Month: June 2021

Roles on Rolls on Roles

On rolls on roles on rolls

Image by adamkontor from Pixabay

This weekend, I made some changes to my blog. I have been noticing that my website is incredibly difficult to navigate and having all of my poems listed on a page was just 1. hard to remember to update and 2. not cutting it anymore from the reader’s end due to the sheer number of posts I now have. I wanted to have a spot where I could place the categories that my blog posts could belong to, and there was not a very good spot for that in my old theme. That theme served me well, but it was time for it to go.

I changed it to my favorite theme I could find that includes a sidebar where I can put widgets. The one downside of this new theme is that it does funky things to the top of the post if an excerpt was including in the post settings, so I fixed that by just going through and removing all of the excerpts from all of my posts. I’m sure that there are other fixes, but I couldn’t find one quickly, and there were a few other things that I wanted to change in some of my posts, so I didn’t mind going through them one by one.

Sushi rolls
Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels

While I was looking at all of these old posts, I found a few that just didn’t match my website anymore or that I was no longer happy with. I kept a few of them listed, but reverted a few others to drafts, so if you were über-dedicated, you would notice that my post celebrating my 100th post is no longer my 100th post.

All of this took time, but not an insanely long amount of time. Nevertheless, it made me think about all the roles that I have on this website. Much like most of the people probably reading this, I am the author, editor, occasional photographer and graphic designer, and administrator of my website. I also am the one who reads and answers my comments and emails (at a very slow rate, sorry!) and the one who reads, likes, and comments on posts from other bloggers.

Dice rolls
Photo by Armando Are from Pexels

I like having all of these roles because of the amount of control it allows me to possess, but I definitely prefer some over others. I primarily think of myself as the writer of this blog and a reader of other blogs. Everything else that I do is just extra.

That said, I think I would have a really hard time passing those other roles off to other people. This blog has been mine and mine alone since its first day. It has had my fingerprints all over every aspect of it, and that makes me very happy.

Egg rolls
Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels

I am nowhere near considering changing this from a one-woman-show, so those fingerprints will continue to be seen all over the site, but if I ever do decide to take on other team members, I think the first thing I will give up is the editing. I know for a fact that I miss things when I edit them myself because I have gone back to old posts that I read through many, many times before publishing them and found spelling and grammar errors that I did not catch. After that, I would probably look for someone with far more coding knowledge than me to customize the site layout more.

What are your preferred roles for your blog? Are there any that you would gladly pass off if you had the opportunity?

Roller skates
Photo by Laura Stanley from Pexels
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In Search

Of flames and dying sparks

When I set out to find answers,
it was like how the sun sets out of the sky–
firstly illuminating, then fading slow, slow, slow,
and finally plunging into darkness.

It’s not that the answers were unexpected–
in fact, quite the opposite.
As it turns out, seeking fire and brimstone
leads you to fire and brimstone.

Continue reading “In Search”

Silent Silence

Silence is impossible to fully express in the written form. Here is my attempt:

Here for but a moment–
an inhale,
a comma,
a pause,
a break,
full stop.
.
.
.
Maybe it’s not a blank space.
After all, a musical rest is conveyed with a symbol–
a hat for a half-rest,
an upside-down hat for a whole.
Maybe it’s all about rest.
.
.
.
And maybe silence is hope.
It’s hope that my words may rest by you
in your quiet moments,
alone,
at peace.
Hope that my words offer their presence, not their voice.
.
.
.
I hope you find the silence you’re looking for.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels

C. D. Anders wrote this poem about silence and how difficult it is to write about. I wrote on one form of silence, the calm kind, but I would love to see other people take up his challenge of either capturing silence in words or writing on ideas that are difficult to put into words.

On Touch

A sense of wonder

Fires may receive their fuel
Daisy petals may be counted
Sandcastles may be built and destroyed
Branches may break
Clay may transform to an urn
Thunderous chords may be played
Delicate chains may be repaired
Fortune may be uncovered
Children may be soothed
Inky pages may smear
Plants may be pruned
Knots may be tied
Candles may be snuffed out
Lemonade may be sweetened
Water may be cupped and flow through cracks in fingers
Chocolate may melt
Needles may make gorgeous embroidery
Paths may be blazed
Bones may be set
Goosebumps may appear and disappear

But there’s only so much that touch can do.

Photo by Jasmine Carter from Pexels

Comfortable

I was made to swim

I do not find comfort in taking up space in the world,
but I was not made to be comfortable.
I was not made to ford rivers,
I was made to swim across their widest parts
and emerge dripping and shivering,
full of energy and tenacity,
ready and excited to do it again and again
and again.

Photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels