Showing posts with label Becoming Blogger. Show all posts

I ENTERED into blogging like stepping into a dark river: excited about swimming, but unclear about what all was in the water.

The before of my blogging: unsure, afloat, all over the place.
Maxi hub, Arima, TnT.

I, to be honest, had not done my research -- an almost unforgivable thing, really, for someone with my work standards.
It did not help that the professional and comradely relationship I had formed with the person I hired to build the blog (see previous post) went the way of all flesh: and by that I mean essentially, specifically to rot.
So I got what I got and, all things considered, it explains why I have treated my very own blog like a red-headed step-child. Thirty years of hard-work print and TV media experience couldn't make up for the simple fact that when it came to blogging I didn't know what I was doing. I was a bad blog parent.

Crisis me a river

Oh, I know now that people say, "There's no wrong way to blog"; and I love that perspective, truly. However, to whom much is given, much is yadda yadda. So someone with my specialised skill set just had to come better than the average bear, especially since the very name of my blog calls for Trinbagonians to come good.
Everything else aside, I needed a better understanding of blogging to really set me on the right path to "anything that's worth doing is worth doing well."
Funny thing, as is often the case it turned out to be something rather small and supremely simple that started me more comfortably on the road to improving my blog, via clarifying what the forum is for. It was the statement, "Share your passion!"

Crisis Pass On

That's what blogs are? Wo-ow! Blow my mind.
Passion I know. Passion I live. Passion is my middle name!
Only, that posed a bit of another problem, precisely because there is SO much I'm passionate about: love, books, smiles, skies, sun, moon, arms, art, stories, helping, learning, laughing. Oh Lordy.
How could I choose one passion? I didn't have to. It could all come together under one wonderful, diverse, singular umbrella of love for my motherfatherland, Trinidad & Tobago.
So Trinbago Come Good, right. I'll sure damn try.

Come Good

The after I'm aiming for: a blog strong, deep-rooted, good. Photo by Jhaye-Q

We used to be taught "look up and down before crossing the street." Maybe they were trying
to teach us about life instead. City Gate, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad Photo by Jhaye-Q

"AH BOUNCE MIH HEAD," we Trinis say when we invest time, effort, money, what have you into something that we have high hopes for, but that ends up in the "proverbial" crash and burn.

Sometimes this happens because we are unwary, distracted or beguiled. Sometimes it's because we simply are not translating the semaphores signalling to us that we are approaching the equivalent of low beams, low doorways, low branches, low hanging hard fruit, and we'd be wise to duck, maybe even run ... the other way!

Well, I bounced my head when trying to make my blog, and was left feeling bitter and wretched toward it for nigh on four years.

Should I go on to relate a real-life drama of connivance, cruelty and other sordid fare? Or should I instead err on the side of advice? Let's see if I can do both: by giving you specific advice, you'll be able to glean intimate insight into issues I faced with my initial attempts at Internet industriousness.

Do run, run!

Think twice before you pity-hire someone who makes it clear they think they're better than you
Think twice about taking it lightly when someone claims to be a good and decent person but is regularly unsettled by acts of simple human kindness
Think twice before you totally believe that the reason someone is "down on their luck" has nothing whatsoever to do with any fault of their own
Think twice before you convince your boyfriend to lend money to someone you've already advanced half of their project-payment
Think twice before you keep near you someone who turns into a real asshole right after you have taken them to a peace & love spiritual retreat centre
Think twice before retaining the "professional" services of someone who knows you've just spent a week in a hospital battling complications that almost killed you, and accuses you of "wasting" time because you were not there to help work on the blog you are pity-paying them to build!!!

And I'll just stop there before I stress-trigger myself into another endometriosis attack (Please peruse my blog at the link: ABC Endo: A Trinbago Survivor's Guide, and spread the word about this most common of female ailments that shockingly remains the Hidden Epidemic).

Listen, the Chinese have a saying: "If you suspect someone, do not hire them. If you hire them, do not suspect them."

I dig the first part. But if we could put our heads on a block for the latter there would never be a phrase like "Ah bounce mih head!"

"I'm crass and mean and dishonest.

So gimme a job."

Nobody comes to you and says, "I'm crass and mean and dishonest. So gimme a job." Or maybe they do say it with their deeds big and small; but in feeling sympathy and wanting to help someone we put ourselves in harm's way anyway.

We may be so damaged in body, mind and heart by that head bounce we get ill at the very thought of anything connected to it. That's how it was with my blog.

Let me tell you: I bounce my head a lot. Productivity is most often what helps me heal.

If I could do this with my soul.

So it was tragic that the blog I had sought to create to help me heal from one devastating interval led to another, that made me unable to stand the blog itself. I kept feeling it had been infected, or poisoned. Sullied? Begrimed? Cursed? What word!

This word: I felt it was not good.

I tried to heal it. But I hated it. And when we hate, it means it is ourselves we have to heal first.

Then ... after a long time I stopped hating my blog. I worked to liberate it from any residual negativity injected by its original designer's shaky energies.

Now, not only do I NOT hate my blog, I'm starting to think I LOVE it. 😋

That's real important, since love is a vital part of passion, and passion is a vital part of blogging.

Shine on

We who write often ask, "What is my reader reading in reading me?"

THIS BLOG MAKES ME LOOK FAT! Just kidding. But I've still got some issues with the fit.

As a resistant convert, I now think blogging is a wonderful forum; but you know how it is when you think the article of clothing your friend gave you for your birthday is really beautiful, but is more suited to her than yourself. That's what this is like.

So far, blogging has been a frustrating kind of fun trying to figure out how to get what I want exactly, so I can give exactly what I want. For instance, some "mechanics" things simply don't work out the way the faceless advice people on the Internet promise it will.

Trial & Tremor

Consider that whole "format your old blog to a fancy new template" push. I tried that a few times and always end up shaking my fists at the code gods and right back in Blogger's functional but shoulder-shrugging template thingy reformatting my blog from almost scratch (as those of you who have been here before realise), because things don't fit, things don't sync, things confuffle, things drive me "ARRGGHHH!".

Et tu blaming the tools, you say.

Well hey, I am a proponent of sometimes the problem is the tool, know what I mean. But most often it's a combination-lock kind of problem: as in a combination of things has you locked up.

Since I plan on getting into the blogging swing of things with almost ten or so (go big or go homepage, right), I need to get from being locked up to having this stuff locked down.

Aiming high and for a fine balance.
Kiddies Carnival 2018 photo by Jhaye-Q

Viva Las Bloggers

Like life it all is, isn't it? That whole "we are in flux: ever-changing, ever-evolving, ever becoming else." When we get things too easy we atrophy like muscles on a couch-potato, and we say "Pass" on many amazing hard-work things that could help us have "Everything is awesome!" experiences.

Better evolution than devolution, I say.

Since the stated raison d'etre of blogging is sharing your passions, I'm so super-dee-duper fervid about making this blogging thing luscious I am committing a few posts to sharing my thus far trials and travails with you.

After all, the journey is the initiation. And problems are part of the solution.

Come Good

Blogging is a form of nudity, but not for every “body.” My own body may have to grow some new bits to get me into the swing of things

Don’t sweat the small puffy stuff. Is it really
taking skin off your nose, after all?

“A hard beginning maketh a good ending.”-- John Heywood

IT IS AN INVASIVE world. So why would you want to put yourself out there and appear to invite penetration?

That’s the double-edged dagger that is Social Media interaction: as you swing for the fences you’re going to have to fend off some Joe Blow taking a swing at your heartwork. When you write for the public, the public tends to take a turn in your ass. I had forgotten this.

Ambivert, I, had to retreat from blogging to think deeply about whether I was up for this kind of exposed, asking, naked writing effort again in my lifetime.

See, writers do not just fall upon ideas. We are pushed. Life moves us. Things happen in the world and prod us, spur us, goad us into telling. When something wounds a writer, rather than rant and reach for a gun, we may pull out some hair then reach for a pen. If there were more writers in the world, there’d be less murders.

About two months after I began blogging, I saw that someone had listed near my original blog url hyewonhai.blogspot.com and blogname Live Naked As We Came, the title offer:Live Naked Pussy.

Live naked pussy is easy enough to promote on the Internet, so why would someone need to take my “hyewonhai” to pitch it?

Horoscope for everybody: People will mess with you, especially if you’re “out there.” I faced my share of quack attacks as a newspaper columnist and TV host.

Sacred profaned

Mr. (Or Miss) Live Naked Pussy probably didn’t even think once, much less twice, before trying to ride my wave and befoul the water. What meaning would “hyewonhai” have had to such a person?

Adinkra symbol for Twi word “unburnable”

The Adinkra symbol for the African Twi language word hyewonhye looks like a simplified butterfly. It means “unburnable” … like the spirit. By converting the latter hye to hai with the Japanese word ai, I created “unburnable love”: about as pure and sacred a thing as can be imagined.

Then ignorant Mr. LNP decided to stank it up, with no concept of how this word came into being. But hey, we all forget that every action has consequences.

Still, whatever Mr. LNP reaps will have nothing to do with any dread thoughts from my direction. He made his bed; as I made mine ... by blogging in the first place.

I should have taken more time to think things through. I see now: just like the newspaper columns I used to write, blogging is for the brave. Blogging takes balls.

Anatomy aside, I am remembering how to swing for the fences. Jump back! Poppa’s got a brand new bag.

COME GOOD

Fooled ya! This pic looks like its offering up something else entirely.
No Live Naked Pussy here. Need some Orbitz for your eyes?

WEANED ON WORDS with my Granny’s storytelling, when I started my formal education at age four and learned words could be written as well as spoken, I came to know what I was born to do: write.

All core artistic people create because they must. Those fortunate enough to begin to earn a living from their creating enter a certain state of liberty. When your art is able to earn you an income, it moves from being your life’s calling and becomes your life’s work.

I had achieved that in a career spanning over twenty years in press and TV. Until I was targeted and utterly undone.

Charred and blue

I used to say “blacklisted.” I will not reinforce the negatives often attached to the word and the colour black. So I’ll borrow a thoroughly perfect term from present Media pop culture: Burn Notice. I was burned.

Like they burned witches. For the same reasons, really. Because I was different, strong, real. Because I would not be their puppet, tool, slave. Because they were evil. Okay, I'll soften the word to ignorant.

They are ignorant of the new world order that has come into being via modern technology. The whole world is opening eyes, ears and heart to all sorts of otherness, making connectivity possible in ways that simply could not have happened before.

So people like me have no excuse to “go gently into that good night.” No. People like me must use all good means and craft to fight for what is right.

I earned my right to be a part of the Media in my nation, but instead was almost destroyed by factions in it. Yet, I do not need it or them to do the work I was created to do.

For Self and country

Even alone, I can apply the same dedication to my duties. I can continue to break ground. I can foster the understanding of what modern media must mean to a nation claiming “developing status,” thereby helping my fellow citizens navigate the international Media, to confidently craft a place in this world for Self and country.

Even alone I can wield my talents, skills, training and hard-won experience, and create something of worth that brings meaning to more than just myself. I can stand and invite others to stand … even if they are alone, too.

What do you look with when you look at life?

This blog is a preview, really, of the corazine (heart magazine) I fully intend to bring to life in my nation.

Adinkra is an African language, and the word hyewonhye means unburnable -- like the soul, the spirit, that which can never be utterly put out. Ai is one Japanese word for love. I mated the words into my watchword "hyewonhai," which translates into unburnable love. That's what I want to become.

I see my world. I have something significant to say about it and to give to it. I will be open. I will be naked. I will not let myself be silenced any longer.

Highlight Topic Pages

Crisis me a river

Crisis Pass On

Come Good

Do run, run!

"I'm crass and mean and dishonest.

So gimme a job."

Trial & Tremor

Viva Las Bloggers

Come Good

Sacred profaned

COME GOOD

Charred and blue

For Self and country

I will COME GOOD