Tag Archives: Blogging 101

Coyote

Coyote. I hear your pack howling in the middle of the night. When your cries become more excited, a crescendo of high-pitched yipping, it frightens me. I imagine you have cornered your prey. A small animal or maybe someone’s pet.

When I first came to Agoura I attended a PTA get acquainted meeting at the local school. One of the moms told me a coyote had gotten their family pet. I was horrified. I did not realize coyotes were living so close to us and that they would attack pets in the backyard.

One time a neighbor’s cat was killed, the remains found on the front lawn. I made sure our cat was inside at night. On occasion, she would ignore my calls to come in at dusk. I would listen for her in the night. If I heard any cries or screeching I would imagine the worst.

One early morning, I went out to the front of my house. In the next driveway a large coyote stood staring at me. We made eye contact. Then he slowly loped off down the street.

I have seen coyotes around the area when hiking with my daughter. They do not bother us but just continue on their way.

Coyote. I know we have encroached on your territory more and more and that is why you come hunting in ours.

Coyotes, Coyote Pictures, Coyote Facts – National Geographic.

The Courage to Write

Too Much Information

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“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”–Gertrude Stein

This quote means that if you are getting a lot of input all day you can lose the ability to use your own judgment. I know if I am overloaded I can not think very well.

I am sure that the amount of information and pace at which it is presented has grown exponentially since this quote was made.

I am one who becomes easily overloaded. Just reading a page crammed with print and images is overwhelming to my visual processing. I feel uncomfortable and resistant to the demand made on my system to absorb it all.

If you want me to get your message, you need to present it in smaller segments. Otherwise, I may not be able to get through it all or, even if I do read it all, I will miss something as my eyes skip over parts of it.

Information overload is a type of assault for sensitive souls and introverted types. It is a draining experience to have a lot of sensory input coming at us all at once.

Information is a type of sensory stimulus and along with all the other sensory stimuli we are processing out in the world we can quickly reach a tipping point.

Then we need to withdraw from it all and go somewhere quiet for a while to recover. We need time to process.

All the information can be a kind of brainwashing. So much information coming at you, competing for your attention.

Information in print, visual images, and audio. Cell phones chirping to notify us we have an email or text message waiting.

There is a real danger that this constant distraction by random information keeps us from having time to think about anything meaningful or truly important for our lives.

All this information can cloud our awareness of life going on around us. It can keep us from living our lives.

Featured Image Information Overload or Filter Failure by Graham Steel

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Introduction to Me and Blogging

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I started blogging to get practice with writing and as an experiment to see where it would lead and if I would like it. I started out blogging with a generational theme as a boomer then decided that I did not want to limit myself to one age group or topics related specifically to one age group. There are issues I am concerned about related to age, women, life and others.

When I was younger I always wanted to know people of different ages and backgrounds. So now I want to still do that and not limit my writing. Only in that it applies to being human and my experience. I can be funny, I think, but did not want to have that type of blog either where I made a joke of everything I am experiencing. I did do some writing like that at first.

I do not want to be an advice blog. I could probably manage to do that as well but have not wanted to so far. I would like to have a universal appeal and not be limited and not be preachy. I don’t want to have to write in a way that is calculated to appeal to an audience but is not really authentic to me.

Now we know what I do not want to do. So no one will want to read what I write? 🙂

The main thing for me is to develop my skills and find my voice. I see the blog as a way to do that and to connect with other writers who may share my interests or enable me to develop some new interests as well.

I do like writing about my interests like movies, books, California, my life and some of my early life experiences and issues important to me now.

I chose the name of my blog, Notes Tied on the Sagebrush, based on an image that came to mind of someone writing and not knowing who would read it, or if anyone would, and the notes being a way of self-expression.

I may want to begin a more ambitious writing project as in a book eventually. And would not like the blog to take up a lot of time that I could use to do research and other writing.

I have found I do look for feedback with the blogs I have written already. That can get to be unhealthy though, in that one can spend their time looking to see who likes their posts.

Wasn’t Facebook involved in a project like that to try to influence people’s behavior by giving them what they had liked in the past? I could become addicted to “likes.”

Featured Image of Blog Writer by Mike Licht, NotionsCapitol.com