Blogging Part 5: Viewing

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As I sit here watching my WordPress follower number steadily approach the big four-oh-oh, I’m thinking of things that I’ve done and can’t help but wonder if others do it too.

One of my lazy habits for a long time was to go to the Readers menu and go through all my followers blog posts. If I was feeling guilty, I’d quickly go down the list and hit “Like” on the ones with the titles that impressed me most. (or thumbnails)

Now besides showing a sort of “kack-handed” support, it also showed just how lazy I could get. It also doesn’t show up on the bloggers view count. Now I did not realise this, back when I was doing it. It only became apparent when I paid a bit more attention to the “stats” for my site.

I would get a notification that “so-and-so” and good old (fill in site name here) had “Liked” my latest post.

But…

My views had not increased. It took a little concentration on my part, but, I eventually made the connection. In a moment of serendipitous epiphany-age, I put two and two together and, besides getting four, I realised they’d hit the “Like” button without actually reading the post.

Now, I’ve always had a “thing” about my view counts. I had it on my first blog at Blogger.com and I had it on my second blog on Tumblr.com and I still have it. I’m attached to my view counts and will (throughout the day) keep checking them to see if they’ve gone up. I am, almost, OCD in my feeling about my view counts.

I then made another connection. I was doing that myself! I felt a little bit ashamed. I mean, I read incredibly fast (always have) and it seemed worse than cheating for me to ignore the actual content of the bloggers I was following to not at least look at the damned post!

So I have stopped that heinous habit and started really liking the post versus, liking the idea or the notification of the post. I would like to point out that I didn’t do that all the time, just occasionally when I “felt” strapped for time. Something that, now-a-days, I’m not but old imagined stresses are hard to break.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this preoccupation with viewing figures.

So how about you?

So you have anything that you obsess over? Do you compulsively check your follower numbers or views? Do you even bother to look at your stats at all? Do you succumb to this “lazy liking” and not read posts at all?

Let me know.

My obsession.
My obsession.

So Much To Do…So Much Time

Being off work, with a work related injury, has been a small blessing. It has also been a curse and a downright pain in the butt.

It has given me time to reflect, internalise and worry. It has also given me too much time to do too many things.

I have a gross of books that I want to read. I have at least ten (infinitely more if I am brutally honest) films I want to see. I also want to write about all the above mentioned items. I have at least four or more videos I need to make.

I could literally take an entire day to list all the things I should and could do plus all the things I really must do.

Having too much time on your hands can drive you slightly batty. Because you are not getting on with the everyday business of living your life, you spend way too much time thinking about it. *On a side note here, it’s fascinating how my spell check dislikes it when I use bold and italicise on a word in the middle of a sentence.*

I do have doctor’s appointments and exercises to do and I have to keep my boss informed as to my progress in terms of recovery and what the latest prognosis is of my condition. But these things do not take up much time or even effort.

Of course the worst thing about having too much time on your hands is the distractions.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (which really is a duel edged sword), Pinterest, Stumbleupon…well you get the idea I am sure.

The biggest distraction of all is the housework. Also known as housekeeping, this mundane and mind numbingly boring task has to be done everyday.  If you don’t keep on top of it, you soon find yourself living in a proverbial pig sty. I am also developing  an almost OCD attitude  in terms of keeping the house clean.

housekeeping
housekeeping (Photo credit: pucci.it)

I just glanced out the window and realised that I didn’t even mention the garden!

Oh well, I guess I’d better do something. The trouble is I am kind of spoiled for choice. There are so many things that I could, should and must do that the list is huge.

I’ll just have another coffee and perhaps a cigarette, possibly a real one instead of the electronic one, and ponder a bit more about what to next.

Housekeeping

housekeeping

One of the first things I noticed when I gained my new-found freedom was that keeping the house clean had taken on a whole new perspective. When I was married it was a sometimes joint affair that involved quibbling about the cleaning process.

This usually involved me helping the “ex” and being told that my cleaning skill were not up to scratch. Now my cleaning skills are all that keep the house from getting buried under a mountain of dust.

Oh, I have help from my “house-mate” – aka my daughter, but, the mainstay of the “heavy-duty” cleaning is mainly my responsibility. Why, you ask? Well, apparently I’m becoming a bit OCD in my dotage.

I’m not talking about the old wash-my-floor/hands-every-two-seconds OCD. I’m talking about almost obsessively worrying about the state of the house. Don’t get me wrong, my house is cleaner than most. It’s just that if it doesn’t sparkle and gleam, I worry.

On the bright side, I don’t obsess about the same things week in and week out. The last two weeks my nemesis has been the laundry. Mainly due to the all too typical English weather my laundry gets done in mammoth  laundry days. The weather combined with the fact that my washer/dryer doesn’t get hot when it’s drying tends to dictate this type of laundry day.

About the laundry. One huge bone of contention used to be my laundry “hanging” skills. Each and every time I helped to hang the laundry on the line I got a lecture about how I didn’t know how to hang laundry properly. Needless to say, this used to irritate the living hell out of me. I had been hanging laundry on the washing line at least seven years longer than my ex – she was seven years my junior – but that counted for nothing except the facetious remark that I had been doing so incorrectly for that time.

The one constant area of housekeeping that I do obsess about is dust and cobwebs. I’ve had a thing about these two thorns in my side. I loathe dust. It makes you sneeze, clogs your sinuses. and looks dreadful.  Cobwebs on the other hand make it look like either no one ever cleans in your house or you are getting in practise to be the neighbourhood Haunted House this year.

But…But. I have found a second thing about my new-found freedom. I take a inordinate amount of pride and feel very productive when I’ve gotten the second (or third, or fourth even) load of laundry done. Looking at the clothes on the line waving in the wind make me feels oddly content, especially when it’s all folded and put away and the dirty clothes hamper is empty, albeit temporarily.

I have also discovered that having a little dust is not a horrible thing. The last time I “Googled” it I didn’t find any records of anyone dying of dust overexposure – thankfully my dust is nowhere near that stage of inundation.  And cobwebs? Well, from apart from the ones in my head, I’ve noticed that everyone seems to have them. So I can relax a little…for now. I haven’t become OCD enough to require therapy just yet.

Still, the best part, I’ve discovered, is not having anyone look at my cleaning efforts and tell me that they are not up to scratch. I decide what days are cleaning days and when my house is dirty enough to be given the whirlwind clean it deserves.

In the area of housekeeping at least, I am the master of my own dynasty.

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