I am in the midst of returning home after an overseas trip. I have a strong sense of getting back just ahead of the drawbridge being pulled up, even though no deadline has been given. As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday in a press conference: it’s time to come home.
In common with many of my compatriots, I have travelled internationally a lot, have lived in other countries, and have served in the military. All of these experiences have made me very aware of how fortunate I am to be able to come home, especially to a country that cares about its citizens and that doesn’t see us a commodity to be expended. It’s nothing but an accident of birth, but that difference has given me multitudinous advantages and opportunities.
So over the next couple of days, I will be navigating airports and aircraft with lots of hand sanitizer, hand washing, and distancing. I feel fine, but I will need to go into self-isolation for 14 days to ensure my health and that of others.
And, for the first time ever, I will be working from home. A new experience.
Salted Caramel is asking further questions about our blogging habits. You can visit her blog here and browse answers to these and additional questions from a number of other bloggers.
1. How often, if at all, do you check your blog statistics?
2. What methods do you use to increase reader engagement, (provided you care about this)?
I think that checking blog statistics is something that we all probably do fairly frequently in the beginning, kind of like our first days and weeks of involvement in any new organisation when we’re wondering how we can get on and with whom.
I started blogging more than seven years ago and in the beginning, I checked a lot. It was pretty amazing to me that anyone was stopping by at all and of course, it was all very exciting. But over the years I’ve wondered why a rather mediocre blog will take off like a rocket and another doesn’t move much, even though the content is interesting and well presented.
I’ve thought about that a lot where my own posts are concerned as well. I’ll check the stats and be blown away by the number of visits on a piece that I was dubious about posting. The opposite happens, too. I’ll think I’ve done a good post, and poof! As my blog-friend Brian would say, sit and watch the tumbleweeds blow through.
So, after all this time, I don’t have any great insights into generally, what types of posts work and what ones don’t, even though I do check stats in an attempt to try to figure this out.
Increasing my readership is not something I’ve worried about. My blog is quite slow moving, probably because I’ve never bothered with that, and this has also been a blog that I’ve done for myself. It helps me to think, sort and organise, and it’s always been a de-stressor, a place to socialise and visit. I limit the number of blogs I follow because I want to read them, and I only have so much time. But when I do have the time, I travel all over the blogosphere and I will like lots of posts without necessarily following the blog. I want the blogger to have the like or likes, but I don’t expect a return visit.
How about you? How often do you check your stats? Do you do much (if anything) to increase your readership?
I have done a lot of flying. As a pilot or passenger, I’ve spent loads of time in airplanes, both large and small. I am intimately acquainted with how cramped the environment is and getting into the pilot’s seat often feels a bit like I’m a puzzle piece squeezing into my slot.
I’ve banged my knees, whacked my head, knocked my elbows and thumped myself in innumerable other places getting in and out of pilot seats and airplanes. They are not built to be places of sprawling comfort. Anyone who has ever been on an airplane of any size knows that.
So, what about the argument around seats? That is, do you recline or don’t you?
I don’t recline. Neither does my 191 cm (6 ft 3 in) husband. And frankly, I get a little irritated when others do, especially if I’m trying to use my little table for whatever reason: working, eating, sleeping (yes, I sometimes sleep on the table). I don’t want a strange person in my lap, and I’m sure the people behind me don’t want me in their laps.
We’re all in this cramped space together, so let’s try to be as respectful and careful with each other as we can. That’s how I see it, anyway.
However, that’s often not how these things go.
Recently, a man aboard a commercial flight in the US began banging on the seat of the person ahead of him because she had reclined. Here’s the article:
Part of the problem is that airlines have crammed people in, but I also understand about the narrow margins on which airlines operate. And to be fair, this has been a problem for many, many years. I remember my mother complaining about the “recliners” when I was a child.
What is your opinion? Should airlines remove the recline function on airplane seats? Should we avoid using the recline function out of respect for our flight mates?
Much of Canada and the northern United States has been sitting in an icy, windy, thumpingly cold Arctic low for the past one or two weeks.
Some more southerly parts have been even colder than us, and we in the southern NWT had anywhere between -36 and -40C (-33 to -40 F). It takes me about seven minutes to walk to work, and by the time I get there, my eyelashes have collected ice from my freezing breath. It’s been pretty chilly.
But I’ve had lovely memories, like this one, to sustain me.
And this one.
The north is very blue and white right now, but I do like the southern blue and white. 🙂
Salted Caramel is asking readers to get personal. Here are her questions:
1. Do you blog under your own name or do you use a pseudonym?
2. Do you share personal details like gender, nationality, race or faith?
3. How much of your personality shows through your writing?
4. Do you share personal experiences to illustrate your writing?
I am not big on telling lots of personal details on my blog because I have a narcissist in my background who still likes to check up on me, and I would really rather that he not find any extra tidbits on how to contact or find me.
An airplane photo, similar to my gravatar.
So, as a result of that, I do use a pseudonym – my actual first name and my grandmother’s surname. I have never bothered to specifically share my race, gender, or faith, although if you’ve read enough of my stuff, you likely will have figured these things out. To me, these things are incidentals.
I definitely share personal experiences, but I try to remove or alter any features that might definitively identify me, so there’s a smudging of the lines.
My blog is me. I don’t try to blur or change who I am, so yes, I believe my personality is here. But the thought that comes up for me when considering these questions is around how much of ourselves we should be sharing.
The online world is funny that way. It encourages people to share, but then, how much is too much? Many people drop off lots of personal information, far too much, I think. They feel safe in doing so. They feel that there’s nothing about themselves that they should hide or keep private. That there’s no need.
Unknowably deep waters.
Until it’s too late and they need to keep themselves private for a very private reason. How do you turn that off? Is it even possible to turn that off?
It’s almost expected that we give up our privacy now, for work, for pleasure, for being able to just operate. And privacy is one of those things that’s precious; it’s been fought for and died over, many, many countless times. Shouldn’t we be a little more protective and respectful of this great costly gift that we have?
I know of people who, through WP, have met and become friends. That’s pretty great. People who otherwise would have never met, especially across oceans and continents, become lifelong chums.
But it bothers me when I’m told that I “should” be using such social media as Facebook and Twitter. For starters that would probably unleash the narcissist. And apart from that, I don’t want to. How much updating and tweeting can one person do? How do people find the time? Frankly, I find a lot of it boring.
I know that information is not only power, it’s money. And lots of companies want us to spill our guts so that they can make money from a raw material that costs them nothing but has the potential to be very costly to us.
They want us to use invasive devices such as Siri and Alexa. They get into our homes and cars and are inside our heads, mining for gold.
Is there gold in these waters?
I don’t want to live in a society that more or less requires us to have one of these in our homes. Ten years from now, here’s the instruction on the side of a box: You will “need” Siri in order to complete the following task …
No.
I don’t care if you want to have lots of Siris and Alexas all over your life. However, I want that to be a choice, not a pseudo-requirement that gradually eases its thin edge into our lives and over time evolves into a necessity.
Because of that, I think that these companies should be regulated. I think that AI should be regulated. And sooner rather than later.
What do you think? How personal are you with your blog? How far do you think technology should be allowed to go?
In the Net! - Pictures and Stories of Life 