A-Z Reflections

Image by cambodia4kidsorg via Flickr

While I’ve been sitting here reading other Reflections posts the list has grown, so I thought I’d best get my reflections post written and added to that linky while I still have a chance to be near the top!  I was number one-thousand-one-hundred-and-something on the original A-Z list and by the looks of my stats I suspect not a lot of A-Z’ers actually made it to my blog – and that’s okay because I didn’t make it to many of theirs!   It was really all I could to do most days to write the post – and that could be because I wrote some really long posts that were more like opinion columns than blog posts!  I also made an audio track in response to L, and that was an all-nighter.

I wrote a couple of posts during the A-Z that referred to the process.  About half way through when I got to N, I wrote Need a Break, and  as I look back at the posts that followed, it seems I didn’t really slow down till the week I moved flats.  Then I posted lots of music videos.  I confess, to resorting to YouTube music videos when the writing brain was so completely drained all I needed was a little music to get me going again. Posts where I used music: H, T, W, and X.

I also discuss the A-Z in Y is for You, where I talk a little about the stats and how the challenge has affected that.  When I got to Z, I had to write about  Zemanta - and at the end of that post I also reflect on the A-Z.

I really enjoyed writing the A-Z.  I enjoyed generating a topic and writing in response to a letter of the alphabet.   Unlike the blogger depicted in the cambodia4kids.org cartoon at the top of this post, I never struggled with whether or not to write about a particular topic.  It was so random, yet there were moments when I thought maybe I was on a spiritual theme, like when I wrote F and G, and I, J, K, and P.  It was when I was in the middle of writing that series of posts that I had a chat with a fellow who challenged me to write an A-Z food.  So I’m planning to do that.  But not this month as I’ve just moved and will be without internet for a couple of weeks.  Anybody care to join me for the A-Z food?  We need to pick a month….like September or October as it relates to harvesting and it will also be a mid-way point.

I’ve got another idea for an A-Z, though I’m not saying too much about that right now, as I want to fully develop the idea.

Image by Vicki's Pics via Flickr

I plan to get round and read more A-Zers over the following year!  Meanwhile, I’m taking a cat nap.

The linkies don’t work in WordPress!   So here’s a link to Lee’s site where you can get the linky….

and Here’s Zemanta’s suggested Related Articles, why doesn’t Zemanta link to more A-Zers’s?

• Seven Tips to Improve Your Written Communication (distance-education.org)
• Yay, for Windows Live Writer and Zemanta (dublinjames.blogspot.com)
• Ten Things I’ve Learned About Blogs (heelsandhikingshoes.wordpress.com)
• Goal Setting and Re-focusing (lkramer14.wordpress.com)
• Writing A Wrong (somerempress.wordpress.com)
• (W)hat’s next? (staceyarcher.wordpress.com)
• The Genre of Blogging (traveliterature.wordpress.com)
• First Grade Reflections (twowritingteachers.wordpress.com)

Y is for You

Who are you? Yes, you – the random surfer, the anonymous reader.

Image by LE FOTO DI MAXI via Flickr

I know who some of my readers are, if you subscribe or leave a comment, or click ‘like’, I know your email address.    Some of you have blogs that I can visit and read, and really get an idea of who you are, and what goes on in your head, at least as much as you want to share in your blog.  Some of you are friends I’ve met here or somewhere else on my life’s journey.  A few of you subscribe – not many – 5 to be exact! That’s right 5 subscribers.  Clearly I’m not going to win the most subscribed blog award!

In terms of ‘hits’,  since I’ve been doing this A-Z blogging challenge, the hits have gone from one in a day (my mother, I’m sure) to 81.  That was the day I published the Love and Baking Cakes post.  It linked to an audio track posted on Soundcloud.   How many of you clicked over from there?

The stats not only tell me how many, but they also tell me if another blog/website referred you, i.e. linked to me from another blog/site to here.  So that tells me a bit about you; I know who you visited before me!  But only about 20% of the blog visitors arrive that way.  Where do the rest of you come from?

Well, I do get stats that tell me if you arrived on the blog from a search engine.  And some of the things people enter in search engines that land them on my blog are most bizarre!  Don’t worry, your ip address isn’t attached to your search phrase – at least not in the stats I have!!

Just today:  ”are amazed is what in the english language”.  I love that sentence, phrase, random collection of words.  I love the misplaced verb, it almost makes ‘is’ a preposition!  It twists the language just enough to be wrong, yet not quite enough to be misunderstood.  Are you a learner of English as a foreign language? Or are you a confused English speaker?  Or was it a typo?  I suspect it was the latter, but whatever, that search phrase worked to get you to my page!

Yesterday’s search phrases offer an interesting assortment:

 poems about baking and love and a woman baking poem - I like that one!  I like the possibility of it being a woman baking a poem.  

I’m sure both of you were after the ‘Love and Baking Cakes’ post with the ‘Make a Love’ poem.  But where did you come from the first time? The time you saw the post, and it stuck in your head, and made you want to come back and find it again?  But then maybe you were looking for something completely different and just stumbled on AlisonAmazed.  Or did you hear me perform that poem and come looking for it?

personal identity by Alison Boston and poem by alison boston identity is very complex 

Well those are pretty straight forward!  I’m sure you were looking for this.  I is for Identity gets a lot of traffic on my blog.  It’s visited every single day.  So either someone is obsessed with it, or identity is one of those words that draws readers.

“indie albany” Yes, I link to the indie albany blog from my blog, but why would a search engine deliver someone searching for indie albany to my blog?

the news is depressing   NO KIDDING!  That search would have brought you to Gawd the News is Depressing where you would have found a kindred spirit at least as far as our general feeling about the news is concerned.

Well, YOU are very interesting indeed. YOU have a curious way of phrasing things you are looking for.  YOU visit some interesting blogs before coming here.  I think I like YOU – whoever YOU are. I hope you like me.

I’m so tired from the move, this blog post is pretty sloppy.

But who are you?  Leave a comment and tell us something about yourself.  What brings you to alisonamazed?  Do you come here often?  Is there something you especially like that you’d like more of?  Mysterious YOU!

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