Why would a long-time blogger join Blogging 101?
“There is always more to learn.” — “Learning is fun.” — “Learning is living!” Then there is the Chinese proverb: “Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.”
Persuasive truisms these are; as Yodda would have said. “Anybody can learn, even little kids do it all on their own.” That too is true. Learning in a structured, guided environment, however, is much more effective and can be much more satisfying. Enough reasons to sign up for Blogging 101.
The assignment for Day Three was easy enough: Follow five new tags in the Reader and five new blogs.
I wasn’t following too many tags and hadn’t paid much attention for some time. They should have been reviewed and cleaned up a long time ago. Some topics that I am very interested in were not on the list. I added photopainting, cafe art, Live Writer, and art. Then I tried to add Windows 10. After all I had been blogging about the latest Windows version for a couple of years. The WordPress.com App would not let me do it. It kept changing it to Windows 1.0. Aha, a bug I said, and opened the in-browser version.
The new tags I had added were there. Nice! I tried adding Windows 10 online. No joy. WordPress insists on 1.o. Hey, WordPress, that version was released thirty years ago and superseded half a year later!
Turns out that WordPress delivers posts on Windows 10 when that tag is clicked. So I learned that WordPress can’t count past nine! See why I enjoy learning?
Now to the second part of the assignment to follow five new blogs. I had enjoyed looking at the blogs of many of my fellow participants in Blogging 101 and had already added a handful. It would not be difficult to find five more. But I decided that I should review my list before adding more. There were over 150 on my list already. If each blogger posted just once a week that would be more than twenty new posts to review each day. Most of us can’t afford the time for that many stories each day. There were also a good number that I hadn’t heard from for a long time. Indeed many had gone “dormant”, no new posts in over a year.
After some housecleaning I looked at the blogs of many of my new colleagues and added a few. More than five. I am now at 166. More than ever. A wonderful collection of interesting, imaginative, stimulating, informative, enriching stories each day. Another good reason to have joined the course.
Something I learned a longtime ago and always stressed to my students is that a picture is indeed worth more than a thousand words when it comes to attracting attention. Since I was looking back I decided to way way back to my first posts for a picture. So here is my “Winter Night” from my second ever WordPress blog post. I hope it is chilly enough for you to want to curl up in a warm corner with your WordPress Reader.
© 2016 Ludwig Keck
