[caption id="attachment_4711" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Image created using Bit Strips.[/caption]
"The leopard does not change their spots." This old saying speaks of leopards but suggests that humans are the same.
Not true.
With hard work, a human can change. With money, they can change even more. There's another saying that applies to people, "Turn over a new leaf." Humans have the capacity to change nearly anything they want about themselves. People overcome drug addictions every day. We can change genders. We can transplant limbs and are working on doing the same with heads for people who are severely paralyzed. Every human has the capacity for good and evil within themselves. Some days one side wins more than the other, but every day we can try again to become something other than we were the day before. Some resist change more than others, so the effort required to make a lasting change varies. With some people, it might be less likely, but even people like Trump *could* wake up and find their heart like Ebeneezer Scrooge.
It's worth mentioning that not all changes are good. I'd never want to become someone who takes photos with a bowl of diamond necklaces as "spaghetti". Did they never hear of the tale of King Midas?
I've found it easiest to make good changes happen in small chunks and to give myself a lot of passes. Major changes don't happen overnight and the last thing you need is to be an asshole to yourself. Successful people don't do that. They have good days and bad days and they treat each like a new chance to move forward. Some days that might only be a baby step. Also, sometimes we take steps backward that ultimately lead to launching us forward like pulling back on the string of a bow. Sometimes we miss the target, but then we learn something that will move us closer.
This weekend, I spent a lot of time working on the background of my blog. I'm not done yet, but I noticed I have over 200 tags and more categories than necessary and realized I needed to tidy it up. This is part of a life change toward getting my shit together. I've removed many tags that were overkill as the topics were in the body of the post anyway. I had a ton that were just used on one post. I had multiple similar tags (fitness, exercise, workouts, etc) and it has been a giant mess. What I've decided to go with is a mix of the eight samurai virtues, some specific things like guitar for the music category, writing related tags, and way less random tags.
I started this by writing down what I enjoyed writing about and I'm aiming to put some real effort into keeping a post focused on one thing instead of 20 things. I think that will lead to better quality posts. I wish I had had the foresight to do this when I began blogging, but sometimes things need to grow organically before you know what it will become.
I intend to go through all nearly 400 posts to ensure I'm not using tags irresponsibly too. I want to place rules on myself for when I use them. The guitar tag, for example, would be good to use when talking about guitar techniques, but not just casually mentioning I played guitar. This will make the tags more useful.
My goals tag has become the virtue of Discipline. I should be down around 50 tags by the time I'm done. I want the categories and tags to really reflect what the post is about. If it's messy, it'll be categorized as Musings and have a couple of tags, but I'd like to have ideally one category only and as few tags as possible.
It's a struggle to apply discipline to tagging blog posts. As I write this one, I wonder if I should tag it with something else like blogging, but now that I've mentioned blogging, the SEO will take care of it for me. As so many of my posts are about writing, I wonder if I really need a category of writing or should I use tags instead?
There's always more to do.
Speaking of discipline, the analog journal hasn't been working great. I think it's largely just not flexible enough for my reality. I'm going to get a generic brand bullet journal and use that instead.
On the fitness front, I need more discipline. I'm going to hit things hard in April as French will be done and I should only need to edit my short story. I'll be doing a lot of sewing starting then and also reading film scripts. I'm looking forward to time away from learning French.
Well, I have a number of things to work on before French class tonight.
Salut,
R~
Image created using Bit Strips.[/caption]"The leopard does not change their spots." This old saying speaks of leopards but suggests that humans are the same.
Not true.
With hard work, a human can change. With money, they can change even more. There's another saying that applies to people, "Turn over a new leaf." Humans have the capacity to change nearly anything they want about themselves. People overcome drug addictions every day. We can change genders. We can transplant limbs and are working on doing the same with heads for people who are severely paralyzed. Every human has the capacity for good and evil within themselves. Some days one side wins more than the other, but every day we can try again to become something other than we were the day before. Some resist change more than others, so the effort required to make a lasting change varies. With some people, it might be less likely, but even people like Trump *could* wake up and find their heart like Ebeneezer Scrooge.
It's worth mentioning that not all changes are good. I'd never want to become someone who takes photos with a bowl of diamond necklaces as "spaghetti". Did they never hear of the tale of King Midas?
I've found it easiest to make good changes happen in small chunks and to give myself a lot of passes. Major changes don't happen overnight and the last thing you need is to be an asshole to yourself. Successful people don't do that. They have good days and bad days and they treat each like a new chance to move forward. Some days that might only be a baby step. Also, sometimes we take steps backward that ultimately lead to launching us forward like pulling back on the string of a bow. Sometimes we miss the target, but then we learn something that will move us closer.
This weekend, I spent a lot of time working on the background of my blog. I'm not done yet, but I noticed I have over 200 tags and more categories than necessary and realized I needed to tidy it up. This is part of a life change toward getting my shit together. I've removed many tags that were overkill as the topics were in the body of the post anyway. I had a ton that were just used on one post. I had multiple similar tags (fitness, exercise, workouts, etc) and it has been a giant mess. What I've decided to go with is a mix of the eight samurai virtues, some specific things like guitar for the music category, writing related tags, and way less random tags.
I started this by writing down what I enjoyed writing about and I'm aiming to put some real effort into keeping a post focused on one thing instead of 20 things. I think that will lead to better quality posts. I wish I had had the foresight to do this when I began blogging, but sometimes things need to grow organically before you know what it will become.
I intend to go through all nearly 400 posts to ensure I'm not using tags irresponsibly too. I want to place rules on myself for when I use them. The guitar tag, for example, would be good to use when talking about guitar techniques, but not just casually mentioning I played guitar. This will make the tags more useful.
My goals tag has become the virtue of Discipline. I should be down around 50 tags by the time I'm done. I want the categories and tags to really reflect what the post is about. If it's messy, it'll be categorized as Musings and have a couple of tags, but I'd like to have ideally one category only and as few tags as possible.
It's a struggle to apply discipline to tagging blog posts. As I write this one, I wonder if I should tag it with something else like blogging, but now that I've mentioned blogging, the SEO will take care of it for me. As so many of my posts are about writing, I wonder if I really need a category of writing or should I use tags instead?
There's always more to do.
Speaking of discipline, the analog journal hasn't been working great. I think it's largely just not flexible enough for my reality. I'm going to get a generic brand bullet journal and use that instead.
On the fitness front, I need more discipline. I'm going to hit things hard in April as French will be done and I should only need to edit my short story. I'll be doing a lot of sewing starting then and also reading film scripts. I'm looking forward to time away from learning French.
Well, I have a number of things to work on before French class tonight.
Salut,
R~