Left-handed Complement

MUDGE’s Musings

I guess it’s the sophomore slump.

It’s been more than a week since I last posted to this blog, vs. my strong beginning last month. See I read somewhere that you have to get into a habit of daily blogging, exercise like any other (and if you saw what I look like, you’d note immediately that blogging is not the only exercise I’m failing to perform daily!).

So the new has worn off, and no one seems to be reading this anyway, so what’s the point?

How about, I like to write! How about, I’d like to be read, and I certainly won’t be if I don’t write! Simple, right? On the other hand, jillions are blogging; who is taking the time to read them? I’m sure that, aside from the professionals and the few hugely talented amateurs, most blogs go unread except for family and close friends. Even then, how many people have good and/or close enough friends that they would have patience enough to read the most interesting blog on a daily basis? Based on WordPress statistics, I apparently do not!

And the pros have one on me, since they can get away with blogging on the job — perhaps their job is in part or wholly the production of a regular column — lucky them! Working as I do in the Heart of Corporate America, I have the nagging impression that blogging on the job (no sir, not me!) — even blogging offsite explicitly about the job — would be a terminating offence. So, the few times I have written about what I do I have forced myself to be most indirect, uncomfortably so, since I’m proud of the work I do, and absolutely proud of the company I work for and the work it does in its often under-appreciated industry. My employer and its industry, and the business conducted by our country, and its capitalist system, is certainly not above criticism, but the good outweighs the not so by orders of magnitude.

And although I’ve been told I’m diplomatic, my usual impulse is to be very, eloquently, shockingly, direct — and it’s sometimes painful to dial that back. But, I love my job, and I’d hate to risk it over a few words. See last month’s rant about my retirement plans — I don’t have any, so this is one boat I choose not to rock. So I’ll continue to try to find interesting things to say about what I do, which I am passionate about (even my bosses say so), constrained by not speaking too distinctly about where I do it.

So, it’s been a little slow there for me the past week or so, and isn’t it just so true that busy people get lots more done than those who aren’t so. I’ve been content to accumulate a few more links for a future clipjoint or two, which I hope is not the total copout it feels like! But, tonight, we’ll write a little more.

And, I’ve been working on a project at home, that due to its multimedia content has been quite time consuming. My older son’s wedding is coming up, and I’ve been working on a slide show for the rehearsal dinner. It’s been fun, but frankly something of a chore (a hobby with a deadline is a job, folks!), scanning in quite a number of photographs (let’s face it, snapshots!) from years long past, and wrestling with the software purchased for the purpose of combining the photos and a music track into a DVD playable at that event, now just three weeks away. My PC, seeming so powerful just three short years ago, seems often driven to its knees by the demands placed on it for such a project. Like any complex software, Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 9 has a steep learning curve, but it has repaid my persistence with what I will modestly term a very nice result.

So far, the slide show has consumed the long Memorial Day weekend, this past weekend and still another couple of hours during evenings this week as I fiddle with the audio software, having beaten into submission (or at least as far as my patience has allowed) the visuals. I’m really happy with the results — but like any creative effort, viewed often enough it has become difficult to stay objective. Not the worst of its genre (amateur slide shows must be almost as numerous as blogs!), hardly the best. Ken Burns’ job is safe. But, I think my precious son and his darling bride to be, and our families, will appreciate it, or at least will be polite about it!

It’s it for now (whew! I wrote something at last!).

Thanks,
–MUDGE

Tags: blogs, blogging, corporate America, hobby, slide show, Roxio

Powered by Qumana