NOTE

As I continue to work on things away from this blog (which is a collection of Free-Time/Casual Online Writing, Remarks, And Notes By ME Whelan) and continue to figure out what goes and what stays of my existing online-writing, the de-emphasizing of one or another continues as well....

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

More About The "Notebook Blogs" - Specifically, About Use Of The Word, "Challenges" In Them

While the purpose of the "notebook blogs" is, as the name for them suggests, that they be "notebooks"; and while (at least for now) my choice of wording for some things in them doesn't really matter, I've realized that I don't like (and will probably change) the word, "challenges", in at least some of them.

Originally, I chose the word, "challenges", because I had in mind future material and/or better polishing/developing some pages/subjects.  So, use of "challenges" was what I had in mind as far as future material (aimed at trying to be useful/helpful to someone who may eventually read them) goes.

Because I thought/think that some personal experience with some things may give me a perspective/starting point from which to write something more useful later I did (still do) want to get some things down in writing that I could either polish or refer to later (if necessary).

I've realized that one of the things that stops me from adding any number of issues to "notebook blogs" is that I kind of cringe at my own use of "challenges" in them.  There are so many people in the world who have so many challenges that are far, far, more serious than any of the more minor things about which I either plan to write or else have gotten down in "notes".  Anything I plan to write isn't even going to be about such people or aimed at them.

Uninteresting as the more minor stuff (like the stuff I've been collecting my own "notes" about) may be, what I've had in mind is not to aim material at those people with big challenges or people who have overcome them.  What I've had in mind is to aim material (eventually) at people who have the smaller, sometimes seemingly minor (maybe even temporary) "challenges" that can add up and make day-to-day life more difficult; and/or that may even add up and create far bigger problems for someone than otherwise would develop.

The problem (as far as my feeling as if I want to cringe at the word, "challenges", goes) is that because I'm aiming to make use of personal experience I feel like I'm coming across (even to myself, which may be the main problem) as if I'm calling minor/temporary difficulties something completely inappropriate.

On the one hand, if someone (myself included) kept in mind that I've chosen that word with that future writing in mind then the word doesn't seem so inappropriate.  On the other hand, every time I run into it on "notebook blogs"  even I tend to forget my reason for using the word.  I don't particularly see any of excruciatingly uninteresting and minor things I write "notes" about as "challenges".  They're more "aggravations"  (or, I suppose, "super-minor challenges", but I can't write such a long phrase all the time; it's bad enough that I feel compelled to put "notes" and "notebook blogs" in quotation marks so often).

Why even write about some of this uninteresting and tedious stuff at all? .....

....Like, why write about how if the "air cushion" starts to go out of one's sandals there can be a tendency for that person to tip over?  Why not be really useful/helpful to potential readers and just say, "Word to the wise (and by the way, 'duh'):  don't expect airy sandals to do the job or more solid shoes" (or something like that?

The world is full of people who say or write that kind of stuff.  Nobody needs me to say it as well.  My point for writing something like just that one, tedious, post about sandals isn't even about how they may eventually cause someone like an elderly person or person with an orthopedic issue to tip; but how they can surprise even the person with solid footing/stability by contributing to a tendency to tip.  And, more importantly, how something like that could make those with very elderly family members mistake a shoe problem for a stability problem.).

The point is that I have my aims (and pretty much don't forget that I do) with regard to future writing for/about, say, very elderly people).  What bothers me until I get to that writing is that the word, "challenges", doesn't seem right when it's in association with all those tedious and uninteresting posts/remarks about such minor, minor, stuff.  So, I'll probably start replacing that word as I run into it, at least when it seems particularly objectionable/inappropriate........

.....There's another reason I do want some of those things in "notebooks", however, and that is that they're things I wish some people realized (not so much for myself because I can speak for myself, at least if/when someone asks me about it, or at least if I think to mention it in conversation (particularly when I get the sense the other person doesn't realize something).  And, of course, I can write for myself

One of the biggest challenges (there's that word again, but I'm not changing it in this instance)  I've had with some online writing I've done or wanted to do has been that in order to have people find one's stuff one, of course, needs to use titles/words that people search for (which is easy enough if people realize that they should be searching for something in the first place).  The problem often can be that far too few people even realize that they should be searching for SOME things.  It doesn't help that while far too few people realize that they should be searching, maybe, for some things; far too many, it so often seems to me, don't even realize that there can be any number o9f things they don't.

It's so easy, I think, for the minor, tedious, things to be "not-realized".  Sometimes it doesn't matter much if someone else doesn't realize.  Sometimes it does.  Sometimes things add up.  Sometimes they don't.

So, while I have not yet quite figured out how to put together some of those more tedious things in a way that makes them something more people might eventually relate to (not to mention in a way that makes them less tedious and seemingly completely self-centered and even, perhaps, without an appropriate perspective), I do still want to get them down in writing.

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