PAUL MERRILL
Note “Sites” in the tabs at the top of this site.
I took my blogroll off my sidebar. I used to have the links of several sites there. I changed that, just for a little variety. And I also added descriptions to each site, so you know the ride you’re about to take.
I am sorry to say that I have to pause this blog for a while. I’m not sure how long. At the moment, there are too many irons in my fire, and something had to go.
Stay tuned. I promise I’ll be back.
Update: This point in my blogging simply turned into my giving myself the freedom to post less often. Again. Thanks for your patience with me as I keep changing my personal blogging experience.
A friend and I had a discussion about inspiration and blogging. Sometimes the spark of creativity has left. Sometimes I wait for the inspiration fairy to touch me, and sometimes that just doesn’t happen.
My friend asked if my move from 5 posts a week to 2–3 had been good for my traffic and engagement. I replied that Shiny Bits is my personal sharing with interested people — and I don’t mind that much if traffic and engagement result.
Sure, I’d love for thousands to enjoy what I put up here. But I won’t water down my posts to try to bring those thousands to my fold. Instead, it’s gratifying when a real connection is made and lasts. That makes it all worthwhile.
Thanks for enjoying what Shiny Bits offers. And thanks for sometimes being my inspiration fairy.
By the way, this great fairy painting is from Dover Publications. They have lots of copyright-free images for your blogging pleasure. And they didn’t share who the painter was.
I started blogging on August 24, 2005. My first personal blog was My Part of Nairobi. My second was My Part of Colorado. My third? It’s what you are holding in your hands now.
Blogging, it has been good to me. And hopefully to you too. If you’ve been with me since Nairobi, you deserve a loyalty card! If you’ve arrived since then, Check out some of that old stuff. You will enjoy the ride, I promise.
Thanks for reading my blog. I don’t say that enough.
I appreciate you.
Some have asked why I scaled back my blogging since March or so. The short answer is that I have less free time these days. I’m in the midst of getting Greener Grass Media off the ground, and my spare minutes are precious.
My hope is still to give you at least two or three posts a week here. Some weeks I may get back to five. Thanks for your loyalty!
You can read this blog by RSS too — and then you’ll know when I’m posting here, without having to check back.
If you’ve always wanted to get inside my head a little more than my blog will permit you, my friend Johanna very kindly did an interview with me over at her blog, Blip of Cheer. Check it out. And I hope you enjoy it. (Thanks, Johanna!)
If you have never heard of Alltop, I urge you to visit. Guy Kawasaki started the site, and my friend Neenz keeps it running quite well.
Alltop is a library. You start by looking within a huge variety of categories. Each category’s page links to some of the finest websites and blogs within that realm. I’m on the “Life” page. You can also find ballroom dancing and Pacific Northwest street food.
And it’s not just for fun — Alltop is a very useful tool for work, if your job involves spending much time online.
I’m off to Malaysia (with no computer along!).
I expect to start blogging again around October 27th, depending on how jet lag treats me.
This is a Guest Post. Elizabeth Howard writes poetry on demand on a Olivetti Lettera 33, and refuses to believe the internet is a gutter for poorly constructed metaphors and overly-bullet-pointedness. If you agree, read more, comment more at her blog, “Letters from a Small State.”
I tweet. Because if I leave the keyboard, I have to subtract myself from the safety of limitless connection.
Blind, ever-pulsating links between me and a perfect unknown.
You know: what Simonpegg or mommywantsvodka are chattering on about at 9:37 p.m. scratches a certain itch. Ahhhhh.
And it deflects. Very nicely. From the complicated love that burrows down. Love that lingers and love that is canyon-width and acid edges, but isn’t all that interesting. Aged and unattainable. Grizzled and drinking beer with its feet on my coffee table.
So, then it’s Us Weekly tweets to soothe the soul — from the constant berating of Not-Us Daily. Life hiding its regalement in banality. That is to say: rotten-fierce love between two people who are ordinary.
I facebook to imagine myself on the wings of electricity, a fairy of fiberoptics.
I lace my imagined self with curiously tangled and dementedly true details. Meaningless to almost anyone.
To everyone but the most ordinary, steel-toed lover.
