by jltitus on February 24, 2010
“Has it really been almost a month since I’ve posted anything of value to the world? I know I’ve been living life and enjoying friends and the weekend, but really.. a WHOLE month. Not good.” That’s what I thought logging on tonight to my blog and considering writing a blog post. Blogging is an interesting thing. There are so many out there; some people share their life, some proliferate information, others share their thoughts about a specific topic. My blog, well this is a place for everything in my life.
When I started blogging I did so to capture what was happening in my life so I had my journaling all done when it came time to scrapbook an event. It have moved to all sorts of locations. It has been broken apart and brought back together I don’t know how many times. I’ve often felt that I “need” to write more on my blog, like I “owe” it to the few people I know that actually read it. I mean if I want more readers and more people commenting I need to post more, right? I was thinking about this the other day and realized this. I’m a lurker. I mean, when I’m on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I lurk and read more than I comment. I know, some of you reading this find that hard to believe because I do comment in Facebook and tweet in Twitter. In thinking about being a lurker, I realized this, “I like lurking. I prefer talking to someone in person than writing to a nebulous person(s) over the web.” That said, I have to wonder how many people are lurking on my blog. Since this discovery I have accepted the fact that this blog is well.. for me. If others want to know what I’m doing, etc. then they can see it here.. but I don’t need comments or readers to feel the value of the blog. The value comes, for me, when I’m talking with someone about say.. a recipe.. and I can tell them, “Go to my blog and select recipes, you’ll find a great recipe for gnocchi.” If they go great, if not that’s OK too.
So what does this all mean? Well, I honestly don’t know. What I DO know is that I don’t feel pressure to post to my blog. I don’t feel bad when no one comments. I feel good that I can share with others and they can read it when they see fit.. or maybe not at all. It’s liberating I have to say.
Tagged as:
jona
by jltitus on January 4, 2010
It’s a new year and so of course that means making resolutions for the year that for me, usually mean I’ll break. Actually, I like to think of them as goals more than resolutions. This year I have a lot of them and I’m hoping that I can reach most of them. I’ve broken the list into a few categories.
Warning: This is a long post.
Health & Wellness
- Eat more vegetables and fish… less meat and chicken.
I have eaten way WAY too much junk over the holidays and have never been good about eating enough veggies each day. I’m hoping this year I’ll turn over a new leaf and eat more veggies and fish. I even ordered some new recipe books from Amazon to inspire me. Eric is up to the challenge as well. He loved using the Epicurious iPhone app to find new recipes to try. I’m hoping that at least once a week I can get a recipe posted that we’ve tried.
- Exercise for 30-45 minutes at least three times a week.
Ahh… the elusive exercise. This spring and summer I did really well exercising and lost some weight. Of course with winter comes the rain and who wants to run in the rain? Not me and NOT my dogs. So exercise has been a bit elusive for me lately because of the weather and well, I’ve just been crazy busy at work. So this year I’m hoping to break that and get to getting. My mother-in-law, Julie bought me the Biggest Looser game for the Wii. It was on my Amazon wish list. In any case I now have the Wii set up in my studio and have committed to exercising and playing that game. I’ve just started and let me tell you, it kick my bootie. Here’s to removed those unwanted pounds for good.
- Walk the dogs three times a week.
I’m a bad owner. I’m so terrible about taking my dogs for a walk and getting them outside it’s not even funny. Baylee is a little round and well, Kona will never be fat because she’s got the Jack (Crack) Russell in her. So I’m going to get them out and walk them three times a week. Maybe once a month or so I’ll take them to the winery to run. They love it there. I try to take them to the dog park but they get overwhelmed by the super big dogs and just won’t do much so, walking it is. I’m hoping I can get my lazy self up tomorrow and take them. Maybe Eric will join me?
Personal improvements
- No more than 2 hours or TV or electrical entertainment a day.
I think I’m a certified couch potato. Most of the time Eric and I do the same thing every day when we each get home. Plop in front of the TV and watch whatever is on or what we’ve got on the DVR until it’s time to go to bed. Go to bed and in some cases watch TV until midnight for no other reason than because it’s there. I have a stack of books, both professional and fun, that I’d like to read but haven’t had the time because I’m parked in front of the TV. This year that changes. This year I’m only allowing myself two hours of TV or electronic entertainment a day. With any luck I’ll reduce even that. Tonight Eric is watching some football game so I’m upstairs reading and writing. I thought I’d be bored to tears but I have to say, I REALLY enjoy the quiet time. I like being able to collect my thoughts and write them down. I just like not having the blare of the TV. Tonight I only watched 30 minutes of TV and I have to say, that was enough for me. I’m feeling good about this one and hoping to continue it all year-long.
- Read at least 2 books a month
Again, I haven’t had, or made, a lot of time to read. I enjoy reading but I’m not a fast reader so it takes me a while to read anything. This year I’m hoping to read 24 books over the year, that’s about 2 books a month. I’m really looking forward to this one as I have several books to read. My “To Read” pile is HUGE, like 40+ books and that doesn’t include the ones on my Kindle. I need to get reading!
- Try to blog once a week
This one is here because I’m a bad blogger. I don’t feel the need to HAVE to blog but I want to blog. I often use my blogs to capture events that I later scrapbook. Some of my friends and family read my blog to keep up on things Eric and I are doing or have done. Note: I’m terrible about emailing people about what I’m up to. So I’m hoping to post a blog every week. They might be about thing I’ve read, things I’m doing, scrapbooky stuff, cooking, who knows.. but I’m going to try. If nothing else it will be a great way of me to improve my writing.
Home & Finance
- Focus on one room a month to “super” clean and organize.
Ahh… the elusive organization. OK, I’m an organized person. My house is pretty organized too but there are pockets of “junk” and clutter that need to go. In the past I’ve tried spring cleaning but that has ended up in the “junk” moving from one location to another. So this year, with the help of a book bought, One Year to an Organized Life, I’m going to tackle one room a month and clean it from top to bottom and organize everything in it. I’ll Craig’s List what I can and then donate the rest. By the end of this year I want the house it tip-top shape. We’ve just got too much stuff that we don’t use or need around here. I’ve even wrangled Eric into this goal. If we meet the goal for the month, we get to treat ourselves to a nice dinner out. I’ve actually already started. This month is my studio/office. Over New Years I took up the carpet and padding, painted the floor with porch paint and as I started putting things back in the room I purged my stuff. Now there’s a big pile of stuff on the ping-pong table in the garage waiting for Craig’s List. I have to say it feels great to have that room almost done.
- Stick to our budget
Eric and I are not good at budgeting. I mean we can plan a budget but it’s the sticking to it that we’re not good at. This year we’re going to really try to stick to it. Our goal is to be debt free, except the mortgage, student loan, and car payment, by the end of this year. That means some belt-tightening and sticking to a budget. We can do it I’m sure we’ve just been lazy.
- Pay bills on time and together
This has been an interesting one for us. Paying bills I mean. When we were first married I paid all the bills and kept the finances going. Early last year I couldn’t take it any more and just dumped it all in Eric’s lap to deal with. He has a different style that I do, like keeping the balance in his head rather than using something like Quicken or something to do that. he also doesn’t reconcile the account each month. Those things started driving me crazy so we sat down and wrote up our budget and then I made an Excel sheet with a column for each pay check we’ll get for the year. I then identified what we will pay with which paycheck. Now when Eric gets paid he knows what bills he has to pay and when I get paid I know what bills I need to pay. We also moved from Quicken to iFinance because it’s a Mac application and has an iPhone app that allows you to sync with your Mac so we can always know how we’re doing.
- Increase 401K
I’m getting older, hit 40 in 2009… that means retirement is closer. When I retire I want to be able to live the way I do now, maybe better so it’ time to throw more money in the 401K. I’m thinking whatever raise I get this year will go right into the 401K.
- No credit card charges
To meet our debt free goal by the end of this year that means no more charges on the credit cards. When we have them paid off I’ll be so happy. This month we’ve gotten two paid off already. Now we just have a little more left to go. I’m going to SO do the happy dance when we get there.
So here’s to a new year, new goals, and a great future ahead. I hope your year is starting out well too.
Tagged as:
finance,
health,
personal improvements,
resolutions,
wellness
by jltitus on June 25, 2009
Well, it’s finally ready. I’ve been working on this blog for a few months trying to get it “just right” and ready for the world to see. I’m pretty proud of this blog. So why did I make a new blog you ask? Well, I’ve been blogging, or not blogging, for a while and had several separate blogs; one for recipes, one for my personal life, and one for my professional life. After much consideration I thought that it was time to make life easier on myself and reduce the number for blogs and give people one place to go and find me. So I melded all those blogs together, to this one. So you’ll see I have recipes, family stuff, work stuff, random thoughts, and more. What’s nice too is that I’ve been working on categorizing all my posts to fall in one of a few categories:
- All about us (Eric, myself, the dogs, and cat)
- Celebrations (holidays, special days, etc.)
- Geek life (work life, social media, techie things,etc.)
- People we love (people in our lives, some family, some friends)
- Places we go (adventures near and far)
- Recipes (our recipes)
- Things we do (activities we do… like wine touring)
I thought long and hard about the name for this blog too. I wanted to name is something catchy or that people would remember but in the end I decided to, “keep it simple silly” and was able to get my twitter user name. So…. welcome to http://www.jltitus.com
I hope to get more consistent about my posting and hope not to bore the few that read this blog.
Tagged as:
organization
by jltitus on November 2, 2008
Recently I was reading Wired magazine and stumbled upon an article from Paul Boutin, “Kill Your Blog”. In Paul’s short article he suggests that blogging is dead and we should… “pull the plug” on them if we’ve already got them. He suggests that social media applications like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc are better, faster ways to express yourself. He goes on to suggest that if you look at Technorati’s top 100 blogs, you’ll have to scroll for a long time to find personal blogs because the top 100 is mostly professional blogs like The Huffington post , Engadget and TreeHugger.
I have to say, I couldn’t disagree more. Ok, maybe blogging isn’t as popular as it once was because we do have tools like Twitter that make it easy to micropost. But blogging does have it’s place. To suggest that one should kill their blog is beyond nuts. Why? Well, let me give you a personal example. I have a personal family blog that I use to keep my family and friends updated on what I’m doing. I use a blog because quite honestly, most of my family isn’t technologically savvy. It’s all I can do to get my mother to check my blog. Many of friends are part of the 90% that are lookers and don’t post comments.
I honestly can’t believe that a person would suggest no longer using a blog. Blogs are not dead and worthless, they are not used by those that are farther down the technological path using social media. Not everyone in this world is an early adopter, not everyone embraces social media. People and companies need to provide content to all in all ways.. If it be a blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I think most companies have some sort of blog, Twitter presence, Facebook presence and more.. Why are they in all these places? Because they’re trying to go where their customers are, where the people are… and that includes blogs. If they didn’t blog, they’d be missing a whole group of people.
Tagged as:
wired_magazine
by jltitus on October 2, 2008
Finally I’ve gotten the opportunity to post about WordCampdx that I attended this last Saturday. this was the first event of this kind I have attended, I just have to say, it was AMAZING! I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was better than I had thought it would be. I started the morning registering and meeting other bloggers. I’m usually a pretty shy person around people I don’t know, but having blogging in common enabled me to come out of my shell. I think I started with 18 twitter followers and ended up with something close to 40 after one day of networking.
- I learned so much attending Wordcampdx. I’m sort of at a loss of where to start. Let’s see, Lorelle VanFossen shared a great story about how Wordpress is changing lives. I had never thought about how blogging enables some people. Lorelle shared a great story about Glenda Watson Hyatt of the Do It Myself Blog. Glenda’s story is so powerful it even made me weepy and thankful that we have techonlogy and the it enables people to break barriers and perceptions. Thanks Lorelle, for the story.
- Betsy Richter shared with us how she got a website up, with authors in something like 10 days. I appreciated the anlogies she made and all the “lessons learned” she shared with us. If you haven’t put it in your feeds, add Our PDX Network to your feeds. It’s a great site to keep up with Portland happenings and people.
- I was pretty happy after those presentations but the day only got better. Chris O’Rourke showed us the top 10 plug-ins to make our blogs pop. He has some great plugins that I had not heard before. It was super exciting to here him talk about each plugin and install them on my blog as he talked.
- After lunch, Jane Wells showed us all the exciting things to come with WordPress 2.7. Man is it going to be awesome! I can’t believe it’s not going to be out for about another month. I’m so waiting for that one.
- Next up, Tying you Tubes: Integration with WordPress Josh Bancroft . Josh made some great analogies relating integration of our “web life” with our blog and how we can support such things as twitter, friendfeed,e tc on our home page.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick did great presentation showing us how to feed our blogs with rss feeds. I can’t believe all the ways to get feeds and aggregate them to get a feed to post on your blog, use for news, etc. Let’s just say I was left in awe and super excited about the possibilities.
Needless to say, I had a TOTAL blast at the event, met a TON of people and look forward to the continued connections. I honestly feel like I’m becoming part of the PDX blogging community. I’ve been checking out Upcoming and plan to attend several events to keep my involved.
Thanks Wordcampdx for a great day full of information! I look forward to the next one!
Tagged as:
community,
portland
by jltitus on June 7, 2008
I can’t even believe that it’s been so long since I last posted. I mean, where did the month of May go? I have found that blogging has become a challenge for me. I mean, I’ve never been one of those people that blogs all the time, or that has tons to say. I do enjoy blogging though. I like sharing what I’m doing with my life with my family and friends. I love learning from others and finding new, fun things from others.
Ok, I have to start this post by saying I LOVE Web 2.0 (yeah, I hate the term too!) technology but I’m finding it a challenge too. I am the sort of person that’s good at multi-tasking, but there’s so much. You’d think this would mean I would be great at reading blogs (yes, I use Google Reader), posting to my blog, and just generally keeping up with things. I feel like a “techie geeky girl” but then I feel at other times like I’m not even close.
So here are my challenges. I’m looking for ideas here on how to deal with things.
Challenge 1: Keeping up with blogs
- I really love reading blogs and what others have to say. I just find the challenge in keeping up with it all. I want to, really I do, I just don’t know how. I’ve cut my rss feeds down to something like 200, which is pretty good for me. I have found that there are some posts I read thoroughly and others I just scan. I just have that, “if I don’t subscribe, I’ll miss something” feeling. I just want to keep up with the things I’m interested in. I think it’s important to keep up with my industry too and learn what others have to say about eLearning and instructional design. I have found I’ve gotten in the habit where the number of unread posts will get so high I just hit the “mark all as read” so I don’t feel like it’s staring me in the face, but at the same time I feel guilty because I’m sure there was something great in some of those posts and I missed them. Argh!!! I can never win.
Challenge 2: Writing to my blog
- I have never been a writer. I mean, when I was a child I always wanted to journal, thought I should journal but I’d only get a few entries in and then I wouldn’t do any more for a LONG time. I’m finding that same challenge as an adult. I’ve tried to post when I have something to say and not put the added pressure on myself to always post once a week or some frequency.
- I often find myself going through the day and composing a blog post in my head about neat things I’ve learned that day or something I want to share. Sadly, it doesn’t get put down and I find that it’s the end of the day and I can’t remember what I wanted to write, let alone do I have the time to write it.
- Another issue is that I’m hypersensitive about my writing. Ok, what do I mean? Well, I know I’m not a great writer. English has never been my strong suit. I mean, I don’t care about dangling participles and things. I care about the message. Bad, I know. It didn’t help that recently, when I was interviewing for a job, the manager asked me this, ” I looked at your blog and noticed a lot of writing errors, is that an indication that you lack attention to detail?” I so couldn’t believe that. To me blogging is all about getting the idea down and sharing with others. I consider it more of a free writing space. If I was writing a formal article for a newspaper, or other publication, then my all means I agree that the write needs to follow English rules but a personal blog… I don’t know, maybe I’m missing something.
Challenge 3: Finding time
- Who doesn’t have this challenge? I find it so difficult to make the time and find the time to read, write or post. I also find it difficult to keep up with all the places I am at. I mean, I have a Facebook account, a Linkedin, Squido, Goodreads, and more. I’ve often thought of making some sort of mashup that is a page that has all of these things I’m in, just so I can keep them all straight. I know, it’s crazy to be a part of all of these things but, at the same time, isn’t that part of social networking? I mean there’s a reason I’m part of each. Everything from having friends there to meeting people professionally in that location and more.
- I do know that if I reduced other things, like scrapbooking and my hobbies I might have more time for reading, but i don’t want to do that. I love being creative, it’s really my outlet and stress reliever. I think I just need to turn the TV off more and read or something.
So there it is, my challenges warts and all. Does anyone else face these challenges? How do you deal with them. I welcome ideas and would love to chat more about fitting technology into your life.
Tagged as:
challenges,
time,
writing
by jltitus on January 18, 2008
I know, I know it’s been a LONG time since I’ve posted and I’m not the world’s most reliable blogger (at least this blog). But I’m going to do better. I think collaboration with others is important and sharing ideas/thoughts even more important. Well, to do that, I NEED TO POST. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about it since the new year and I’m going to try and post once a week, at least. I’m going to start there and after that, who knows.
I hate to make excuses but I think one of the reason I haven’t posted is “information overload”. I think most of us can identify with that. You know, having something like 130 RSS feeds, getting magazines a couple times a month in the mail and not having the time, or notion to read them all. For me a degree of guilt comes with all of that. I would LOVE to be able to sit down and read, read, read but I don’t. Instead I choose to watch shows on TV with my husband, work or just enjoy life a little more. I started cleaning things a bit last night getting rid of those feeds that I don’t read much or where people haven’t posted for over a year. I’m not sure how many feeds I have not but I might be under the 100 mark. I’ve got my magazines stacked and ready to read and my notebook next to it to take notes. 
My husband and I have also agreed to turn the TV off from 6-8pm too so that’s going to help too.
Here’s to things picking up and posts/knowledge improving.
Tagged as:
posting
by jltitus on March 20, 2007
by jltitus on February 12, 2007
For those of you that don’t know, I was laid off from my previous employer (Intel) back in October. I sort of thought it was going to be coming because my old group was very political and because I was one of “those people” that bucked the system and dared to ask upper management questions, I wasn’t really liked. That in addition to some other political things lead to my lay off. At first being laid off was really hard because I knew it was good for me but at the same time freaked me out too. I didn’t understand why, from a performance perspective, why I was laid off when I’d had over 3 divisional recognition awards and my customers felt i delivered results. I think at first I was just numb and wasn’t sure what to do with myself since I had gone from working a 40 hour week to nothing. Let me tell you though, it was nice. It was great to have both Thanksgiving and Christmas off to really enjoy the holidays, my friends and family. That was a real treat.
I kept looking at my RSS feeds and hoping that some day I’d feel the desire and need to read and immerse myself back into the blogisphere and be a “contributing member of society”. Just about every day I’d open my computer and look at the long list of posts to read and just felt overwhelmed and I think a part of me just wanted to curl up and hide from everyone and lick my wounds. It was a feeling I’ve not had before, I mean, I’ve NEVER been let go from a job and that was a hard pill to swallow.
Well, things have changed. I have a full time job now that I’m really excited about. I’ll be using my wonderful ISD skills in the travel industry developing online courses for the company that has hired me. I’m pretty excited and it’s with that excitement that i write this post. I’m back.. i mean…
I’M BACK!!!!
I’m so excited to read up on the posts that I’ve read, well I may not read all the ones I’ve missed but I hope to catch up and start posting to others blogs. I’m interested to see what I’ve missed and jump back into sharing my thoughts, learning from others and bring that knowledge to my new job and company.
This was a long and hard process but I’m really glad I went through it. Getting laid off was the best thing I ever needed. It was a great kick in the you know what to get me out there and realize that I bring value. May you all feel the same.
Tagged as:
internet,
posts
Help! Wordpress tip needed!
by jltitus on August 21, 2007
OK, can I just say, I really, really wish that when someone posted a comment to my blog, I got an email telling me so. I am so SO used to that because of RSS feeds, and other blogs I have that it would be nice if WordPress did the same.
Anyone know how to do that? If it’s not possible, how do those of you out there remember to go check your posts to see comments? I’d be interested in hearing your processes.
Tagged as: comments, tips
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