Mockingbird Hill Cottage

On Blogging: Why I No Longer Care About Stats and Competition

2013-05-22T18:50:05Z

I’m thinking out loud here. Bear with me.

Though I’m sure I have a more than a bit of it in me, I’m not a super competitive person. When I recognize it rearing its ugly head, I feel uncomfortable. It’s not me. I don’t like what it brings out in me. I know there is a healthy form of competitiveness and, to a certain extent, it drives us to do better, to be better. When I used to audition for acting roles, which is all about competition, I was excited and triumphant if I was cast in the part. But usually, I didn’t see my fellow auditioners, so I was only in competition with myself, if that makes sense. I did the best I could and hoped it was enough.

Blogging has changed a great deal since I first started this blog over five years ago. What used to be a more intimate community of people sharing thoughts and ideas is now a much more competitive arena. Everyone is trying to get sponsors, ad income, affiliate links, big stats numbers. Everywhere I turn there is advice as to how to grow your blog. I have benefited from some of that advice in the past. But now it’s all about numbers. How many visitors come to your blog, how long they stay, what other sites refer visitors to your blog, are you on google+ because you must be on google+, do the big bloggers consider you part of their pack, how much ad income do you generate, how many comments do you get, what’s your google ranking - the list is endless.

And exhausting.

I’ve fallen prey to it in the past. I have to be honest about that. I took on ads because I needed the additional income. That income is very, very, very modest. I wanted bigger numbers because bigger numbers meant more ad income. I started posting every day because of it. (I’m glad I made that change – it’s a good discipline for me.) I looked at other blogs and wondered why they had such huge numbers. I still do. I felt a bit of resentment about the opportunities that seemed to come to younger bloggers and mommy bloggers but not to ‘seasoned bloggers’ as I call myself. I analyzed, assessed, compared and obsessed.

Then I turned a corner. The sheer abundance of blogs out there left me feeling overwhelmed. And underwhelmed by lots of repetitive content. I saw blogs that I used to really enjoy for their personal, heartwarming content change into what might as well be called websites, for want of a better word. Every post became a tout for their business. I’ve stopped reading them. I’ve watched other bloggers try to come up with a new project, a new idea, all the time - and it was too much. I was exhausted for them. After seeing the first few blog posts about chevrons and pallets and grain sacks and horizontal stripes on walls, my eyes glazed over. How many times can you reinvent the wheel? The need to keep up, to find something someone else hasn’t blogged about, to generate constant new projects to keep stat numbers high – Oy. I know that lots of bloggers want to generate a healthy income from their blogs. I totally understand that. And many bloggers are perfectly content in that business-like, competitive atmosphere; indeed, even thrive in it. More power to them. I really mean that.

I don’t.

There, I’ve admitted it. I simply don’t thrive in a competitive atmosphere. I don’t want to. That’s part of the reason I left acting behind and became a teacher and coach.

That little fact doesn’t make me better, or worse, than anybody else. I’m not. I’m not condemning anyone. I’m just speaking about a change that has happened to me, in reference to this little blogging world of mine. Listen, let’s be totally honest here. I’d love to generate more ad income than I do. I’d love to get a book deal. I’m a good writer – I’m proud of my writing. I’d love to be considered a top blogger. I’m just like anybody else. I’ve worked hard over the past 5 years to create a place on the web that I’m proud of. I worked very hard on this blog’s design. The quality of my photography and my content is very, very important to me. But all of that is to please my aesthetic, to keep this blog at a level that I can be proud of and that enables me to connect to you in a meaningful way. Sometimes I fail. Most of the time, writing this blog makes me very happy. And that, my friends, is what is important to me; not numbers, not stats, not the latest way to get my blog out there, whether it be Pinterest or Facebook or Instagram or whatever – not any of it. Yes, I appreciate the extra income, and would I like more of it? Of course. In the end, however, it’s all about joy. And I don’t get joy from numbers (which might be the reason we file an extension every year with the IRS.) Numbers don’t do it for me. Numbers take away the heart and soul of what I do.

I am withdrawing from all that. I no longer read my stats. I no longer read all the articles about growing your blog. I don’t really care what my Google ranking is and you can’t make me care, so there.

The blog isn’t changing. My priorities about what is important for this blog have been clarified and strengthened. You are important to me. The quality of my content is important to me, but not because of a competition. Because of me. Because of you.

It’s awfully freeing.

Happy Wednesday.

Bird Watching in the Park

2013-05-21T13:11:32Z

Yesterday was my day off. I did a little grocery shopping, then I walked to the park with my camera and sat on a bench for an hour.

There are lots of pigeons in the park and, contrary to the opinion of some people, I think they’re beautiful. Each bird had markedly different coloring and each was unique. This guy was the biggest of the pigeons and just a bit of a bully.

Moments later, he took off.

Coming in for a landing.

Then this little guy landed on the bench to my left.

Is he feeding a nearby family?

Then he took off.

No, it’s not mine.

All in all, a lovely time in the park.

I sweetly asked my colleagues to stop by the apartment and hold up my quilt:

On the left is Mary. She’s the Stage Manager on this production. We’ve worked together before and are good friends.

On the right is Robyn. She’s the Assistant Stage Manager.

I lament the lack of wall space in my cottage. But as I looked around this apartment with its ceilings that are at least 17 feet high, I thought it would be the perfect place to hang quilts! Too bad it would involve drilling holes – a no-no in temporary housing. Ah well.

Today is another student matinee. The director is going on for another actor who had to go out of town for the funeral of a family member. Should be interesting.

I must take a moment to acknowledge the terrible tragedy in Oklahoma. The news accounts of the tornado are gut-wrenching. The photos of the destruction attest to its horrific power. My heart goes out to the citizens of Moore and to everyone else who has suffered inconceivable loss from this devastating tornado. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

Mabel & I Finish the Quilt Top and Maggie Gets a Present

2013-05-20T13:18:45Z

Quilt top: done

I finished it on Saturday. Then I tried to take photos by climbing up on every raised surface.

Kitchen counter. Chairs. Sofa.

It’s also been rather gray and rainy the last few days, which doesn’t help. I’m not happy with these photos, but here goes.

The aqua in the borders is brighter than this photo indicates, as are many of the other colors, but when I tried to mess around with saturation, the colors got too bright. I’ll try to get a better photo on a sunny day.

Note foot on granite counter.

This photo captures the colors pretty accurately. But still not quite right.

I really love this design with its simple graphic appeal and colors that make me smile. It’s a happy quilt. Or will be when I actually quilt it. Right now, without the quilt sandwich, it’s merely a top.

Later on this morning, a few of us are going grocery shopping and I’m going to see if I can bribe my colleagues to hold up the quilt top for a photo op. Cross your fingers. I will be my most charming as I ask for a wee favor.

In other news, Maggie Rabbit has a new scarf:

This yarn came with the kit – Alicia included a pattern for a cape. I wasn’t crazy about it for some reason, but I love the color of the yarn, so last night I pulled out a crochet hook and made her a little scarf. I think she likes it.

She also had some very minor ear surgery. Just like those of us who experience the sagging of our once-firm skin, Maggie’s right ear was a bit too floppy. The operation was done on an out-patient basis and within 10 minutes, she was out of surgery and up and about.

Maggie is one tough rabbit.

Happy Monday.

Scenes From My Home-Away-From-Home

2013-05-19T13:36:36Z

Life on the road:

Claudia’s prescription for life on the road:

• Bring your camera along

• Make sure you have some creative projects to work on; a Maggie Rabbit, a quilt top and a future coaching project

• Bring along your pals; in my case, Wayfrum, Maggie Rabbit, Little Lamb and Mabel

• Fresh flowers are an essential

The quilt top is finished. Photos tomorrow.

We have three preview performances under our belt. At this point in the process, I watch every performance leading up to opening night and take notes, which I then pass along to the actors. Even though the play is now in performance, there are still rehearsals where technical problems are fixed and changes are made – this will go on until opening night.

Which is Friday.

That means I go home on Saturday. (Insert smile.)

Next week at this time, I will be once again writing from my blogging chair with my Scoutie by my side.

Happy Sunday.

A Favorite Thing #37

2013-05-18T00:03:12Z

Welcome to A Favorite Thing #37! I’m just getting in under the wire here tonight. It’s been a hectic week, with lots of tech rehearsals and preview performances and I’ve been working very hard. Add to that the fact that I came home on our break today and finished sewing my quilt blocks together and you’ve got a recipe for a late post. But never fear, I finished in time. Just. Now I have to eat some dinner.

Let’s look at some highlights from last week:

Linda, of More Fun, Less Laundry shared the most glorious tree with us. It’s a flowering cherry and it hangs over her deck. Its blossoms are simply beautiful. Oh, how I’d love a tree like this. I’ll say it again: glorious!

Betty of My Crazy Quilt Life, shared a charming miniature garden she made. Isn’t it adorable? I love the walkway and that adirondack chair.

Debra, of The Homespun, share photos of her beautiful cat, Kanga. Kanga fell in love with some cloth napkins that Debra had never used. She played peek-a-boo (like in this photo) over and over. So sweet.

My favorite thing this week:

Shakespeare.

As you know, I work in the theater as a Voice, Speech, Dialect and Text Coach. I coach all kinds of plays, but for the past few years, I’ve worked almost exclusively with Shakespeare. That’s fine by me. I know a lot about old Will Shakespeare and his words and the wonderful thing is that every time I work on a play – no matter how many times I’ve coached it before – I learn something new. I can’t imagine a richer text to work with, or a better playwright. He was the wisest of men. He knew all about the human condition, coined many words we now use daily, wrote in iambic pentameter, and he continues to touch our hearts almost 400 years later. He was an actor, a playwright and a poet. If you’ve read my posts this week, we’ve had two preview performances for students and they completely understand what’s being said. They stomp their feet, cheer, boo, and laugh with glee. Who else can elicit those reactions in both adults and children? I’m so grateful for the opportunity to immerse myself in his wise words. Thanks, Will.

Now it’s your turn.

You can link up anytime from this evening through Sunday. Make sure you enter the URL of your post. If you’re unsure how to do that, just click on your post title after you’ve published it and copy the information in your browser address window. Come back here, paste the URL into your link entry and there you go! If you have any problems, drop me an email and I’ll help you out. Please link back to this blog on your post. That way, those that read your post and are interested in reading more can do so.

One of my concerns about link parties is that the very reason for them has somewhat gone by the wayside. They’ve become so big and there are so many of them that many bloggers don’t take the time to visit any of the other participants. Link parties are a way to meet new bloggers and share with each other and the only way to do that is to visit each other. So, please, take some time to visit everyone over the next few days. No rush. Stop by, introduce yourself, and leave a comment. It’s the neighborly thing to do. It’s also nice if you leave a comment here, as well.

Enjoy!

Kids Love Shakespeare

2013-05-17T13:08:39Z

Well, I take back everything I said about a student audience. We had our first audience yesterday morning and they were the best audience you could ever hope to have. Comprised of middle and high school students, this audience was completely involved in the play from the start to the finish. They got everything, laughed, gasped, sat on the edge of their seats – I had such fun watching their faces and their body language (in between moments of actually doing my job and taking notes on the performance.) At the end, they stomped their feet, cheered, and jumped to their collective feet for a standing ovation. The girls cheered and screamed when the leading man came out for his curtain call (we see his bare chest a lot) – we’re now calling him the Justin Bieber of the cast.

What I had forgotten was how powerful and accessible Shakespeare is. To everyone. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s hard to understand. Not hardly. This group of kids completely understood what was going on and let me tell you, they didn’t hold back in their reactions. In this age of computers, of virtual games, of virtual everything, there is nothing like live theater. There is nothing like Shakespeare. He writes about everything man feels and experiences with an immediacy that is stunning some 300+ years later. These young people will be changed by this experience.

I was humbly reminded of my high school drama club. We took a trip to the Stratford Festival in Canada every fall and saw Shakespeare done by extraordinary actors. That was my first experience with Shakespeare. I was changed forever and I’m not exaggerating. The live performances of Shakespeare’s plays, acted by a talented company of actors, excited and moved and transformed this young girl who wanted to be an actress, who loved words. Little did I know at the time that I would be working with his text so many years later.

That’s the set (taken with my iPhone.) As you can see, it’s a boxwood garden maze. The actors can walk on top of the hedges and also have lots of blocking down between the hedges. They can pop up, hide, go under the bridges. It’s a fabulous set design. That center circle is powered by an elevator and it can go up and down.

In other news, I got a Hartford Public Library card. I found out we were able to get a card as employees of Hartford Stage. Knowing I’ll be back for 6 weeks in August and September, I went for it. I was searching for a Deborah Crombie mystery that I hadn’t read and I found it. In the Large Print section. I’m not quite ready for Large Print in general, but I have to admit it’s easy on the eyes!

I’ve sewn two rows together on the quilt. I have to be honest here and say that something is always off on my blocks – doesn’t matter what quilt I’m working on. It seems I always have to wrestle with them to make the whole thing work. Drives me buggy. Is it that I can’t always stitch a truly straight seam? Is it that my rotary cutting is off? Lord knows. I envy those who make it seem so simple, who have no problem getting everything to align beautifully. I want to get better at this, but in the meantime, I just have to sigh and say “Whatever.” It is what it is. It won’t be perfect, but nothing ever is. At least in my creative life. Here’s to the journey.

Happy Friday.

On The Road: Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground

2013-05-16T13:02:55Z

The Ancient Burying Ground is just a block or two from my apartment. The city has grown up around it, so it is surrounded by tall buildings, the hustle and bustle of city life, horns honking, sirens blaring. (I call Hartford the City of Sirens. Honestly. I’ve lived in several big cities and I’ve never heard as many sirens as I do here. Even in Manhattan.)

I visited another graveyard much like this one last year. I’m fascinated by these sacred places, by the stories that the old and crumbling headstones tell. The Ancient Burying Ground was in use from 1640 to 1803. It was also used as a grazing pasture for horses, cattle and sheep. As in England at the time, graves were dug and people buried, not in family plots, but anywhere a space could be found. As the numbers grew, people were buried on top of each other. Eventually, a church was built on the land – over many graves – but this was the custom in England, where many were buried within churches and that was considered an honor.

What I find remarkable is that this plot of land has over 6000 graves. Only a few headstones have survived. I imagine most people couldn’t afford a headstone.

The church you see is Center Church, erected in 1807. It replaced the original church, which was built in 1636.

That obelisk honors the founders of Hartford.

I love the carving on the stones. As is often the case, many of the stones commemorate women who died young, most likely in childbirth.

This story is especially poignant.

Here lies a young man who died at the age of 29 in 1803. He drowned in the Connecticut River. (Note the spelling of drowned at the time – drownded.)

Then you look to the left of the stone, and you see this:

His son, just a baby when the father drowned, died 3 years later. What a terrible loss for Eliza Watson.

As you stand there in the cemetery, birds chirp and fly among the headstones, trees are in bloom, grass grows.

I had no idea, as I took these photos, that there were 6000 people interred in the grounds.

You can read more about the Ancient Burying Ground here.

A little bit of Hartford for you.

Happy Thursday.

Playing With Blocks

2013-05-15T13:06:22Z

That sneaky scamp, Scout, took over my blog yesterday! I don’t know how she did it. But she’s a Border Collie and they are very smart, indeed. Thank goodness I’ve taught her some manners; she responded to all your comments in her inimitable, slightly sassy, way.

I finished all the blocks yesterday, then, on a rehearsal break, laid them out on the carpet. Then I climbed on a chair and stood on the kitchen counter to take this photo:

This is my home-away-from-home version of a design board. I’ve found that taking a photo helps me to see any problems with the layout.

The nice thing about being in this apartment is that I can do something I never could at home. I can leave the blocks on the carpet. No dog hair, no curious Scoutie walking all over them. Since I don’t have my own space at home that I can contain with a closed door, this is a refreshing treat! I kept glancing at the layout throughout the evening and found I didn’t like the concentration of vivid red at the top of the photo, so I kept playing around with block placement. The vertical row of blocks on the left will actually be the top of the quilt.

This is what I ended up with. Although now that I look at it here, I’m going to tweak a couple of blocks.

There. I tweaked it. It’s almost impossible to get a good photo in this space, but this gives you an idea of the look I’m going for.

The finished quilt is supposed to measure 63 inches by 74 inches. As you know, we don’t have a lot of wall space in our home, due to an abundance of windows and the sloped-attic-type walls upstairs. I started to wonder whether I should go with the 5 blocks by 5 blocks layout or make it 4 blocks by 5 blocks. Now is the time to make that decision. So I called Don and had him measure the available space on the staircase wall. When we first moved in to the cottage, I had a quilt hanging there. It’s sort of the perfect place for a quilt.

Turns out there is just enough room. I don’t want this to be a throw. I really want to hang it because the colors are so wonderful and they really go with the colors in our living room and kitchen – as well as in my studio. And the great thing about hanging it in that space is that I will also be able to see it from my studio. I like the simple, graphic quality to it and the patterns and colors make me happy. (Hopefully, I’ll still feel the same way when I’ve finished it!)

The next step is to start sewing the blocks together. Today, however, I will have to be at the theater most of the day. Final tech rehearsals in the afternoon and evening, then the first preview tomorrow morning. Morning, you say? Yes. For the life of me I cannot figure out why the first preview is a student audience at 10:30 in the morning. That means we lose another afternoon to run through the show before an evening preview. Believe me, if I was still an actor, I would not be happy about teching until 10 or 11 tonight and then having my first performance at 10:30 in the morning. For students. I do not know a single actor who likes morning performances.

Tomorrow I will have a post about my visit to Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground, which was in use from 1640 to 1803. I took lots of pictures.

Happy Wednesday.