It began with a change of venue, from HostGator to PeoplesHost. After nearly a decade, it was time for a fresh start. Rather than blow away the old blog, I decided to start with a new one. This gave me the opportunity to experiment with a fresh look, fresh content, fresh thoughts, and a fresh perspective. It tickled my funnybone to carry on the accidental tradition of naming it for the year of its birth. It’s All a Matter of Perspective began its life at https://jahangiri.us/2013, but that was meant to be a temporary home. It turned out to be harder to rename an established blog than I thought it would be. In a mash-up of laziness and exhaustion, I left it alone and the name stuck. This time, https://jahangiri.us/2017 is a deliberate homage to its predecessor, and we’ll just let newcomers wonder, in six months, where the other three years are hiding.
I hope you’ll subscribe to the blog, so that you’ll get new posts in email. Look to the right sidebar, near the top: enter your email address, click Subscribe, then check your email and confirm that you meant to do that. It’s the best way I know of to get notified when there’s new stuff, so you don’t have to check back every day and be disappointed if nothing’s changed. Don’t leave it at that, though! This blog is not a magazine, and the real beauty of a blog is when it turns into a conversation in the comments section. Don’t wait for an engraved invitation – comment!
What’s in a Name?
In A Puppy, Not a Guppy, I explored the consequences, both positive and negative, of the names and labels we put on others. Parents rightfully spend a lot of time considering baby names; children learn the pain and joy of nicknames endowed upon them by bullies and friends, relatives and teachers. The names we give are a reflection of our own attitudes – our own perspective on the people and things we name. A blog is no different.
I’ve never understood why there are so many blogs named with some variant of “Random Thoughts.” A quick Google search:
random thoughts blog
yields a mind-numbing 8,810,000 results. Some of them live down to their name: random thoughts, blurted out to a blasé Internet with another 67 billion things vying for their attention. The only reason anyone wants to read a blogger’s “random thoughts” is because they love that blogger and haven’t the heart not to. It takes a strong opening sentence to capture and hold a reader’s attention with a blog name like “Random Thoughts,” but I know some of these bloggers – a number of them are neither random nor dull. They just need a fresh start and a catchier blog name.
Fresh Perspective
I liked “It’s All a Matter of Perspective,” but since I’ve chosen not to demolish it and salvage its parts, I can’t have it for the title of this blog. A fresh start with “A Fresh Perspective” is what I’m working towards, in more ways than one. Committing to the name, I hope to commit to the goal of focusing on the people that merit attention, and on the things that are within my sphere of control and influence, like creative originality, a positive attitude, and general well-being.
I need to print the Slow Blogging Manifesto and keep it close when I turn on the PC, to reinforce my resolve. Facebooking is the antithesis of slow-blogging. The blog is home. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – they’re like the corner bar, the coffee shop, the bakery. But the blog is home, for a writer.
I’m keeping the tagline: “99.3% truth, .7% blatant lies. In between lies my perspective on life.” I like to set expectations – to play fair. William Faulkner wrote:
“The poets are wrong of course […] But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That’s because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.” (The Town, 1957)
Lord, let me be a poet. Even when I’m just being a blogger.
Amen to the quote! SO happy to see you back in the blogosphere. 🙂
Thanks! Glad to be back. (I was active a month ago! LOL Just had little things like Harvey, a broken hard drive, a broken modem, malware on my old hosting service, transferring everything, setting up a new FRESH template, and making sure I had some content ready to open with – little things like that – got in the way for a while!)
Amen to the quote! SO happy to see you back in the blogosphere. 🙂
Thanks! Glad to be back. (I was active a month ago! LOL Just had little things like Harvey, a broken hard drive, a broken modem, malware on my old hosting service, transferring everything, setting up a new FRESH template, and making sure I had some content ready to open with – little things like that – got in the way for a while!)
Totally agree with you. The blog at the end of the day is home. All the others maybe fun for awhile but a writer must find his way back to his blog.
And well, as for the ‘random thoughts’ bit, your post got me thinking and I ACTUALLY know 5 people on my timeline with those words in some form or the other in their title :/
Godyears.net
With over 8 MILLION blogs having some form of those words, I’m not at all surprised, Roshan. Pretty sure I do, too (haven’t counted, but I see them often enough that it leaves me scratching my head). I hope none of them are upset at being called on it, here! 😀
Totally agree with you. The blog at the end of the day is home. All the others maybe fun for awhile but a writer must find his way back to his blog.
And well, as for the ‘random thoughts’ bit, your post got me thinking and I ACTUALLY know 5 people on my timeline with those words in some form or the other in their title :/
Godyears.net
With over 8 MILLION blogs having some form of those words, I’m not at all surprised, Roshan. Pretty sure I do, too (haven’t counted, but I see them often enough that it leaves me scratching my head). I hope none of them are upset at being called on it, here! 😀
Holly fresh prespectives are like freshly brewd coffee, strong, flavoursome and they don’t fail to add that extra vigour. I’m sure your blog is going to be all about that and more.
All the very best.
https://natashamusing.com/2017/09/rafting-adventure-wanderlustwednesday/
Mmm, nice! (Coffee is my jet fuel – love that metaphor, thank you!) I’m glad you enjoyed it, and do hope you’ll come back for another cup!
Holly fresh prespectives are like freshly brewd coffee, strong, flavoursome and they don’t fail to add that extra vigour. I’m sure your blog is going to be all about that and more.
All the very best.
https://natashamusing.com/2017/09/rafting-adventure-wanderlustwednesday/
Mmm, nice! (Coffee is my jet fuel – love that metaphor, thank you!) I’m glad you enjoyed it, and do hope you’ll come back for another cup!
Last try. (I tried four times yesterday).
I don’t know, Holly. I don’t use random thoughts, but ruminations from the mind. It means the same thing (but far more mellifluous)
😀 And a little more original, curiosity-piquing, vocabulary-building…
But no, it does not mean the same thing at all. A “rumination” is, by definition, a “deeply considered thought about something.” (Or cud. Chewing cud. But let’s not go there. I’m sure you can think and chew cud–or gum–at the same time.) And that is the OPPOSITE of a random thought blurted out into the universe, as if anyone would care. We all have so many of our own random thoughts, and so few of them are really original (if you ruminate on them for a bit). Ruminations, on the other hand, may start life as random thoughts, but get the full mental treatment – deep, considered – they’re developed well before they hit the page (or post).
This is one of my goals for this blog: to ruminate, not to blurt.
Last try. (I tried four times yesterday).
I don’t know, Holly. I don’t use random thoughts, but ruminations from the mind. It means the same thing (but far more mellifluous)
😀 And a little more original, curiosity-piquing, vocabulary-building…
But no, it does not mean the same thing at all. A “rumination” is, by definition, a “deeply considered thought about something.” (Or cud. Chewing cud. But let’s not go there. I’m sure you can think and chew cud–or gum–at the same time.) And that is the OPPOSITE of a random thought blurted out into the universe, as if anyone would care. We all have so many of our own random thoughts, and so few of them are really original (if you ruminate on them for a bit). Ruminations, on the other hand, may start life as random thoughts, but get the full mental treatment – deep, considered – they’re developed well before they hit the page (or post).
This is one of my goals for this blog: to ruminate, not to blurt.
You know how much I love your perspectives and not just on your blog!. Glad your writing has a new home.
Thank you for the kind words, Corinne! Me, too. This feels right. (I feel like Goldilocks, some days.)
You know how much I love your perspectives and not just on your blog!. Glad your writing has a new home.
Thank you for the kind words, Corinne! Me, too. This feels right. (I feel like Goldilocks, some days.)
I thought about starting a blog at about the same time, end of 2016. I was blind-sided by the election results and felt I needed a place to vent my frustration. Then sanity returned and I settled down. I found this blog through something you posted on Facebook about NaNoWriMo. It took me to your old blog which led me to this new one. Hope it is working well for you. With all the writing you do, I wonder how you find the time and energy and enthusiasm to keep it up.
I wonder, too, some days! Yes, the post you followed from Facebook was to my unfinished, unedited story “Eradicating Edna,” an example of how to beat up on the Inner Critic and have fun with NaNoWriMo (as in, it doesn’t have to be all deadly earnest and literary). I really ought to finish it. I have more would-be buyers for that novel than for all my children’s books combined.
A place to vent is good, but I tend to go dark when I am merely frustrated or full of impotent rage. I don’t want my blog to be all melancholy, nor do I want to create a nice little echo chamber, nor do I want to invite the Internet Horde to my doorstep without a damned good reason. (They don’t scare me as much as exhaust me, and as you pointed out, there are better uses for that energy. More pleasant uses for it.) And there’s usually another writer, out there, who has said all I’d want to say on the subject, said it well, and could use a boost – a read and a share, because it’s the sort of writing they enjoy and they deserve a wider audience.
I can’t always muster the positivity to write for #WATWB, much as I’d like to do that every month. I am the black sheep of the family, there. Fortunately, they haven’t quite given up on me. I am often caught somewhere between Anne Frank’s optimism in writing, “It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,” and the little voice that snarls, “Yeah, and look where that got her.”
I think the way I learned the story of Pandora’s box was inaccurate; “hope” would not be shut up in a box containing sickness, fear, evil, death – but “false expectations” or “expectation of evil” might be. 6th-century BC Greek elegiac poet Theognis of Megara states that
Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men’s judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety.
So, really, nothing changes – and maybe that’s a comfort, as we (humanity) have survived dark times before. But will we, Bob and Holly? Who knows.
What I really want to do is return to writing fiction, but it’s a muscle that seems to atrophy when neglected too long or compared to works we admire more than our own. So there’s the dilemma: the well must be filled, but in filling it, we mustn’t overfill it to the point of satiation.
Anyway, NaNoWriMo is a game that can’t always be “won” but it’s a good, fun, creative outlet and an exercise in balancing priorities. Think of it as a kick-starter for imagination, a way to build good writing habits, and an exercise in time management, too.
I thought about starting a blog at about the same time, end of 2016. I was blind-sided by the election results and felt I needed a place to vent my frustration. Then sanity returned and I settled down. I found this blog through something you posted on Facebook about NaNoWriMo. It took me to your old blog which led me to this new one. Hope it is working well for you. With all the writing you do, I wonder how you find the time and energy and enthusiasm to keep it up.
I wonder, too, some days! Yes, the post you followed from Facebook was to my unfinished, unedited story “Eradicating Edna,” an example of how to beat up on the Inner Critic and have fun with NaNoWriMo (as in, it doesn’t have to be all deadly earnest and literary). I really ought to finish it. I have more would-be buyers for that novel than for all my children’s books combined.
A place to vent is good, but I tend to go dark when I am merely frustrated or full of impotent rage. I don’t want my blog to be all melancholy, nor do I want to create a nice little echo chamber, nor do I want to invite the Internet Horde to my doorstep without a damned good reason. (They don’t scare me as much as exhaust me, and as you pointed out, there are better uses for that energy. More pleasant uses for it.) And there’s usually another writer, out there, who has said all I’d want to say on the subject, said it well, and could use a boost – a read and a share, because it’s the sort of writing they enjoy and they deserve a wider audience.
I can’t always muster the positivity to write for #WATWB, much as I’d like to do that every month. I am the black sheep of the family, there. Fortunately, they haven’t quite given up on me. I am often caught somewhere between Anne Frank’s optimism in writing, “It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,” and the little voice that snarls, “Yeah, and look where that got her.”
I think the way I learned the story of Pandora’s box was inaccurate; “hope” would not be shut up in a box containing sickness, fear, evil, death – but “false expectations” or “expectation of evil” might be. 6th-century BC Greek elegiac poet Theognis of Megara states that
Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men’s judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety.
So, really, nothing changes – and maybe that’s a comfort, as we (humanity) have survived dark times before. But will we, Bob and Holly? Who knows.
What I really want to do is return to writing fiction, but it’s a muscle that seems to atrophy when neglected too long or compared to works we admire more than our own. So there’s the dilemma: the well must be filled, but in filling it, we mustn’t overfill it to the point of satiation.
Anyway, NaNoWriMo is a game that can’t always be “won” but it’s a good, fun, creative outlet and an exercise in balancing priorities. Think of it as a kick-starter for imagination, a way to build good writing habits, and an exercise in time management, too.