Catharsis of the Bogue

Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

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Migraines and Laundry, Which One is Worse? Part 1

September 26, 2013 / / 0 Comments

I have spent the last couple of days reading so much stuff about how be a successful blogger.  I don’t know if I can take any more advice.  But I did get some good tips so not time wasted, just not spent writing.  So here is what I am going to do with this blog, write it! I will write whatever I want every day.  There may be 2 posts per day. There may even be a series like this one is going to be. Here is part one:

So here goes with some focus actually.  It may or may not be known that I am a stay at home dad.  I have been off and on for the past 8 years so that an actual parent can raise our kids.  My wife is a Nurse and can just make more $$ than I can so when it comes down to it, she is more logical to work than me.  Especially this last go around.  I quit working in April of 07 to go back to school and finish the last few credits of my degree.  About a week later, my 11 month old daughter had a seizure and ended up in the hospital for 16 weeks with kidney failure.  My wife carried the insurance so I took care of the little one as well as the 2 other kids.  And the house.  and the laundry.

The next 2 years I spent 3-4 days per week taking the little one to dialysis because she had her kidney’s removed, and it took that long to get a transplant lined up.  She got the transplant in May of 09, so after all of the followup DR. appointments I am here taking care of the house and the kids again, run of the mill stay at home dad.  Funniest thing is how it pisses off my father the ex Navy SEAL type A personality control freak.  But I digress yet again.  I wrote many blog posts to keep family updated on the baby’s progress at www.carepages.com pagename: ameliarosematthews.

I didn’t start this out to talk about stay at home dad stuff, or even migraines but it may be what it was meant for.  I went downstairs yesterday to catch up on the laundry.

Join us tomorrow for part 2 of the migraine and laundry series. See Part 2 Here

And part 3 Here

Justin

If Only My Blog Was A Fish.

September 26, 2013 / / 6 Comments

I don’t know if I can even express just how much I want to get outside.  I have spring fever so bad it is not even funny.  I know there are some around the country that are just happy to have it stop snowing.  There hasn’t been snow in Salt Lake for over a month now, and the temps are near 50.

Perfect for fishing!  I have got to get out and catch something.  I wrote a couple of weeks ago about wanting to go fishing and how you can just have too much tackle to be effective.  I still believe that I don’t need much stuff to go, just the time to do it.  And my new pole.  I received a new rod and reel in the mail the other day.  The result of some contest I entered.  While not the most expensive rod you can get, it is pretty darn sweet.  I can’t wait to go try it out.  I am really leaning towards this week and one of the community ponds that we have here.

I had that rod in my living room for a few days telling my wife that I just needed to get some line on it and I would put it away.  I got a roll of brand new 8 lb test flourocarbon line, something I have never used before.  I spooled it onto my reel.  I resisted the temptation to tie on a lure and see if the fish in my aquarium would bite.  One time I taped a fly on the outside of the aquarium just to watch the fish go crazy.  It was great fun.

So now, my new rod lies dormant in the dark of my camping trailer.  I can hear it calling to me.  It is like Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.  I can hear it.  I can feel it.  I am pathetic.  I need to go fishing.

What does this obsession have to do with blogging?  This is the passion that is needed to power your blog from “just another blog” to something with a known name that people want to read.  I keep referencing Ben at 6aliens.com and James at TheInfopreneur.net as well as Dave at website-in-a-weekend.net.  No I am not getting paid to pimp their sites, they are just my inspiration in this whole blog adventure that I am undertaking.  They are all great examples of tenacity and the passion that it takes to keep a site going and be successful.  Now, I am defining successful here as many pageviews and comments.

James is a madman and posts up to 3 times per day!  Ben is all over the net and besides content on his site he has regular guest posts on other sites.  Dave is a savant when it comes to WordPress and has valiantly recovered from a hackers attack in the last couple of weeks.  They are all still reading, posting and commenting all over the web.

That is what is worthy to emulate.  Drive, passion.  Making things happen.  Paring down the crap out there and focusing on what counts for your blog, and your writing.  It is about being like a kid before Christmas when a new plugin arrives that you just can’t wait to use.

It is about using new tools that you haven’t heard of before.  It is about continuously refining techniques and your site until it works.  Until people want to read what you write.  Can you do it??  I am.  I want to toss out a line to Blogistan and reel back in readers.

I can’t wait to write more and read everything in my RSS reader.  If you are reading this you rock!  Check out my Pre-Writing Challenge page to track progress on that.

Please feel free to comment if the mood strikes and that fly that I taped to your monitor is tempting!

Justin

To Pre-write, ahh the value

September 26, 2013 / / 4 Comments

So we are starting this Pre writing challenge (see my page here) and today is one of those days that it would be incredible to have a few posts lined up I could just hit publish and be done with it.

This morning, I went out and turned on the car so it would be warm when I took my kids to school.  I do it most every morning because it is cold.  A few minutes later, we went back out to the car to go to school and it was making some strange sucking, bubbling sound.  Of course the kids start to panic and I did a bit when I looked under the car and there was a huge puddle of transmission fluid!

Now I am paranoid about transmissions.  They break way too easily in my opinion and are incredibly expensive.  I do a lot of repairs on the cars and can do most things short of tearing down the engine or fixing the transmission.  I did a bunch in high school shop but it didn’t cover transmissions.

So we took the other car to school and I am dreading what I am going to find.  I hope it is a gasket on the pan, or a screw has fallen out, something I can repair.  I finally get the car jacked up and get under it and guess what.  It wasn’t the transmission after all.  I almost peed myself with relief.

Come to find out, Chrysler had some brilliant idea that the power steering fluid needs to run through a small cooler like a radiator.  One of these hoses had burst and the power steering fluid in a Dodge Caravan is actually transmission fluid.  There were several unprintable 4 letter words used to describe the lineage of certain engineers and their anatomical deficiencies.

So this is an easy fix for the car.  If it were not for the internet and auto repair forums I would not have known all of the things that I needed to fix it.  The net is like that.  Out there and waiting to suck us in.  Larger point, I have a bunch of stuff to do today and i am putting some of it off so that I can write this post.  My normal writing time was spent outside under the car.

This brings me to the value of having a few posts in the queue waiting anxiously to emerge.  I have been thinking for the last couple of weeks that I would like to have 3 posts available for this because there are days when Doctor appointments and other things just prevent me from writing.  Then along comes Carlos Velez at Conscious Me.com; with this guest post about how Pre writing is your friend.  Struck a chord with me and over a few days the Pre-Writing Challenge was born.  See my Pre-Writing challenge page for more info on how to join.

It would have been nice today to say, “I just am not going to write right now.  I’ll post #7.”  Didn’t happen but at the end of the challenge it will be so.

Thanks for being here!

Justin

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