December 1 : A Year Has Passed

Time has come and gone and will never come again....

One year ago today I posted "a collection of my thoughts."

So how are things different today? Let's See! My "2012" stuff appears in red...

Ah December! The culmination of the Gregorian Year. A time for closure and reflection.

* This week I'll be formulating my 2011 New Year's Resolutions. I've come to the conclusion that resolutions, or promises to oneself, are in and of themselves a good thing. These resolutions will serve as goals or purposes for carrying on in the year ahead. By thinking about them and writing them down, I'm gonna get a jump on the New Year by putting them into effect immediately.

In retrospect, I didn't do too badly carrying out those resolutions. I could have done better. Some things didn't work out or change at all, while others got worse. (sigh!)

* Every December I buy a new planner. The type that I get is a calendar + daily guide that I use for a variety of things, an area where my professioanl and personal lives come together. The planner serves as a diary and at the beginning of each month I enter astrological and religious data. Yes, like our great President Reagan, I watch the stars. I'm also what you might call a "religious hobbyist" in that I enjoy reading about various religions. In our house we always mark and learn about special holidays for the world's major religions. Passover? Eid? Christmas? We celebrate and cherish these days. I still fell the same.

* With Winter on the way, I find the number of visitors to this blog increase almost daily. It begins around Thanksgiving, peaking right around December 24-thru-30. I theorize that more working people have taken time off, and worldwide students are vacationing from school. In upper-North America, it's c-c-cold outside! They go online rather than watch reruns, parades, and end-of-year wrap-up shows on tv or listen to constant Christmas music on the radio. It's a time when I try to write more meaningful and timely posts in line with the winter, the holidays, and the "reflection time" such events foster. When the Northeast got smacked with that early October snowstorm on the night of my birthday, blog traffic jumped. It's good to cozy up to the computer, (the modern-day digital fireplace, taking over from the venerable TeeVee), read stuff, write stuff, make friends, win (lose) a few arguments, buy stuff, check out the news, listen to music, watch youtube... all good... every single bit!

* When I'm sitting at my homePC, I usually have four active browser windows: one for my email, one for Google Reader, one for the blog I'm reading at the moment and one just sitting on Google, ready to be invoked when "the need to know" strikes. I'm writing this in a text editor (TED) whilst tweeting, SMS-ing and IM-ing via my cellphone. This is how I maximize my time. I'm usually online between 4:30 and 7:30am, while making breakfast and getting ready for the workday. Haha! Nowadays I have TWO computers at my workdesk plus a laptop and my smartphone! Ain't no stoppin' me! (Plus I get everything done 6xfaster than if I was on one lonely PC). These days I'm online from 4am-6:30am New York Time and I hop back on around 6pm... sometimes jump right off... sometimes leave the connection open while doing other things... it's a flexible arrangement!

* It's more difficult to write a blog like this one than it is to write a "niche" blog that targets a specific audience. I try to offer something for everyone, and 99% of the material you see here is stuff I would normally take interest in. If there were no blogs, I guess I'd be jotting my thoughts down in a small notebook. Ditto!

* One thing I like to do on this blog is include "easter eggs" - little surprises you'll find either by clicking on certain text passages, or more likely, by mousing over an clicking on images. While you won't be surprised all the time, you will be some of the time! I still do this, and it is just as surprising what people DON'T find as what they do! :)

* A personal blog is a great place to "bookmark" stuff that happens around you in your life during the passage of time. I save favorite photos, videos, recipes etc. right here, by incorporating them into the blog. Stories I've researched and pictures I've taken find their place here as well. That's how the "Around The Blogosphere" aggregated posts came about. It began on my old "Capital Region People" blog as a sidebar feature. There used to be a neat little service called "Sidebar" - you put the widget in your sidebar and they had a very quick-loading, tiny-footprint text editor where you could upload pictures and text to your blog, without having to jump thru all the hoops to get into your blog editor! I loved the service, but one day it stopped working, and then it was gone! I still keep a few "outdated" things here on the blog, reminders to me that times change... and once in awhile I know they bring back a memory or a chuckle to another person sitting in front of his or her computer somewhere else on the planet... like the way I've tagged this post "Lifestreaming!"

Okay - here I am ready for the jump to 2012. Not a clue as to what lies on there on the "time frontier" - but I do hope you'll spend some time here with me on the blog.