A local school is having a fundraiser, I heard on the radio this afternoon. For more information, I am asked to visit their website.

I visit their website, and there is no information about a fundraiser. I check “Announcements.” Nope, nothing there. “Community?” Nope. Well, the PTA/Boosters are usually the ones to host fundraisers, so maybe something is in their section? Nope.

Finally, I click on “Newsletters.” That page doesn’t show a current newsletter, or any news for the matter, but has a link you can click on to view the list of newsletters. And, they haven’t had a new newsletter since last year. But opening the last newsletter of last year, in the middle of the newsletter, there, finally, is info on the fundraiser.

But, should it really be this difficult for someone to find something mentioned on the radio, especially since they’re being encouraged to visit your website to find more information?

I think not.

Were this an isolated incident, you could laugh it off as a silly mistake. Like in the old days, when people printed and distributed flyers about their new product or service, and made a very big omission: their phone number.

Instead, this still seems to happen too often these days. Really, shouldn’t people know better by now?

Laconicism.

How about I call it by its name?

And, how about I post a bit of a teaser?

And, how about, despite these revelations, you’re still a bit in the dark, eh?

Only a handful of people, including Mike who’s sworn to secrecy, know more details about this project. And none of them know the full details. Muhahahahaha! Oh, and Doug knows a bit about it too, but he’s probably forgotten by now.

But, this thing will really rock. Right Mike? I’ll allow him to answer that question, so long as he does so without specifics.

And, yes, it really has been since 2005 that I started working on this project.

When you’re juggling a bunch of different projects, sometimes it can be difficult to keep track of them all, even if you write them down. The sheet of paper you write them down on may get lost, or you may just get tired of looking at it if long periods of time pass without being able to cross anything off the list.

I have said previously, too, that my intention was to finish my eCommerce site before I move on to any other projects.

The problem is that when I work on the same thing day after day after day, I get bored with it. Especially when you know what you want out of it, and what remains is a bunch of grunt work. It’s one thing to want to finish a project, but actually completing the project is quite another.

I think boredom hurts productivity too. I have to confess that I really haven’t put a lot of time into my eCommerce site since before Christmas.

I was okay with taking a holiday break from it, but the holidays are long past now! And, I am finding it difficult to get back into the swing of things. I end up fiddling around with it and not making much progress, because I am just so bored with it. It is far too easy to go blog hopping, using the excuse of, well, I’m learning new things! than it is to simply sit down and crank the thing out.

So, I think I’m going to take a short break from it, using the excuse of for productivity’s sake! I think I just need to work on something different for a while, finish it, and then have the satisfaction of completing something and then maybe I’ll be able to tackle the eCommerce site once again with a refreshed state of mind.

Instead of being mind-numbingly bored.

Plus, I really ought to get a comfortable chair. The fact that I’m uncomfortable sitting here working on things cannot be much of a productivity aid either.

Oh, yes, but this post was supposed to be about keeping track of your progress, right? Well, here is what I am doing, and maybe this will help you as well, although it’s not an entirely original idea, seeing as it is something Joanne* and others already do. As you can see, I’ve listed my list of projects in my sidebar, underneath the eBay ad. As I complete things, I’ll be able to delete them from the list. Of course, the “Other Blogs” is a bit vague, but maybe that will be a semi-permanent item, as I have lots of ideas for blogs but not as much time to do them.

And I think Mike will be glad to see at least one of those items in the list. Pete too.

*I’m hoping she gets back into the swing of blogging regularly again, soon, because I think it helps to have a blog sparring partner to keep blogging from getting boring as well.

Have you ever written a blog post, and then re-read it later and considered how uninteresting it may have been to your readers?

You might have thought, why did I write that? You may even be tempted to delete it, or at least not write similar things in the future.

Before you do that, take another read. Would a rewrite have improved it? Was there a lesson to be learned that got buried in your post?

For example, take my “Backtracking a Meme Redux” that I posted earlier today. The title doesn’t grab your attention, and the lesson gets lost.

People really don’t care about your meme. They are looking for something that’s about them. Something that helps them. Something that improves what they are doing. You are focused on you, when you need to focus on them. No doubt, when you look at a blog, you are looking for the benefit to you. You don’t care that John Chow made $25k last month; you want to know how he did it so that you can make that much a month.

That was my mistake in the aforementioned post. I should have started with the benefit to you. And, that benefit is the lesson that gets lost in the message: “…even if you get something to go viral and get spread around, you might not benefit at all if your own name or linkback gets lost in the shuffle.”

Starting out with that, and also using a better title, would have made the post more interesting. You’d know right off the bat what I wanted to show you, and you’d have known right off the bat what you could expect to learn from the post.

Are you making the same mistake with your blog posts? Peruse your own archived posts. Are there articles you wrote that didn’t get the attention you thought they deserved? Maybe you wrote it for you and not your reader. Perhaps you could rewrite the material and present it again to your readers, and see if it gets any better traction than it did the first time around.

Putting your reader first can be the difference between a memorable blog post and a boring one.

*Figuratively, not literally.

Back on October 2, 2007, I started the “3 Things You Haven’t Let Go” meme. About a month later, on November 4, I backtracked it to see where it had run off to.

Let’s have another go and see where it’s gotten now.

dcrBlogs -> I started “3 Things You Haven’t Let Go”
Joanne -> changes to “3 Things I Won’t Let Go”
Stealth -> back to “3 Things You Haven’t Let Go”
*Total Diatribe -> remains “3 things you haven’t let go”
Hear ItFrom.US! -> “Three Things I Haven’t Let Go”
the badbadivy experience -> “3 Things I Haven’t Let Go”
Just Another Pretty Farce -> remains pretty much intact, though the actual title not listed

And, that appears to be where this particular branch ended. As near as I can tell, none of JAPF’s taggees completed the meme.

At least through this branch, the title of the meme remained intact for the most part, and didn’t branch off into different ways as it did the last time I backtracked it. On the other hand, the link back to me as the originator of the meme wasn’t present at all in this branch.

I wonder if it’s still going, or if it has wound down altogether by now? Have you seen my meme? If you have, leave a comment below and maybe I’ll be able to follow another branch!

Anyway, this is fascinating stuff. It also goes to show that, even if you get something to go viral and get spread around, you might not benefit at all if your own name or linkback gets lost in the shuffle.

*New tangent.

Not that these are SciFi links, but rather I’m assuming you’ve already breezed through those links and are looking for more stuff to read, because everything is in reruns and how many times can you watch silly animal videos on YouTube? Okay, quite a lot actually, but you’re still hungering for more links.

More! I hear you shout. More? You want more? You can’t handle no more!

Whoa! Dickens and Nicholson maybe don’t mix so well.

In any event, here are some more links for you to peruse. All are recent additions to my growing lists of Blogs O’Plenty and Viral Blogs. And, by “recent” I literally mean within the last five minutes I have added them. I found them at varying times, but it was not but five minutes ago that I actually added them anywhere. Now, I get to clean out a bunch of URL files that have been gathering dust on the hard drive. No new additions to the Daytonnati Blogs; apparently, this is largely a blog-free area.

1. Rolando is playing musical blogs again. He’s nixed My Quiet Space, which lasted all of a couple weeks and has replaced it with My Hush Space, this time using WordPress. I think he recently changed his theme, again, on RPlayground too.
2. Sweet Escapes. I like the title. That’s going to come in handy the next time I do something like this.
3. Bread and Roses. I like the title too. Poor Autumn looked like she was a fine dog.
4. Brokentype. Found by way of this article on “6 Rules of Serializing Novels Online.” Good stuff. I found the idea on RSS delivery excellent as well. Good thinking there!
5. 100 Different Things. Nice title, but I’m still awaiting lists of 100 different things. I think Joanne could provide some meaningful input there.
6. ChiQ Montes - WordPress Theme Designer. As I’ve mentioned before, if you leave a comment here, you’re going to get pulled in.
7. *Thrift Store Shopper. Exactly what the title implies. And, it’s true that sometimes the cheapest things provide the most value. Consider cat toys. They’ll be endlessly fascinated with a new toy, until ten minutes later when they’ve gotten off the catnip high. But, throw a straw on the floor, and they’ll amuse themselves for hours. Just grab an extra straw the next time you eat out–free cat toy! I think I should claim a patent on using a straw as a cat toy. So, send me a nickel as a royalty payment every time you give a cat a straw to play with. Even at a nickel, it’s still a bargain compared with most cat toys. On second thought, make that a nickel an hour. Much more reasonable. For me.
8. Can’t Get Rich. This blog’s author will explain why he can’t get rich blogging, and how you can’t either. He should have thought of the Cat Straw™.
9. From Ink to Ether. A guide for moving from the printed page to the web. Remember the old days when moving from a typewriter to a word processor was a big deal? And there were writers that resisted giving up a typewriter? No wonder so many Great American (or Canadian) Novels were never finished. After a while, you just get bored typing the same thing over and over and over again, just to make minor corrections.

   Did you know that, before computers, an average of 125 writers died each year at their typewriters? You didn’t know that carpal tunnel syndrome could kill, did you? Your hands go so numb that you can’t pick up food anymore, but, oddly, you can keep right on typing. These poor souls would die typing away, and all they left behind were balled up papers all over the floor, and a page in the typewriter reading “It was a dark and stormy nighhhhhhhhhhh.”

   Yeah, I made that up. Typewriter keys don’t repeat like that.

10. Loft in Translation. Some celebrity bloggers just don’t understand blogging. Here’s one who does. It’s Mrs. Miller! Mrs. Miller? Stargate: Atlantis? The one show that’s not in reruns right now, because it’s not affected by the writers’ strike? Anyway, this is the blog of actress Kate Hewlett. Who admits being addicted to blogging, but then vanishes for months at a time. Which actually sounds like several bloggers we all know! I like how she goes off on tangents, like this: “I wonder if the cockroaches ever use the rats as transportation. You know, like little hairy horses.” And check out the cat photo in that link. If you just look at the thumbnail, that’s one huge cat! Honey, I blew up the cat! Was that a movie? Anyway, you can see from the larger view that it’s on the counter and not the floor. Otherwise, well, you wouldn’t have to worry about rats in that kitchen. Not even the New York ones.
11. Lessons from the Scrapbook Page. Scrapbooking. Apple. What’s not to like? I should do a site on Scrapbooking for Men. We’ll glue pictures to pieces of 3/4″ MDF, lacquer them and cut strips of crown molding for the frame, which we’ll then hammer for the rustic look and then stain and dry brush with a metallic gold paint. Then we’ll nail it to the wall and go eat meat. The next day, we’ll start page two.
12. The Underpaid Princess Blog. Features a fun Blogging Game!

There you go. Twelve links to keep you busy for a while. Enjoy!

Or, if you’re not “old school,” I guess you might call it SpecFic Saturday.

Anyway, here is a selection of links that will help inspire some creative thinking of your own.

Or cause your brain to explode.

Either way, proceed with caution and note that I am not responsible for the content of these links.

1. Creative Inspiration from Einstein et Alia. Did you know that Albert Einstein authored 75 books of poetry? Wait, maybe that was the Einstein of a parallel universe. I’m so confused.
2. 75 Words Every SciFi Fan Should Know. And each of them was a title of one of Einstein’s books!
3. How to Find the Weirdest Stuff on the Internet. Or eBay.
4. Time May Not Exist. It’s just a figment of your imagination.
5. Time is But a Figment of Our Imagination. See!?
6. Parallel Universes Confound Us All. Not Einstein!
7. Our Violent Universe. And you thought our world was violent!
8. How to Live Forever. Sign me up!
9. Five “Bizarre” and Discredited Theories. But, one day, California probably will be an island. What’s left of it, anyway, after “The Big One.”

Have a Happy Saturday! And, whatever you do, please do try not to blow up the universe. Thanks.

Does this one really require an exposition?