works of wanderlust

Category: deeper thoughts

  • Backyard: Blogging (a How-to Guide)

    As spring approaches, and the snow melts into a nurturing moisture that slowly starts to restore the greens to the grass and the leaves to the trees in my little suburban backyard, I find myself looking for excuses to sit in the weak spring sunshine and do those activities I would have just weeks before found a quiet corner of the house to get done.

    Daily blogging is not incompatible with an outdoor lifestyle, but it does take some special preparation to help ensure its success.

    I don’t know about you, but I write best when I’m comfortable. A cushioned seat or a soft-bottomed chair of some kind. A flat level surface with enough space for my tools (see the first item) and a cup of coffee. It’s got to be out of the wind and sun, and the last thing I want is to have bugs swarming around my head or an angry wasp buzzing at my screen. I like a view of the yard, particularly when the birds are swooping in and out of the feeders I have set up. And so long as she behaves herself, the dog is happiest when she can sniff around or find a place nearby to curl up and enjoy the tippity-tap of the keyboard.

    Some tips to successfully blogging outdoors:

    Setting the Tools

    Writing is a personal act and one that often involves a favourite keyboard, a certain pen & paper combination, or just the right screen font. I myself am fussy about how I write. I admittedly spend too much money on certain styles of keyboards that feel just the right way under my fingers. When I’m in the flow of writing, the last thing I want is to be distracted by an unfamiliar tool. Personally, I’ve taken particular care to set up my writing tools around these comforts and have multiple sets: one that is portable as well as a set that is more grounded at my desk. I have the same chiclet-style keyboard in the wired (desktop) and wireless (tablet) model for the precise reason that I sometimes like to write outdoors (or in the olden, pre-pandemic days, at a café in …gasp …public.) In short, backyard blogging starts with some investment in having a device or method that is capable of not just working, but working for you, in said backyard.

    Connecting Disconnected

    And now that you have a computer, tablet, or some other writing device set up in a comfortable position outside, you probably need to link it up to the internet. Of course there is always the option of writing your post offline in a text editor and uploading later when you are back in the house or can push it to your blog platform in one effort. A good wireless internet setup that reaches out into a moderate sized backyard in not an expensive investment these days. Nor is tethering your device to a wifi hotspot supplied by your phone a thing that is going to drain most moderately-sized cell phone data packages. Provided you’re not uploading dozens of photos or expecting to share a full video, bringing the internet to your backyard should be a practical and straightforward way to extend your writing space into your green space.

    Undistracting

    Wind. Bugs. Varying sunlight. The birds fluttering to and fro. The honks of a car horn on the street. A siren passing by on the main road a few blocks away. A neighbour calling his dog. I sit in virtual silence, or listening to music, when I work inside. In my suburban backyard, as much as I revel in the life of the neighbourhood, distraction becomes a real thing when I’m trying to put my fingers onto that keyboard and focus on the words. On sunny mornings the sun comes up past the neighbours house in just the right way that a glare blots out any hope of visibility on my tablet screen. If I sit my chair in just the right angle it blocks most of that light, but it is distracting nonetheless. A pair of headphones and some music is a way to block it out if I need to, but mostly blogging outside means tweaking the way you work to work well with the distractions in the outside space, air, noise, and life.

    Feeding the Inspiration

    Finally, when the space is just right, the tools are working great, the bugs are shooed away, and the glare of the sun is not obscuring the screen, I find it never feels quite right to sit outside in the yard without a beverage and maybe a snack of some kind. In the mornings I write with a hot cup of coffee and a bit of sourdough toast. In the evenings, after a day of work fuels my after-hours wordiness, a cold beer or a finger of whiskey can often pry loose that tangled inspiration. Maybe you like a glass of wine or a glass of icy cold soda. Maybe you nibble at a snack of some kind, pop yourself some popcorn or crinkle open a bag of potato chips. Backyard blogging, if nothing else, feels like permission to enjoy the act a little more, and to feed your inspiration with the space, the fresh air, and something more literal to sip on. Or maybe it’s just me.

  • Kinda Secret Projects

    I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with my friends and family.

    In fact, there are very few people who I know in real life who also know that I write in this blog.

    Maybe… say… five people.

    I have no real good reason for not self-promoting other than that I wasn’t ready yet. Creativity and personal expression, particularly as you get older, is this balancing act between newfound not giving any effs, and realizing that your interests are straying further and further from popular culture and mass market interests. There is also the whole risk equation tied back to personal and professional reputation, but that’s a blog post for another day.

    Also, simply, I wanted to get my legs stable under me before I went telling everyone that “hey, look over here… I’ve been writing a blog you should all check out!”

    I’ve done that more than once in my life. Posting to the internet for twenty years often means you’ve racked up many projects and over-tapped the good will of friends and family.

    I’m not the only one who does this … is doing this kinda-secret-project thing right now … or so I found out.

    One of my colleagues, a guy who reports to the same boss as I do, revealed to the team yesterday that his New Year’s resolution made and kept was to start a podcast.

    He has posted nearly twenty episodes of a self-produced audio program… in secret… since the start of the year. The link went low-grade viral around the office chatter and I think he multiplied his subscriber rate by insert-coworker-count-here… speaking of, ahem, professional reputation.

    I was momentarily tempted to stick my hand up and say “hey, wanna read my blog anyone?” but the moment passed and he was in his moment, and maybe mine will come, too.

    Or whatever.

    I’m kinda enjoying my kinda secret project for now.

  • Sylvan

    This language of mine is so filled with clever words meant to precisely describe many things. Other words have meanings that are soft, fluid and flexible that they are used to describe concepts so vast as to make the boundaries of those definitions fuzzy and flexible.

    To me, sylvan feels like on of those words.

    SILL - vann

    Living in or simply relating to the woods.

    To me, growing up this word had a fuzzy meaning that was almost opposite of it’s actual definition.

    Sylvan meant a trip to the beach.

    Not a great beach.

    Yet a twenty minute drive from my house was a large prairie pond called Sylvan Lake. On a summer Saturday we’d drive out, swim in the shallow, muddy water, wander the path along the town, and eat candy or ice cream.

    Or later, “Want to go to Sylvan this weekend?” As a teenager with driving license this was a epic getaway far away and out of town.

    The shores of Sylvan Lake, the lake, is not devoid of trees by any means and I imagine now, knowing the definition of its alias, that once long ago it was revealed by explorers and granted a name because it was a huge lake in the middle of a woods. Today it is but a dent in the vast agricultural Canadian prairies, an impression in the otherwise rolling flat lands that happens to contain water, support a small town, and attract city folks for their weekend getaways.

    I’ve since travelled to many beaches touching many lakes, rivers, oceans, and warm blue seas. It still echoes back to my youth when I hear this word, yes.

    But my association with this word has mostly reverted to moments more like the photo in this post: the quiet of the woods, the majesty of a living forest, and the peace that comes from walking among the trees.

  • A Blogging Good Anniversary

    I occasionally allude to an interesting-to-me fact: I’ve been posting my thoughts online in the form of blogs for a long time.

    To give that claim some context, as of today I have been a blogger for twenty years.

    That’s right.

    On April 20, 2001, twenty years ago to today, I posted my first dispatch post from a hot little apartment in metro Vancouver shortly after moving there for a post-university job.

    I don’t want to sour this post in any way with recollections of why I shelved that blog or mourning all the other little temporary websites that lived for a time online before fading into the obscurity of a backup file on my computer. Needless to say, the digital road from there to here has been long, rewarding, introspective, emotional, and likely worn out more than one keyboard.

    I’ve been read by lot of people for too many reasons to list.

    I’ve been scraped by content farms stealing my words and photos.

    I’ve been recognized by media and linked from news articles.

    I’ve been hacked.

    I’ve been awarded for words, design, and concept.

    I’ve been undermined by people I had trusted for things I’d written in good faith.

    I’ve told stories.

    I’ve had regrets.

    I’ve corrected mistakes.

    I’ve learned, grown, shared, and opened myself up.

    Literally millions of words have appeared online at times, and as many of those words as I have cared to keep are safely archived and privately backed up in safe digital spaces for my personal future reference.

    If you have been reading and enjoying this blog, thanks. It is the latest in now-twenty years of efforts to share my words and thoughts and creative soul online. It has been a big part of my life, mostly for good, and always interesting… well, at least for me.

    It has been an outlet and an inspiration to step out of a pandemic-based rut (an even more significant thing to say today as my age-group eligibility for a vaccine starts this morning!)

    I write and post, and I write therefore I am. And while this blog may still be young and new, for me personally this is a blogging good anniversary worth pausing to blog about.

  • Douglas Fir

    Look up but watch where you’re going.

    On a recent trip to the mountains I was reminded of the diversity of the forest and the interesting world of trees. I may not work in the field, but I have a four year university degree in biology which included more ecology, botany, and entomology coursework than any normal lifespan should have to contain.

    Even though it didn’t turn into a job, those four years earned me an immovable respect for the natural world and a firmly entrenched fascination with the diversity of living things.

    I was looking up at the trees, but not really watching where I was going.

    Of the many of varieties of trees I was looking at, and among the dozens of species that make up the mountain forests, there is one that has held my interest for a very long time: the mighty and curiously-named Douglas Fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii. It has held my interest not because it is necessarily an interesting tree, which it probably is in its own right, but because when I learned about this tree as a kid my best friend’s name was “Doug” and I always felt a bit jealous that he had his own tree.

    Yet, the Douglas fir was most definitely not named after my school chum, Doug. It was in fact named after a nineteenth century Scottish botanist and explorer named David Douglas. He is credited (in the narrow bandwidth of European science) with first cultivating the fir which would later bear his name. He did this in his twenties. In his twenties!

    I certainly did not discover or cultivate much of interest in my twenties. Though in my thirties I helped cultivate a daughter who is now a teenager and who is anxiously contemplating her future education. We spent nearly an hour last night having a heart-to-heart conversation, me trying to bear witness to her struggles to find a meaningful life path, and also empathize through recounting my plight of squandering a university education in an interesting field for which I still have passion but most definitely no career.

    She is young and still looking up at those millions of trees in the forest and their possibilities.

    I’m getting older and often watching my feet, trying to remember to look up occasional and admire that world around me.

    Look up.

    David Douglas died under mysterious circumstances at the age of thirty five, but the officially documented cause was still interesting. Like a cartoon villain in a Gilligan’s Island rerun, he fell into a trap hole on a Hawaiian island and was mauled to death by an angry bull while his dog watched from the edge the pit. I suppose it could be said he, being a young and ambitious guy, spent a lot of time looking up at the trees and what was under his feet ultimately got him in the end.

    The moral of the story is that if you’re always looking up at the trees someone might name one of those trees after you forever securing your legacy… but also don’t be surprised if you fall into a hole to your immediate doom.

    The parenting lesson is that I need to give my teenage daughter the ability to look up and admire those trees, take her to the forest (both literal and metaphorical) but that I also need to be a good dad and keep my eyes on the ground for her. Maybe those four years of university weren’t a waste of time after all.