Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


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Paper vs digital

I’ve been blogging since September 2006, when I was in grad school and a fellow student was putting together a host something or other to support people’s blogs. My first post was about writing an assignment for one of my classes.

I didn’t know what a blog was back then, but I liked to write, and I thought the blog would be a good place to put my thoughts about going back to school as a middle aged student. Now I read some of my oldest posts and think …. man, those were good (and sometimes bad) days.

It was all a new experience for me, being a student again, and I enjoyed almost all of it. Riding the city bus, hanging out with people half my age. Experiencing new things. Just being in Ann Arbor.

And then the blog morphed, especially after I graduated, and even more after I retired.

Now it’s more of a photo blog, a pet blog, a travel blog (when I’m lucky), a family blog. Sometimes a not anything in particular blog.

And here’s my dilemma. The blog is huge. There are months missing because when I transferred it to WordPress some months didn’t come on over…but overall it’s still huge. I pay a fee every year to keep it going because I’ve used so much storage. Someday I won’t pay that fee any more. Then what?

In library school we talked often about how technology is a double edged sword. That as it changes the ability to access the information changes. That we have paper documents and art from centuries ago, but someday soon people won’t be able to access things on floppy discs or thumb drives because there won’t be hardware left that anyone knows how to use.

Yet paper lives on.

I’m not thinking that stuff on my blog needs to be preserved for decades, but I would like to read it when I’m old, which is at least a couple decades from now. In particular I’d like to be able to read about Katie.

So I’m thinking about researching a way to print the blog posts about her. She was over 15 years old, so there are quite a few. If you remember, she was a prolific writer.

And if that works I might want to print the posts about going to school as a middle aged student. That was an extraordinary experience. There were fewer, if any, pictures in those, so they might transfer to some sort of paper document easier.

I don’t know.

I always have these ideas and then I get discouraged trying to figure out solutions. So if you’ve read my wandering words this far and you have knowledge of some way to print blog posts, let me know your ideas!


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Almost Walktober?

How many of you know what a Walktober is? Not everybody? Let me take a moment and explain.

Many years ago Robin, over at her blog, Breezes at Dawn, introduced me and others to the idea of taking a walk in October, blogging about it and then linking our posts back to her blog.

Fall colors aren’t all up in the trees.

People walked from all over the USA, Canada, and from the rest of the world too! She’d collect all our stories and then at an appointed time, perhaps early November, would post on her blog a roundup of sorts, a collection of all our posts, where everyone could read about all the walks.

A little chickadee ventures in for a snack.

Robin coordinated this event for years and then last year she needed some support as she was busy with other things, so I did the collection and roundup part.

I think this year there is another person scheduled for this role, but I’m not sure. I’m going to try to find out.

Light is different in the fall too.

But regardless, I think we can put a successful Walktober together, even if there is no one else able to coordinate the effort. I can always do it again, no problem at all.

Sooo….would you like to go on a walk and show us your part of the world?

As Robin always says, it doesn’t have to be an actual walk. You can go for a jog or a bike ride. You might travel in a car or a train or a subway. Maybe you’ll want to hop, skip or jump your way around. Any way you want to do it is good, just show us your world!

Two cranes preening when one needed to take a biggggg stretch.

Lots of people choose to take their walk in the woods, showing us what fall (or spring if you’re in the southern hemisphere) looks like where they live, but I’ve done a Walktober in downtown Detroit and that was fun too. I’ve also done a Walktober in my own backyard, and one at my family’s house in Alabama.

It just depended on where I was and what I could find that you might like.

Signs of fall are everywhere.

Maybe you’ll be on a vacation somewhere in October, that would be interesting to share with us. I was just in Washington DC and I could have used photos from there, but I think I’ll try to find somewhere different this month to share for my Walktober.

A little titmouse is curious about what we might be offering.

While I’m working on the logistics, you take a few moments and think about where you’d like to take us on your Walktober!

He got his seed to go.

The photos in this post are from a walk at my favorite park, taken in the middle of September with a friend. This park has been featured in many of my Walktobers, and might be again.

It’s not all about birds at this park.

But we’ll see.