Getting Back in the Saddle

Recently, I've been trying to train myself to get up earlier and to do a little writing. So I was up at 5:20 on TUES, 12 APR, scribing some notes I had scribbled down for this blog post while I was sitting in on a workshop at the Northwest Ministry Conference at Overlake church in Redmond, WA, where I had volunteered to help run the NCWA booth on SAT, the 9th. The workshop was discussing how to build an online community, not just a website. Part of the discussion included doing a blog. It was enough to convince me I needed to climb back up on the horse that had bucked me off last year. I've been dragging my feet about getting back into the saddle of blogging, mainly cause I didn't know what to write about. So I decided I would just write about needing to get back to blogging, and about why I haven't blogged for over a year.

The longer I put off doing something - getting back to blogging in this instance, the harder it is to get back to doing it. When I was in high school I was in a drama class in which we were required to get up and do a monologue. I didn't mind getting up on stage and doing small parts, even though I hated getting up in front of class and giving speeches, but this just went against my grain. When the time came to perform the monologue, I came down sick with a tummy ache. I really was sick to my stomach, from nerves, and mom had MS and didn't have the strength to fight with me to get me up and to school. I ended up missing 14 days of school when my high school councilor finally came by the house to see what was wrong. We all talked, and I reluctantly agreed that I would return to school the next day. Talking about having creepy-crawlies in the tummy, walking back into the school that next day certainly gave me the heebie-jeebies.


So why the long absence? It was about this time last year that my Toshiba Qosmio G25 started having heart palpations, and started giving me heart palpations. I managed to get my docs backed up on a flash drive and then copied them over to the Toshiba Satellite that a friend from church gave me. MAY & JUN of 2010 came and went, and I spent that summer sorting through the various copies of all the backup files I had managed to accumulate.

I wound up throwing away some 7,000 files. Some of these files were back ups of back ups of back ups of ... well, you get the idea, going back to at least 10 years ago. All this to say: I got a little distracted from blogging for awhile, even when I did get a computer up and running. THEN in JAN I managed to kill the Satellite (or at least put it into a coma). In FEB a friend from NCWA gave me a replacement, and I've been busy trying to get all my files restored from the last backup I had performed to the flash drive. After I got close to finalizing this process I started dating my backup files, and working on keeping them organized a bit better.

So, here I am a year later finally trying to figure out what to write about in order to get back into blogging. Last week I opened the old posts to try to get motivated to blog and spent a day fiddle-faddling with the layout and such, including renaming the blog "Ruggles' Roamings," from "Ruggles' Wanderings," wanting to get back into blogging, but a little reluctant to try to climb back into the saddle, after all - "What would my readers think of me having been gone so long, and now here I am expecting anybody to actually care about what I blog. I'm not really a blogger (worse - I'm not really a writer), just a pretender." It was thoughts like these that I had to overcome in order to sit down and write this new entry, and so here we are.

So what's next? I've been working on my short story The Ayes Have It, getting it critiqued, editing / rewriting, getting more critiques, trying to move forward. Maybe I will write about that, maybe I will write about trying to write with a cat in the lap. I still owe you all the conclusion of A Midnight Snack, so I need to get that posted. If you already read the older posts, you may remember that I originally stated that this blog was supposed to be a tool in order to get into, and stay in the habit of a regular writing schedule. I'm hoping that between my recent attempts to get up earlier, and my renewed efforts to continue with my blogging that I will be able to get even more writing done. I need to go make sure my backups are current, and properly dated, so that I don't have to re-live last summer's adventures.

Palm Sunday is coming up, Monday is the beginning of Passover, Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday follow close behind, so as we enter into this holy season, be blessed, in Christ's Holy Name.

Chesed v’shalom aleichem b’Y’Shua haMashiach