Pity Party and Plans for the Future

Sometimes it takes a pity party to reboot your life.

In the last month or so, the following things have happened to me, and they resulted in my spending a lot of solitary and moody time on the couch reading and watching movies and television.

  • My son told me that I was never going to get anywhere with my blog if I didn’t focus my topic. He’s a social media expert, so I imagine he is probably correct.
  • My physical therapist told me that my knee probably isn’t going to get much better and that I’m going to have limitations with my range of motion in my surgical knee no matter how much I exercise it.
  • I realized that wearing a Fitbit has positive and negative aspects. On one hand, I love the documentation of one’s life because I’m a born and bred social historian. On the other hand, the Fitbit also hands up my failures on a social media platform for me and my Fitbit friends to see.
  • I blew up at a party when a friend made a political “joke” that hit a nerve.
  • A dear friend told me that I have to get off social media and stop worrying about what other people think – including the comments sections of political posts on Facebook. I encounter so much hatred and ignorance that it makes me frustrated, and resulted in my rude behavior on Easter.
  • I missed seeing two annual flower shows that I love because I really didn’t have anyone to go with. My friends are all busy and interesting people with their own lives and it’s very hard to schedule activities together. Having active lives should be a good thing, but not if I have to wait to do something because we can’t schedule a time.
  • I read three books with bloggers as the primary characters. They were well written and the authors clearly had knowledge of the blogging world, but it made me look at blogging success through different eyes.

So, I’m declaring the pity party to be over, and this is what I’m doing to change my perspective. Continue reading

Coming to Grips with SEO and Well-Meant Advice

Over the past few weeks, I’ve really been struggling with writing for my blog.

The combination of the everlasting winter and the everlasting knee replacement rehab certainly contributes to my Debby-downerism, but it’s more than that.

On one hand, all the SEO tips and blogging experts tell me that I need to focus on one area and write compelling content about that area.

On the other hand, the reason I started blogging was to write about what was on my mind and to share information and visuals that I thought people might be interested to see. Continue reading

Reading Bonanza: Free Books

I’ve been reading this summer, but only a little more than I usually read because I’ve been working pretty hard on regaining control of my house.

I ran across this website today — books, movies, and more books for free! Just in case I need more books. Even if you’re not going to actually read them, the lists of “best books and films” are fun to peruse.

Although I respect the bloggers that are reading the classics — classics clubs are omnipresent among the book bloggers — that’s not why I read. At least not now.

Have a great weekend! I’m on a short break to celebrate my birthday.

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A NEW START

When I first started blogging in 2010, I had very little idea of how much my daily (or almost daily) connection with the world would come to mean to me. I have valued the opportunity to express myself, hone my craft, and try out new things on my friends.

Today represents the first day in a new chapter in my life — retirement. I will be keeping a daily chronicle of my experiences and reflections on this passage in my life. I hope you will join me at Retirement 365 as well as continuing to follow Got My Reservations.

There’s a link to Retirement 365 in the side bar of my Home Page — thanks for your support!

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Orchid Week: Thursday

I’m in my last week of teaching — is that even possible? — and won’t have a lot of time to blog this week, so I’m leaving you with a series of photos of orchids that I took at the nursery. Enjoy!

 

Today’s teacher task: Cleaning my classroom and end-of-year luncheon. The party is always fun and will certainly be meaningful this year for me!

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Orchid Week: Wednesday

I’m in my last week of teaching — is that even possible? — and won’t have a lot of time to blog this week, so I’m leaving you with a series of photos of orchids that I took at the nursery. Enjoy!

Today’s teacher task: Graduation rehearsal and cleaning my room, followed by graduation in the evening. It’s always bittersweet to participate in graduation festivities.

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Orchid Week: Tuesday

I’m in my last week of teaching — is that even possible? — and won’t have a lot of time to blog this week, so I’m leaving you with a series of photos of orchids that I took at the nursery. Enjoy!

Today’s teacher task: supervising cleaning out lockers and making sure my kids don’t put usable school supplies in the trash. We donate good stuff to less affluent schools. Then they will go through their portfolios from eight years of elementary school. They absolutely love seeing their stuff from when they were little and also seeing how much they have grown in their eighth grade year with me. It’s usually a feel-good activity for the last day of classes.

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Retirement 365

People ask me what I’m going to do now that I’m retiring from teaching public school. I’ll start with Retirement 365, which is my blogging chronicle of my first year of retirement. It will debut on June 9, my first day of freedom from the demands of middle school children and their parents. Am I ready for retirement from teaching? Absolutely. Am I ready to replace it with something equally important and meaningful? Yes, again.

Right up there with blogging more will be watching more television. I’m eagerly awaiting the new What Not to Wear season — you know how much I love Clinton and Stacey (really, I do) — and it killed me to erase a bunch of unwatched programs off of my DVR so that there was room for Stacey and Clinton tonight. Of course, my erasures included Private Practice and Grey’s Anatomy, both of which I intend to watch this summer in their season’s entirety, and American Idol where Jessica Sanchez was robbed.

So maybe not everything I do in retirement will be totally important and meaningful, but a girl’s gotta have her vices even at her doddering old retirement age. Stay tuned… I’ve got a lot of grading and cleaning and teaching still to accomplish in the next eight days.

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