The earliest point in my life that I can remember enjoying writing was my Junior year in high school. I went to John Jay High School in San Antonio, Texas (Class of 1992.) My Junior year obviously was 1990-1991. For English class that year, I had a teacher named Mrs. Ladson. I don’t know why some teacher’s names stick with you and some don’t. I don’t remember much exceptional about Mrs. Ladson’s teaching ability, but I do remember a lot of students didn’t like her and accused her of being mean, but for some reason I had no problems with her and she even seemed to like me. My friend Wes once commented to me that Mrs. Ladson, while chastising him for some behavior infraction, said “Why can’t you be more like my student in (whatever period I had her class) Eric?” Go figure.

One hallmark of Mrs. Ladson’s class was the journal. For the first 20-35 minutes of class, we were to write in our journals. We had to have a separate notebook (yep, one more public school teacher demanding parents spend more money on school supplies for one class) to keep a journal in. Some days, she would write a theme on the board for us to write about. Other days, she would allow us to “freewrite.” Most students used that time to misbehave. For some reason, I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t have any friend in that class.

At one point, Mrs. Ladson had a student teacher. I wish I could remember his name, because he’s truly the nexus of this post. He really took the journal time to a new level. Each day, he would put a word or phrase or concept on the board. The phrases were the best. He would put part of a sentence up and ask us to finish a story. I don’t know why, but he really inspired me, and I wrote a lot of my best work under his themes. I know I’ve kept my journal notebook from that class, although most of our stuff is somewhere in limbo between here and my in-laws’ house with the expectation that someday this house will sell.

So, to Mr. Student Teacher in 1990-1991, at John Jay in San Antonio, in Mrs. Ladson’s class, if you come across this post for one reason or another, please leave a comment. You have no idea how much you inspired me to write for the rest of my life. I’ve never made a dime off of my writing, but somehow you really did inspire me to keep it up and to even enjoy it.

I’ve been blogging since the end of 2004, and just yesterday one of my posts generated a record setting 5! comments! That felt good, although two of those comments were me replying to somebody. Still, I’ve never had two comments to reply to. The final comment agreed with me, but that was a friend of mine that I asked to check my post, my logic, and my character in response to those who were kind enough to read my post and comment on it.

I’ve mentioned at a few points that I wanted to be a “problogger,” or somebody who makes lots of money by blogging. I’ve slowly come to realize that this isn’t for me, at least, not at this point in my life. I enjoy writing, to a point, but I imagine if my income came to depend on it, I might not be able to keep up. I’ve also not been able to discover a niche. My interests vary from time to time. I’ve tried at various points to have blogs dedicated to PC’s, Linux, Apple, Marriage and Family, Bible Study, IT, politics, education, theology, Franklin Covey, GTD, teamwork, etc. I’ve tried various themes, but I’ve never been able to stick with one niche long enough to generate a lot of repeat interest. At this point, I guess I’d be happy with people who stop by just to see what I’m going to write about next.

For some reason, I’m on an MLM kick this week, ever since the post I linked to above. I’ve been involved in an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) organization. Actually, I’ve been involved in two, and I’ve seen “plans” for several others. I’ve read lots of testimonies of people who came out of the specific MLM that I devoted a lot of time and money to get nowhere. Aw, the memories! Of course, the question remains, what will I be into next week?

According to the Clifton StrengthFinder assessment, one of my strengths is Learner. My current company, when I started, gave me a copy of the “Now, Discover Your Strengths” book. They’re a “Strengths Based Organization,” which I found interesting. After years of “focusing on my weaknesses,” including during my time in that MLM, it’s refreshing to work for a company that wants me to learn about my strengths and put me forward to our customer based on them. It’s an interesting concept. Of course, I also work for an engineering company that was started by engineers, that believes  family comes first and “work is what we do so we can do the things we want to do after work, so have fun” in it’s value statement. I’m babbling, but I’m not getting paid for this. Apparently, the strength of “Learner” sums me up pretty well. I hope I’m not posting copywrited material, and I’ll take this down if I am, but here is the definition of Learner from the assessment:

Learner

You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning. The process, more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you. You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered—this is the process that entices you. Your excitement leads you to engage in adult learning experiences—yoga or piano lessons or graduate classes. It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time and then move on to the next one. This Learner theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become the subject matter expert, or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or academic credential. The outcome of the learning is less significant than the “getting there.”

That’s me, all right. That explains why this week I’m spending my free time reading and thinking about MLM’s, and next week I could be off on another tangent entirely.

At this point, I’ve decided that one of my goals for blogging is to work on my written communication skills. As I learn new ideas, or think through old ones, my goal is to work on how well I can communicate to those who are kind enough to stop by my blog and read my posts.

I have considered getting my own hosted service, but for now I’ll stay here, or with another free blogging service.

I've been wanting to break into problogging for quite some time. (Probloggers are those gifted few, like Darren Rowse or Yaro Starak, who get paid 6 figures from ad revenue for blogging.) For some reasons, I just haven't been able to. I'm sure the hard facts are that I haven't yet figured out who my target audience is yet nor have I been able to keep a consistent writing schedule. My posts are all over the spectrum varying simply over what I'm pissed off about this week.

Ever since I added a bunch of blogs to my Google Reader feeds, I've definitely seen what I don't want to do. I get very frustrated to see a bunch of new posts on one of my feeds only to find that they are little more than "A Summary of this week's posts" or "One year ago on Lifehacker." Even worse are when five or more of the blogs I follow do nothing more than echo each other. Chances are that at a minimum, I will read the same ten posts each week on Lifehacker, Lifehack, Dumb Little Man, and several others. To be honest, I've grown sick of hearing about GTD and I've unsubscibed from many blogs that focus on it. I think the term GTD cult is an understatement. I do maintain a few that present unique and interesting information, but I've gotten rid of many of the "Gospel of the Law of Attraction" blogs.

Another thing I'm growing tired of among the problogs are the lists. I know; Darren Rowse and many other pobloggers says that lists are a great way to bring in traffic but they're also a great way to have me unsubscribe from your blog's feed. I can only read so many iterations of "5 ways to smile" before I puke and terminate a feed.

When I first started blogging I wanted to do socio-political commentary, but that's little fun for me to read so why should I subject anyone who haplessly stumbles by my blog to it? I'm not sure how things are on the "liberal" side of the aisle, but on the conservative side most political news is whining, especially among Christian conservatives. I can't tell you how many email alerts I get with a subject similar to "The Liberal Media Is Ignoring Christian Issues!" No kidding. How is this news, especially when I get the same email from three different organizations six times a month? Sometimes I want to email them to say "Stop wasting my bandwidth!"

I'm not entirely sure where my niche in the blogging world is, but I think I may retool my format once again. I'm a computer geek but I also like history and philosophy. I also consider myself an amateur Bible scholar. There are a lot of things I want to write about, and since I'm not sure that anybody reads my blog, I guess I can write about whatever I want to anyway. I've decided that I’m not likely to get paid to blog, so I might as well have fun with it. I assure those few of you who type whatever search into Google that lands you here, I won't do blog tricks that annoy me. If I do comment on another blog's post, I will make sure that my comments are unique.

This is our bird. We got a parakeet a couple of weeks ago. We haven't named him yet. I still call him "Bird." I'm just testing the publishing of pictures from MS One Note. OK, that didn't work.

I'm just testing using MS One Note as a blogging client. I've been looking for a way to blog from my Pocket PC. If you want to see what I'm up to moment by moment (when I feel like posting, anyway) check out my Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/emuelle1 .

I noticed last night that a post I submitted to Blogger did not post. When I logged in, I found the post in drafts. I'll have to tweak my settings, but it appears that offline publishing tools such as Windows Live Writer can't automatically publish anymore. I have to write the post, submit it, then log into Blogger and publish the draft. That also includes a CAPTCHA, which I often have a hard time with because I sometimes can't tell if the site is looking for a capital or lower case letter. That's way too many steps in a workflow. For now, MSN Spaces takes fewer posts. I at one point wanted to be a "pro blogger", or at least make lots of money in ad revenue in exchange for making lots of posts and generating traffic. That probably isn't going to happen, so I can switch to just posting whatever the heck I feel like. For those of you who follow me here, look forward to more posts.

I also may be migrating some of my posts from Blogger over to Spaces, but it looks like I'll have to move them all manually, one by one. I may only move some of my favorites or those that I worked hardest on. I don't plan to delete my blogs on Blogger; I'll leave them up as long as possible with occasional posts to keep them active. Check my archives. If you find any broken links, at least to my own material, let me know.