased with my contributions. I didn't do everything I wanted to, but I did post almost every day to multibeautiful - and, I think, succeeded in reviving it as several other users posted as well. And I completed the photo-a-day challenge at photographic_i. It might be rash to declare this now, but I think it could be the start of a 365 project. My 52 project foundered because it consisted entirely of themed self-portraits, which I don't often have the time to construct. A 365 without subject constraints is more flexible, as it allows me to draw on the large number of photographs I take on an almost daily basis. If I succeed in continuing, I plan to keep posting to the DW community and to my Flickr account, and will do weekly roundups on my personal journal.

For those who aren't members of the community or are on LJ, a link to my photo posts is here.