GIGI GOES GAGA

24 OF 30: NOT YET AT THE FINISH LINE

No one has probably noticed, but I'll 'fess up anyway: I didn't get to finish 30 blog posts in 30 days like I set out to do a month ago. Bummer.

But on the bright side, I've completed 24 posts in 30 days -- way more than I've done since I started blogging in 2004. The point of this exercise was for me to develop the discipline to write every day, and not to rely on inspiration (which happens to be truly unreliable). And the truth is I almost did -- the only time I didn't bang out words on a keyboard was when I was in VA/DC this past weekend for my sister's wedding and didn't have time or a laptop. I must also confess there were days this past month when I started blogging and then deleted the post because it wasn't going anywhere except down.

So I'm not yet at the finish line but I intend to get there, just a bit late. Reminds me of a friend who competed in a triathlon in San Diego a few years ago: not accustomed to the cold mornings, he cramped up soon after the swim portion, and through sheer will and dedication pedaled and ran through the pain and exhaustion. When he finally staggered to the finish line, just about everyone was gone except for his parents, a couple of buddies, and the folks cleaning up. But he made it.

Just as I will. I'll need a few more days to finish the last six. If you have any suggestions of what you would like me to write about, please let me know in the Comments section below.

In the meantime I'm starting another 30-in-30 personal challenge. For the next month I will exercise daily. Nothing crazy, you understand. Twenty minutes here, 45 minutes there...a run/walk on the treadmill one day, a fast walk on the trail behind my apartment the next, and a few sets with the dumbbells and weight machines on yet the next. The point here is to keep moving and get the blood flowing until it becomes a habit I can maintain at least a few days a week.

Come to think of it, I probably should have started this endeavor earlier; I could have used the bloodflow into my brain. Probably would have been more effective than hoping for a bit of writerly inspiration. Anyway, if I get this right I'd have developed two good habits by my birthday, which is at the end of the month.

Wish me luck!

PS: You will be relieved to know that I will NOT be posting my daily exercise efforts. Instead I'll write all about it when I'm done.

 

GIGI GOES GAGA TOO

I opened a Tumblr site a couple of years ago and putzed around it, not quite sure what to do with my new online toy. I've decided to use it as a media folder of sorts, with photographs,  links to audio and video files, news blurbs, and the like. We'll see how it goes. If you'd like to visit my not-so-new site, you can click on the Tumblr symbol under "I'm Also At" (above right, between the Pandora and Twitter symbols).

WHERE I HANG MY HAT THESE DAYS

I've been writing here lately. But I'll still keep posting away here, too.

Why the new blog? Because I'm writing with a talented group of writers for the next two months: The Undeniables.

GONE A MONTH?(!!!)

I can't believe I've been gone an entire month!

So much has been happening -- one would think I'd be writing almost daily. If I were more disciplined I probably would have been.

Which is why today is Day One (of 43 days) of intense daily writing for my Creative Fiction writing class. I don't know if this means I'll be blogging here as well -- but I hope so, and I certainly will try. They say writing is a muscle you need to keep strengthening and flexing, and so I'll be in training for the next six weeks.

I've also joined a writer's online workshop, which requires all of us to be writing daily as well on yet another blog I had to set up for this purpose. In 12 days I've written only four short essays -- letters, actually, since my chosen category was "correspondence." I need to step it up, obviously, especially since the workshop goes on for only 60 days. I should be able to write every day -- for 60 days and six weeks, right?

I'm looking forward to this, even if I'm a bit scared. Fear is good, though -- at least the kind that, say, actors and singers feel before they go on stage. I don't know exactly what I'm afraid of, although I suspect it has something to do with how I simply stopped writing in my mid-20s because I thought I wasn't good enough. I didn't start writing again until six years ago, when I started up this blog.

In the meantime I get to make writing a habit; doesn't it take six weeks to make anything a habit, after all?  

ABOUT-FACE

It's been a month since I last posted anything and, judging from my blog stats that Typepad so kindly keeps track of, people seem to think I've gone away completely. In the meantime, I've discovered a few great products and terrific songs -- but I've had no one to share them with. Which partly explains why I'm back. Raving about my newest favorite hair product on Facebook can make me seem a tad bit manic, you know?

Another thing I discovered during my absence is that the more friends I add to my Facebook list, the longer I meander and skulk around that site. Obviously, when I'm there I'm not here. At the other place, all my favorite reads, brands, and stores update me with what's hot and new without my having to click over to their own sites as well, which makes me stay there even longer. And when you consider all the photos, links, and videos that my friends share (and which I invariably explore) it's a bit of a miracle that I have any kind of offline life at all.

Sometimes the most intense and interesting conversations I engage in happen over at Facebook chat. And, yes, I've wondered why the other person and I don't simply pick up the phone and actually talk with one another. I suspect that the answer is related to why personal blogs ever became popular in the first place: sometimes it's easier to be so exposed when no one can actually see you doing any real exposing. I tend to think of Facebook chat (as well as any kind of instant messenger communication) as online frottage, or dry-humping: it feels really intimate, the excitement is there, both parties can feel pretty satisfied -- but the connection is still limited because of its very nature.

Many other bloggers I used to share space with have now abandoned their sites for the greater intimacy and immediacy of Facebook. Some of them I can call my friends now -- or at least, they're now my Facebook friends -- and I'm even familiar with how a few of them spend their days (and especially their nights). But I do miss blogging (how old-fashioned the term feels now, 'no?). I miss posting whatever I feel like on my very own space without knowing who might be lurking about -- or if anyone's even still around. Why, I think of many of the stories I've shared over here and realize that all this (relative) anonymity brings along with it so much freedom.

Please pardon my sexual references here tonight, but I suppose blogging, given my reasons for doing it, can sometimes feel like the online equivalent of a zipless fuck. I write, you (hopefully) read, but because I don't really know you're there, I'm not trying to impress or manipulate you. And hopefully, in the end, we both get something out of it.

If you're still reading this, thanks for hanging around. Hopefully, you're also taking a break from Facebook and have decided to catch up with me here instead.

WHODUNNIT?

Gah -- once in a while I remember something  and get the urge to blog about it. Good stories are hard to come by after all, agreed? And especially when they're personal and real, correct?

But when I think about the real and personal faces who read this blog, I quickly change my mind. You can imagine the stories I sometimes am itching to tell; after all, I've already written about how, say, I once dated a guy who claimed he had sex with a girl I knew -- who really was a guy at the time they were supposedly intertwined. Or about how my health professional once instructed me to buy (and, obviously, use) a dildo for post-surgery therapy, and how I ended up with my own mini-collection instead due to my inability to understand simple medical directions. I've even written about the time I needed to move apartments and was flat broke, and so I assembled a crack team of ex-boyfriends who soon discovered their common denominator as they were lifting my dining table (I still cringe when I think about how that conversation started).

So, yes. Those were the stories I could tell, and there are still those I can't.Sometimes I think it's time I start up an anonymous blog. The only danger is ensuring I don't post a story there that I've already told in this one -- and then blow my cover. After all, if I can't follow plain medical instructions, how can I be trusted to know when to keep within my own guidelines? I probably just broke one by writing this post, too -- and so I guess I can't. But it sure would be fun, wouldn't it?

REDESIGNING, SIMPLIFYING

I confess I haven't been posting as much as I used to (although some of you have probably noticed). There's still so much to say, to show, to share -- but I've simply been stuck in the mud for way too long now.

So I've changed the look of this page. I wanted something clean and spare in the meantime until I can figure out how I'd like this to evolve. My friend Cathy suggested I check out Tumblr and I'm playing with the site until I decide whether to switch over or stay and keep that as a companion mini-blog of sorts. All I know is I'm itching for a change, something that will rev up this sputtering engine of mine.

Any suggestions? Knoizki, are you out there?

NaBloMoPo - DAY ONE

I signed up for the NaBloMoPo challenge today to get my lazy -- uh, fingers -- moving again. So here I go folks: a post a day for the entire month of November. I have a few ideas of what to write about each day, but if you have any please use the comments box (or email me). In the meantime, with two minutes to go until midnight, this is my first post. What a cop out. But I promise to try harder tomorrow!

MULTIPLYING

Some of you might know or remember that I also have a Multiply site where I post my music playlists mainly, though recently I've started using it to notify my friends when I have a new blog post up here -- especially since I don't do it too often these days. I think that keeping identical blogs on two more sites might be too confusing, so I've decided that keeping them complimentary instead would be the better idea.

You'd need to have a Multiply account to access mine, but I tend to keep my playlists available to everyone anyway, not just for my network. My original plan was to be able to do everything in this blog, but still haven't figured how. Until I do, please visit me at my other place to listen to the music I simply talk about here.

Here's my latest Multiply music playlist post:

I missed D's 50th by a few days and still feel absolutely wretched. He's one of my dearest, most steadfast friends, and always thinks of me better than I do of myself. I have nothing for him right now except for this playlist, which tells a bit of our story, and my constant friendship and love. Happy Birthday to someone who always makes me feel like I'm home. You wear 50 well.

Somebody Hurt You - A Girl Called Eddy
Angel Tonight - Leigh Nash
Love Like Laughter - Beth Orton
Thank You - Dido
Love is Stronger Than Pride - Sade (what he still always tells me -- after all these many years -- whenever I mess up.)
Here We Go Again - Angie Stone
All Good Things - The Weepies
Breathe - Lalah Hathaway

To listen, click here.

SEX AND MY STATS

A good friend recently announced with not-quite-mock-horror that my blog has been linked up to many salacious sites, something which has repeatedly worried him these past few years. I looked up at him angelically, smiled warmly and sighed, "Well I really haven't been writing about sex recently."

"Yeah," he quietly agreed. "And your stats have actually plummeted because of that." I love how my friend simultaneously frets about just who clicks to see my blog and why not so many people have been clicking as much.

Sure, I could write lots of things about sex. I'm not a prude, I'm open-minded, outspoken, and honest almost to a fault. My past posts have mentioned shopping for vibrators, condoms, and even porn; revealed the existence of a sex book collection that's now mostly boxed up in the garage because of my husband's intense shame in having them so openly exposed on my bookshelf; and even about making out in cars and kissing all kinds of boys.

I could certainly write about the discussions my girlfriends and I engage in -- gleeful stories that would make even a shameless lothario blush. And, yes, I've had many similar conversations with my guy friends, too. (The trick is to stay cool and maintain the demeanor of someone trying to explain, say, how to drill a nail securely into a wall so no one thinks you're getting turned on. Otherwise it can get pretty icky.)

Recently my bestfriend texted me right in the middle of Girl's Night Out: "You should be here. You would be in your element." And I didn't have to text her back and ask what they were talking about at that particular moment.

I suppose a part of me is concerned about people misinterpreting straight conversation for an open invitation. And even though I continuously harp on about the importance of responsibility and safe sex, there are those who would consider me irresponsible and even dangerous for broaching the topic at all. But the simple truth is that sex is only one of a myriad of things I think about and consider important, and I certainly don't write about it to generate more traffic around here.

Even if I could very well be in my element when I do. But right now there are so many other things I want to write about (even if I am quite intrigued why there are more and more sexual products sharing my name). My stats be damned...for now at least.

JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I'D SEEN EVERYTHING...

I'm often curious what keywords used in a Google or Yahoo search bring people to my site. This one -- a first -- makes me wonder: is the seeker looking for verification, or what?

Ummm...hope you found what you were looking for?

KILLING THE MEMORY HOG

I've had a couple of people tell me that my site's taking too long to load -- or worse, causing their computers to freeze up completely. My computer geek sister suggested I might have too many Quicktime music files hogging memory and causing all this havoc. So I've deleted all music files save for the most recent one listed in my Soundtrack sidebar -- and I'm going to have to keep things this way indefinitely. If you want to hear some of the music I listen to, please check out my Multiply site instead (but you'll have to be a member, too -- sorry! -- although it costs nothing to sign up).

I've also cut down the number of items in both sidebars; only about 35 of each are displayed out of the 200 or so I've posted thus far. Hope this helps! In the meantime if any of you techie bloggers have any other ideas, let me know please.

STOP THE PRESSES! Someone just emailed me with a possible solution. I'm crossing my fingers that it works and will keep you all updated.