Irene Smith

I have finally had to come to the conclusion that I can’t do everything. I was trying to update this blog weekly, write a book, participate on Brigit’s Flame by writing a short story every week, study for Microsoft Certification, and also do my real job, the one that pays the bills. This left very little time for everyday things like, oh, sleep and spending time with my family.

I just couldn’t do it. Trying to do too many things at once caused a system crash (my system, not the computer) and I just haven’t felt like doing anything for several months. My health has been suffering and so has my psyche. The whole experience just made me feel sorry for myself and left me incapable of accomplishing much of anything. The few stories I did manage to write got me nothing more than a bunch of rejections.

Is it time for me to give up on writing? Maybe I’m just fooling myself. I thought that I write well. Most of the people who read my stories like them (except for the magazine editors, apparently) so if I haven’t figured out what I’m doing wrong by now, maybe I should just quit.

Why can’t I do that? No matter how many rejections I get, I find myself writing again. It builds up, like water pressure behind a clog in a pipe and after a while, I start getting story ideas that swoop and dive around my head like crazed birds until I sit down at the keyboard and get them out there. I can’t help myself.

Two days ago I said that I would make a post to this web site every week for the next year. So why am I posting again only two days later? Because today is the Tenth Anniversary of this web site. Ten years ago today I registered the domain irenesmith.com (and back then it cost me $35 per year) and created this web site.

It has been re-designed many times, of course, over the years but it has been here (and been mine!) for all of that time. Once upon a time, this was a regular web site. Under the covers the pages have been created with HTML, ASP, ASP .NET and PHP. Now I’ve turned the whole thing into a blog because it’s easier to write a post than create a page. I’m lazy, I admit it.

I think it is easier to communicate with visitors this way and I know for sure that, although I haven’t been posting as regularly as  Iwould like, I’ve been posting a heck of a lot more than I did when this was a regular web site. So… a year of posts? Yes. I’ll be posting every week for the forseeable future, not just for a year, but for as long as I have the time to make the posts.

If you have suggestions for future posts, whether it be an article about some aspect of writing, a software review, or something else entirely, please leave a comment and let me know what you want. Then we’ll see how I do.

See you again on Saturday.

This is the beginning of the year of postings. I actually remembered. Starting today, I plan on posting one entry a week from now until next July.

I have this urge to run away from my life. There has been too much sorrow lately; so much that I don’t notice the good things that are surely happening as well. I want to hide, to be alone, and there isn’t time. I’m watching the movie Elizabethtown. It’s nearly over and Orlando Bloom is running around the flea market, looking for Kirsten Dunst. I’m certainly not looking for Kirsten Dunst, but I think I am looking for something. I just wish I knew what it was.

If I had the money to do it, I’d hop in the car and just drive away. I love my husband and my children and grandchildren, but this is a trip I’d take alone. Just me and a bunch of CDs with my favorite music.

I’d go looking for those places that people seldom notice and rarely visit. I’d visit museums and tourist traps. I would stop to eat when I felt like it and stop to sleep when I got tired. I’d check out big cities and small towns. I think it would be refreshing and invigorating, and when I came back, I’d be ready to go on. Of course few people get to do in real life what people get to do in movies.

Despite the fact that I have a really good job, I can’t afford to “run way” even for a few hours because there’s never any money left over. So I go on from day to day, building up a sleep deficit that I’ll never be able to pay back. Getting more and more emotionally exhausted by the day. I eat too much, I sleep too little, and I don’t know how to change it.

There is something very soothing about writing. I’m sitting here in the darkened living room (it’s daytime outside, but dark in here) with the television running the background (Elizabethtown has given way to The Truman Show) and the physical act of hitting the keys and seeing the words appear on the screen is soothing.

I’m trying to think of a cool way to close this off, but I can’t. So I’m just going to end it. Here.

See you next week…

Believe it or not, this July irenesmith.com will celebrate its tenth anniversary. According to whois, I purchased this domain in July of 1999. The site has been more active at some times than it has at others, but there has been something created by me, Irene Smith, at this domain continuously since 1999.

I first created my won web site in 1997 when I created a web site at GeoCities. Since then I have had many free and paid web sites in various locations but this site has been a constant since its creation back in ‘99.

My goal for the rest of this year is to post something new and (hopefully!) interesting to this site every week. We’ll see how I do.

Something sure went wrong with the latest version of the Twitter Updates plugin. The new version offered me the option to post the Twitter Updates to my blog on a weekly basis. It sounded like a nicer option than publishing daily so I selected it. What did I get? About fifty posts entitled Twitter Weekly Update with the same half dozen Tweets in them. I was not happy.

When I went to the plugin’s web site to report the error, I see that the plugin is unsupported and I should report the problem in the forums or if I want to pay them for Word Press support… Needless to say the plugin has been disabled.