Blogging — Going A Different Way

On Faith

I love how easy it is to change directions on WordPress. I changed the name of A Church A Day blog to My Rules http://mbcoudal.wordpress.com/ when I realized visiting a church a day was too much of a commitment. (Although I just won a journalism award for that blog, so I will probably go back to A Church A Day when the kids go to camp this summer.) I also want to stick to My Rules because I want to be accountable to the 7 life rules I made up for myself.

On Fitness

I changed the focus of my running blog http://runningaground.wordpress.com/ to health when I found out I had basal cell cardinoma. But I still love the idea and name of Running Aground. I am logging, blogging, slogging my way to fitness.

On Writing

I changed this blog https://gettingmyessayspublished.wordpress.com/ to The Connected Life — a much better title than Getting My Essays Published. At first, this blog had a private setting because I wanted to keep track of where I was sending my essays and where they were, or were not, getting published. It seemed a personal and boring endeavor, the pursuit of publication. But then I wanted to comment on so many things about social media. I’m not really in love with this blog’s URL or the name. It’s kinda meh.

On NYC

My favorite of my blog titles is My Beautiful New York. This is the only title I haven’t changed since I started almost two years ago. I still love the name My Beautiful New York.

The title says what a blog title should say: Here’s something delicious. Here’s what I’m passionate about — or at least musing on. For a few months My Beautiful New York was mostly pictures downloaded from my phone.

When I post and want to refer back to an earlier post, I sometimes wonder Which blog did I write that for? Then I Google MBCoudal and a tag. 

And then there are times I wonder which blog to post on — should I post my musings on My Beautiful New York or My Rules? Like those several posts about the sidewalk art. They seemed like quintessential New York stories, but ultimately, I decided they had more to do with an epiphany or synchronicity. And that jibes more with My Rules.

Also there is this questing of PostADay2011, posting every day of 2011. The tag PostADay2011 is getting too big in my clouds. It’s dwarfing my other tags, so I’m going to have to untag PostADay2011.

I’d do it now, but I’m going to watch a movie with my kids. I love my kids even more than I love blogging. I do love blogging, especially because you can change their names. Kids? Not so much.

Posting Every Day

I post every day. Okay, every night. I plan to do it for 66 days because that’s how many days it takes to make a habit. I’m up to 33 days. Half-way there!

I love it. I love mulling over what to write. I jot down ideas on the back of envelopes in my purse. Then, later, can’t decipher my handwriting. It’s big and scrawly. Other times, I know exactly what I wrote. Like I saw the phrase —  “glory = Riversd Park = walkin home as lmpsts light.” I’ll post that one in My Beautiful New York.

I like the feeling of scooping a story. I believe I was one of the first people to post about the new astrological sign (thanks to my friends at Happy Hour!). I did expect my readership to soar the night I posted that little piece of brilliance. http://mybeautifulnewyork.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/the-zodiac/

There might have been a slight bump in readers. I don’t obsess over my stats. I am just glad that I have readers. (THANKS!) And I’m doing it partly for myself — to figure out what it is I’m thinking.

And I don’t have to go on long in these blog posts. Once I hit 100 words, I figure I’m nearly done!

I want to conclude with a picture of where I was when I started writing this post — a new cafe on 120th and Broadway at Columbia University. How charming is this! I am in love. I am in love with New York City. This spot had been a construction site for years. Now it’s a lovely place to hang out and write in the early morning.

Go figure. Life is surprising. And so are the things you discover every day.