canyonwalker | Entries tagged with blogging

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #28
Back Home · Wed, 22 Apr 2026. 7:30pm

We are finally back home from Ohio. Our flight actually landed early so we got home-home, as in walking through our front door, at 6:15pm. It's 7:30 now as I settle down to write this after figuring out what to do about dinner (I opted to make a simple dinner at home instead of going out), sorting through a week's worth of mail (mostly junk but a few things from Amazon arrived early), and unpacking about 2/3rds of my stuff.

Things still to do are: finish unpacking the other 1/3rd of my stuff, spend time time unpacking mentally, and shower to clean off the odors and... for lack of a better word, glaze... of travel. Oh, and catch up on seemingly a dozen blogs from this trip I've left in my backlog. 😟 The blog backlog will probably take me at least until Sunday to clear out. The other stuff I'll do this evening, as there's still ample time left in the day. I'm glad I planned this travel both to avoid getting up at stupid o'clock in the morning and arriving home late, late at night. It feels good to be home in time to enjoy it. We may even sneak in a soak in the hot tub this evening!

Update: I skipped on the hot tub as I started running out of steam shortly after writing this entry. By 8:30 I was ready for bed. That seems early— there was still the last bit of light in the sky when I laid down— though not so much when you consider I got up at 5:30am Pacific time.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #16
Circleville, OH · Sun, 19 Apr 2026. 10am

It's Sunday morning and we're doing our usual morning routine so far on this Ohio trip: sleeping in a bit then lingering over a simple breakfast before heading out for a few hikes.

"Hey, what happened to all of last night?" you may wonder. "Like, after you visited that amazing pencil sharpener museum?"

Nothing. The answer is nothing happened since approximately 4pm yesterday. 🤣

All we did was drive home to Circleville, enter our hotel room, lock the door behind us, and veg the whole evening. We didn't even go out for dinner. Partly that's because we weren't too hungry, having eaten a late lunch at The Feed. And partly it's because we were tired and lazy and still had some food left over from our grocery run Friday evening. We nibbled on what we still had and called it dinner-enough.

Blog Backlog; Change of Tempo

It seems surprising that for how all our evenings thus far have been "And then nothing happened" I'm still running behind by what looks like 3 days already in blogging about this trip. We're vegging in the evenings after having busy days, I remind myself. This blogging backlog happens because we're doing a lot of stuff I enjoy writing about. And because I rate-limit myself at 3 posts/day so as not to overwhelm people's feeds.

Still, I hate get backlogged. It makes it hard for readers to follow the tempo of the trip. Like, if blogs about hikes and traveling curiosities are spread over 3 days, are you really going to think, "Wow, that was one busy day"?

So what I'm going to do with the next few days worth of blogs is switch to posting daily summaries first. I'll come back around later in the week with details (and pictures!) from individual hikes. I expect it'll take me until Sunday to catch up on all those. But hopefully, at least, I'll catch up on the daily summaries to the point that I'll post my "It's Wednesday night and we're home from Ohio!" blog no later than Thursday morning. 🤣 Maybe I'll even squeeze it out Wednesday night.

It's been a while since I've checked in on my blogging. My last remark on the topic was noting in mid-January that I'd blogged 30 days in a row. Well, good news/bad news in that vein....

Good news: I extended that streak of writing at least once a day to 62 days.
Bad news: The streak ended when I missed a day on Feb. 21. I then had another missed day on the 27th.

Looking at the month of February 2026 in full:

I posted 42 journal entries
That hits my intermediate goal of averaging 1.5 blogs/day.
It's my best month since September '25, before I hit a slump in October.

Am I over my slump of the previous 4 months? Yes and no. The main thing that drove my uptick in blogging this past month was playing D&D. I posted twelve journals about D&D in the month. Without that February would've been as much a slump as October was. Will playing D&D continue? Unclear. I want to, but at the moment the challenge— as always— is finding time that works for everyone. I proposed last week that we play this weekend, and my players quickly drove the negotiation out to whether or not we can play in 3-4 weeks time.

As for what got me into a slump with blogging starting back in October.... Two big factors were the seasonal slowdown in outdoors adventures as winter weather came on, coupled with us having to stand down from travel due to Hawk's two surgeries. Both of those surgeries are in the rear view mirror now, and she's recovering well— though still weeks away from being fully healed. Plus, the weather is getting nicer now. Plus— bonus!— I've just retired, so we have way more free time to do fun things that are worth writing about. This would seem to augur more blogging ahead. But....

...But the other problem I highlighted in October was the DFC problem. I just don't care. The past week as I've stared at my keyboard I've mused to myself, "Do I even care anymore?" I don't know if I do. I hope I'll see my spirits lift when I get more active again.

As of today I've blogged 30 days in a row. That small accomplishment is an accomplishment because my blogging has been spotty the past few months. Occasionally I've gone days at a time without writing.

I'm calling it a small accomplishment because I've done so much better in the past. Until a few months ago I had blogged nearly every day for years. I had a streak of over 300 days in a row from April 2024 into early 2025. Late last year I slipped from skipping one or two days a year to having several skip days a month. 30 days ago I got back up on my digital surfboard and decided I would just do this.

A small accomplishment is still an accomplishment. There have been a few days among the past 30 where I felt the I-don't-wannas. Evenings where I asked myself, "What does it matter if I post something or not tonight?" I learned from those months and years and writing virtually every day that it's a habit, a practice, that has to be developed. And for me it's an important outlet of communication. I rededicated myself to the task. Just do it.

I've been blogging in fits and starts recently. After posting to my blog nearly every day for years I've had a lot of skip days recently. I skipped 9 days in October, 4 in November, and so far in December— which is only half over— I've already skipped 5 days. When it rains, though, it pours. On days I have blogged I've often posted 2 or even 3 entries.

Seeing that my tempo of blogging has become irregular is a bit of a disappointment. Years ago I set a goal of posting every day. (That blog is from 2021. I know I set the goal a few years before that, 2017 or maybe earlier, though I can't find anywhere I wrote down the goal back then. But in searching for it I did find an interesting perspective from 10 year ago on Why I Write.) After going strong and meeting my goals for years I now feel I'm running out of steam. Or, more precisely, running out of fucks to give.

My sporadic turn to blogging the past few months is attributable to obvious factors. For one, I've been traveling a lot less as Hawk is recovering from foot surgery. I've always focused my blog on the joys and frustrations of travel. With less to do there's less to write. And I haven't wanted to write too much else. ...Which leads into Two: I'm kind of depressed. With not a lot going on right now I've been feeling down. I care less about writing when I'm down.

But hey, maybe I will write about other stuff soon. Just in thinking how I'll frame this journal entry today I've already thought of several other topics I could write about soon. Plus, it's not like nothing's happening just because we're not traveling. I just have to find the motivation, and the focus, to write.

It's my 5 year anniversary of blogging on Dreamwidth. Oh, I've been blogging longer than that.... I started on LiveJournal over 14 years ago. (My first post was very in media res.) And I do still blog on LiveJournal. I cross-post (manually 😡) to both.

Having a shorter history on Dreamwidth makes it easier to pull recent statistics from there. For example, I know from my profile I've posted 3437 blogs in 5 years and 646 in the past 12 months. That's an average of 1.77 posts per day this past year, down from 1.92 last year. Yeah, this year has been a bit slower for me in terms of writing than years past. I've remarked on various reasons why. Those reasons range from dispiriting things happening (including just being sick) to engaging in fewer activities than normal because of an injury to just not even caring. 😰 But hey, enough melancholy.

One thing I enjoy using these anniversaries to do is checkpoint what I've written about. For starters, here are the Top Five topics I've written about in 5 years on Dreamwidth:

Top Topics, Past 5 Years
Rank	Tag	Uses
1	In Beauty I Walk	537
2	Planes Trains and Automobiles	468
3	TV	279
4	Waterfalls	274
5	Weather	259

A few thoughts on this list:

The tags "In Beauty I Walk" and "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" remain at the top of the list. That's appropriate as those are the foundational themes of my blog.

I feel a little sad that TV has rocketed up to #3. Last year it came in at #6. I have mixed feelings about it because I'm thinking, Didn't I have anything better than TV to write about? But on the other hand, I did watch more TV this year than in the past. Not that that's even a lot. More on that later...

Likewise, Weather seems like a lame thing to have on the leader board. I mean, people talking about the weather is kind of insipid. Blogging about it seems like the same. But the Weather tag got a lot of use this year because there were simply so many times that weather became a factor in something I wanted to do— sometimes as an opportunity, but most often an obstacle. And many times it was extreme weather I was writing about— which I call out is happening more frequently, and will continue to happen more frequently, because of human-caused climate change.

I am satisfied that Coronavirus has fallen off the list. Last year it ranked #4, by this year it dropped all the way to #9 on the list of what I've written about over the past 5 years.

Now let's look at what I wrote about in the past 12 months:

Top Ten Topics, Past 12 Months
Rank	Tag	Uses
1	Planes Trains and Automobiles	123
2	Job	77
3	In Beauty I Walk	71
4 (tie)	No Rest for the Wicked	67
4 (tie)	TV	67
6	Taking it Easy	66
7	Dining Out	64
8	Better Call Saul	51
9	Waterfalls	50
10	Sales	47

A few remarks on Top Ten:

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles climbed from 2nd place to 1st this year while In Beauty I Walk dropped from 1st to 3rd. I'm not sure what this swapping of places indicates.... Perhaps that I spent more time flying/driving than actually walking the past 12 months. 😂

Job leapt up 8 places, from #10 to #2. That's not surprising as I had more than usual to say about my current job over the past 12 months— which included not just one but two troubling layoffs. Though I wasn't dismissed in either layoff, both prompted my thinking about when it'll be time for me to bow out.

Better Call Saul roared onto the Top 10 list this year, coming from zero up to 51 posts. That helped propel TV up to the #4 spot. I actually don't watch much TV overall. Other than finishing Breaking Bad and watching all of Better Call Saul I watched barely any TV the past 12 months.

Here's the Second Ten list. I'll detail it out to show some where some topics that dropped off last year's Top Ten list landed as well as some topics that almost made it this year.

Second 10 Top Topics, Past Year
Rank	Tag	Uses
11	Being Sick Sucks	46
12	Weather	45
13	Around Home	41
14	Family	39
15	Pool Life	37
16	Road Trip!	36
17	WTF?	35
18	Italy	34
20 (tie)	Canada	32
20 (tie)	D'oh!	32

Some remarks on Topics #11-20:

Being Sick Sucks climbed 4 spots this year, to #11. If it weren't for all the problems at my job it would've made the top 10. 🤮 And that's sad because who wants to see being sick on a Top Ten list? But the tag got a lot of uses the past 12 months. In that time I got Covid, my wife suffered a month-plus of a stomach virus that might have been a case of Norovirus the doctors refused to test for, and just recently my wife had foot surgery. It's been a shit year, health-wise.

Weather actually dropped 8 slots this year, from #4 to #12. The sad thing is that's not because extreme weather and its harmful effects, driven largely by climate change, have lessened this year vs. last, but because with us Being Sick so often we've been less impacted by weather as we've sat inside. 😓 Notice also that Around Home made this year's list. Last year it didn't even place.

Two country tags made this list. Canada I've visited before but not for a few years. This year we spent an enjoyable week in Canada. And this year we visited Italy for the first time! (I also visited Spain for the first time but so briefly that its tag only got 1 or 2 uses.)

Finally, what happened to Coronavirus? Not only did it drop out of the Top Five Overall, but in the past 12 months I tagged it to a paltry 9 blogs, dropping it all the way down to a tie at 69th place for the year. I'd say "Good riddance!" except most of those 9 posts about Coronavirus were about me getting Covid-19 last December. 😳 So now hopefully it's good riddance!

October 2025 was my slowest month for blogging in years. A few quick stats:

I posted 34 journal entries in October

At a rate of just over 1.0 per day it's the slowest month I've had in... checks spreadsheet... 4½ years.

Yes, I keep a spreadsheet. 🤣

While I averaged one journal per day (actually 1.09/day) I didn't post one journal every day. In fact I missed nine days in October.

I thought that would be my biggest number of missed days in, like, 10 years, but it turns out it's also just 4½ years. Basically, April 2021 was an unusually slow month for me. (I figured that not by looking at a spreadsheet but by eyeballing my monthly blogging by year.)

Okay, those are the stats. But the real question is "why". Why did I experience such a slowdown in my writing in October— especially compared to the relatively high 70 journal entries I wrote just two months earlier in August? Metrics don't answer meaningful question such as that though they at least tell a person where/when to ask.

The answer in this case is simple. I just didn't want to. Oh, I had more things I could've written about. There were things that happened in October I could have written about. There were things in my backlog from months earlier I could have written about. But so much of the time I just didn't care.

Earlier this year I wrote about the power of the phrase DFC— as in, I Don't Fucking Care. Used positively, it's liberating. It's a way to Marie Kondo through your life, filtering out what's not worth your time or frustration.

The downside of DFC, or Kondo-ing, is that when you're disaffected or depressed, everything can start to fail the question, "Does this bring me joy?" And that's what happened to me in October. A combination of factors, from me feeling physically listless, to the changing season signalling an end to our summery outdoors activity, to Hawk's surgery and recovery basically grounding both of us for weeks, have aligned to leave me feeling like I just don't care about doing any of the few options left.

I've been "caving" recently. As in, hiding in my cave. Oh, there are outward signs of life. I show up to work, I'm cheery at work, I've gone out for lunch most days this past week. But inside I've felt dead. I haven't wanted to do anything. For example, I haven't even been able to get myself out to the hot tub to enjoy a soak. Oh, I still still make forward plans for it. "I'd like to use the hot tub after dinner tonight," I tell myself. Then when 8pm or 9pm comes around I decide I'm just as relaxed lying on the floor in the house and would rather not change into swim trunks and go outside.

Things have looked up a bit this past week. I got back on the cadence of blogging. I had 7 "skip days" earlier this month, days when I didn't write to my journal. I think the last time I had that many skip days in a month was 10 years ago. But now I've been writing daily for a week-plus, including some days where I've posted twice. Small steps forward.

And this weekend I finally mustered the will to go out to the hot tub! I was going to do it Saturday morning but then the I-don't-wannas hit... but then I did it Sunday morning.

And Sunday afternoon I did a legit, major chore by dealing with the clothes washer. And good news after my check-it-out and clean-it-up efforts: it's not broken!

It was a slow weekend after Hawk had her foot surgery on Friday. She napped a bit on Friday afternoon— and so did I. But while her sleepiness was unexpected, mine was... I don't know what.

Frittering and snoozing on Friday set a tone for the rest of the weekend. For Hawk, again, that's expected. She's getting over the physical stress of surgery and pain of incision. And she's hobbling around with a half-cast on one of her legs. Just getting up to go to the bathroom takes planning and determination. Me? I have no such excuses. I spent the weekend mostly sitting around like a bump on a log, and that's all on me. I wish I'd at least gone out to soak in the hot tub. But each time I considered it I decided I'd rather just sit inside like a bump on a log.

I'm disappointed that I couldn't even muster the will to write to my blog this weekend. Yeah, there was little new to write about; that's always a disincentive against blogging. But I have a backlog. I have things I've been meaning to write about from the previous weekend, the week before that, and the weekend even before that. Oh, and other stuff still in the backlog from earlier in the year and even last year. Now I'm wondering, will I ever get to these things? I don't know.

Wow, it's been 5 days since I've posted to my blog. That's really dropping the cadence since I set a goal years ago to post something every day. Missing one day here or there... yeah, that happens maybe a handful of times a year. Missing two days in a row... until this week that's only happened once this year. Missing three days in a row... not since 2021. And here I've missed four in a row.

Why did I drop the pace? Partly it's the downhill slide that happens when you skip once. Skip once, and it becomes easier to skip the next day, too. By the third or fourth day I barely even thought about the fact I was skipping it.

So, what's happened in the past 5 days? For one, the weather's changed. I've remarked before that I know it's fall season when it's cool enough that I choose to wear pants for warmth rather than for decorum or fashion purposes. I've worn pants the past several days and will again today.

Pants aren't the only sign it's fall, though. I've remarked before they're one of three indicators. The other two are it's starting to rain (a northern California climate thing) and it's gotten cool enough to run the heat in the house. Well, it rained a few weeks ago. Rain hasn't yet become a steady thing... though maybe it will soon, with rain in the forecast the next few days. And running the heat? Though it has been cool overnight & in the mornings the past few weeks we haven't yet switched on the heat. But again, the weather in the forecast the next few days may change that.

So, what's up other than the change of seasons? Well, I was busy at work the back half of the week. That's part of why I slipped my blogging cadence. The busy-ness was unexpected.... Early in the week my calendar was only half full, but then new things kept popping up. Even on Friday. At 8am Friday I had 2 hours meetings/tasks scheduled. By COB Friday I'd been booked nearly solid.

And outside of work? Ugh, work has left me drained most days. I've slumped into a pattern of finishing work for the day, rustling up some dinner, and then crashing at home the rest of the evening, often going to bed around 9:30pm. But Saturday Hawk and I got out & did a thing. We wen to the open house at the California Raptor Center in Davis. I have a bunch of pictures and video of the birds of prey we saw there. I'll share those soon.

And on tap for today? Ugh, even just a road trip yesterday left me tired out— as did our road trip to the Sheep Fair last weekend— so today's going to be a relax-at-home day. I figure I'll go for a soak in the hot tub in a bit, then get lunch, then... probably just fritter the day away. But I hope it will be a good fritter. Maybe I'll even find time & energy to blog more.

August was a pretty good month for blogging. I wrote 70 journal entries, my most since December 2024 (when I also wrote 70). At 2.26 blogs per day it's a big uptick from my pace in July and June, when it felt like a struggle just to hit 1.5/day.

What was different in August? The obvious answer is travel. This blog has always been primarily about my adventures and observations while traveling, and in August I had a whopping 5 trips.

Part, too, of publishing 70 journal entries in the month was planning them out. For most of the month I hit a stride of 2/day. I did that often with a conscious 1+1 combination: 1 post about a trip I'd taken recently, 1 about something else that was happening.

Late in the month I upped my pace as my trip in Canada brought more things to write about. I wrote 3-4 a day for several days. And I'm still about 5 days behind! But writing that much while still doing things took even more planning. I drafted posts ahead of time to get some of the easier and/or repetitive work out of the way when I had idle time, then filled in photos, video, and colorful details when I was ready with them.

September is shaping up to be another busy blogging month, too. For starters I've still got a backlog of about 10 Canada trip posts I'm working through. Then I've got 4 more trips planned for September!

It occurred to me the other day that I've got a lot of trips planned in August. I've got 5 trips planned in just 4 weeks!

Aug. 4 I'm making a "rubber band" trip (out and back same day) to Phoenix

The week of the 11th I'm headed to Chicago on on a business trip for 4 days of sales training

On the 18th I've got another rubber band trip to Phoenix

The week of the 25th Hawk and I are traveling to Toronto to see family and visit waterfalls.

Somewhere in the middle of all that we've got a weekend road trip to the Eastern Sierra planned.

As I noted in a blog last night, travel is what inspires a lot of my blogging— when I have energy left to write. 😔 We'll see how much I write this month. It could be a little... or a lot.

I lost my tempo in July. My blogging tempo, that is. For the month I met my mid-level goal of 1.5 blogs/day, scraping in with a 1.55 average, but my pace across the month was not even. I missed my baseline goal of blogging every day.

I churned out journal entries at a rate of 2/day for the first half of the month. My writing was powered by enjoyable activities on a several days long road trip to the Oregon Cascades. But around mid month I lost steam. Even with a few blogs from Oregon still in my backlog I just... couldn't even. I had not one but three missed days in July. Three days when I didn't post to my blog. Before July I only missed two days across a whole year.

Why so many misses last month? I'm not sure. As I noted at the time, partly it was running short on energy, partly it was running short on care. ("Short on care" is the polite form of the expression, "Short on f---s to give". 😨)

It certainly wasn't lack of things to write about. I began the month with a healthy backlog of things to finishing writing about. During July I not only didn't get to anything on that backlog, I grew the backlog. I still haven't finished blogging about our trip to the Oregon Cascades at the start of the month, and I'm at least 4 blogs behind on last weekend's North Coast roadtrip. Why don't I enjoy writing about doing enjoyable things? 😣

For the last many years on this blog I've looked at my posting frequency as a matter of how many posts per day. And for years I've averaged close to 2/day. This past week that ratio's been upside down. I've averaged day/2.... Meaning, 3 posts in 6 days. One post every two days.

What's up with that? I wish I could say it's because I've been too busy— too busy doing things to pause and write about them. But I have not been busy. At least not that busy. Alas the reason I've posted so little this week is because I just... haven't... cared.

A big part of it is I've been tired. I'm not sure why I'm tired. Again, I haven't been super busy. I haven't been putting in 12-14 hour days at work, and I haven't been running myself ragged with things outside of work. Frankly I've been lying around like a bump on a log a lot.

A week ago I fretted that I hadn't done much over the weekend. This weekend I managed to do even less. I just couldn't must the energy... or the caring... to get out and do anything. 😞

What's got me down? I don't know. Maybe it's just a reality of getting older that I struggle so much to find energy.

I'll see if I can at least get my blog rate back up. 🤣 I do have a ton of things I want to write about. I just have to choose to spend the time writing. My energy to write comes in bursts, though. To make that work for blogging I'll start drafting blog entries when I have a spurt of energy, then post them at a steady rate. It's a technique I've used before when I've been pressed for time. Now I'm just pressed for energy. 😞

Oregon Cascades Travelog #24
Back home - Sun, 6 Jul 2025, 6pm

We're back home from our trip to the Oregon Cascades and high desert. We got back home a bit after 5pm today, was a bit over 6 days after we left home Monday afternoon. The trip today was all driving, no adventuring, as we decided this morning we just wanted to get home. Today's drive was 334 miles, bringing the total distance for the trip to 1,762 miles. That's a lot to cover in 6 days— nearly 300 miles per day— especially with all the hiking we did in addition to the driving.

We're already unpacked from the trip. We make a point nowadays of unloading everything from the car and putting it away as soon as we get home. Years ago we'd sometimes play the "Ugh, we're so tired" card and leave things in the car, intending to unpack the next day. The thing is, there's usually no more convenient time to do it. The next day after a trip is usually a work day, which means there are plenty more reasons to put off unpacking. I think the record was stuff got left in the car for a week one time. 🤣

Speaking of tomorrow being a work day, it is. For me, at least. That was a big part of why I favored coming straight home today. At 6pm now it's not exactly "early", but I've got things unpacked, I'm stretching out to relax, and I can take it easy the rest of this evening. All this will make it somewhat easier to start a full work week tomorrow morning.
Edit to add: One thing that's not done from this trip is the blogging. I figure I've got about 10 blogs stuck in the backlog. We'll see if I can clear them out this week.

It's been a while since I checked in with my blogging stats. To be particular, it's been two months since I posted March and April stats. Two months seems about the right frequency for this meta-blogging.

In May I nearly hit my stretch goal of 2 posts/day. I came in at 1.97 with 61 entries in 31 days.

In June I slowed down but still achieved my intermediate goal of 1.5/day, with 47 posts in 30 days (1.57/day avg).

I thought June would be another 2-a-day month like May— and March and April— because I was still catching up on my trip to Italy and had other items, including catching up from earlier trips, in my backlog. Instead, many of those things remain in my backlog because I ran out of steam for blogging. From the middle of June on I struggled to post even once a day.

But I did keep up with my baseline goal of posting something every day. That streak's been unbroken since February, and if I overlook that one off day my streak of writing daily goes back over a year at this point.

So, what's still in my backlog as I go into July? Five Things:

I have a scattering of blogs from hikes from a recently as a week ago Sunday (Alviso slough) to a few months ago (e.g., Pinnacles National Park).

I have at least 3 blogs from our trip to Rome, Italy last month backlogged on processing photos.

I have a blog or two from our trip to Panama, six months ago, I still have to finish.

I still have several blogs stuck in backlog from our trip to New Zealand— which is now 14 months ago!

This isn't backlog yet, but I'm about to leave on a vacation trip to Oregon, so I'll have a lot to write over the next week-plus.

Italy Travelog #16
36,000' over the Tyrrhenian Sea - Tuesday, 27 May 2025, 10am

This morning we woke up early, 5:30am, to eat breakfast in our room, check out of our hotel in Rome, and taxi to the airport. We were out the door and in a taxi before 6:30, at the airport by 7:15. We're headed to Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia.

In case you're wondering, "Wait, you only toured Rome for one day?" the answer is No, we had two days there. At this point I've skipped over our Monday tours, leaving them in my blog backlog for now, to avoid getting too far behind. I'll come back around the to the backlog later. For now suffice it to say that Monday was busy. We toured the Vatican for several hours then took the metro back into Rome's city center to visit several sites such as Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon. It'll probably take me 3 days to catch up on blogging about all of that. And boy, are our feet tired from all the walking!

With this flight to Cagliari we're shifting gears on our trip. Our quick visit to Rome was the "us" part of the trip. Cagliari is the "club" part of the trip. We'll be with work colleagues, the top performers globally from my sales team, for the next few days.

It's been a while since I checked my blogging stats— well, it's been a while since I posted about them— so let's do that now.

In March and April I met my baseline goal of writing every day. Some days it was hard and I felt like I had to push to make time to do it, but I did. Even when I was busy. I try to reframe it not as a chore, a thing to be done with time and energy taken away from something else, but as— to borrow an old advertising slogan— "The Pause that Refreshes".

I met my intermediate goal of averaging 1.5 posts per day because...

It hit my stretch goal of averaging 2 posts per day— in both months. In March I made it with 63 posts; in April I squeaked across the line with an even 60.

In April I started out the month strong. Our trip to Georgia was the source of many things to share, and I had little problem writing twice a day on average. Ultimately I wrote 28 blogs about that trip. That was nearly half the month's output! I hit the skids late in the month, though, when I had a busy week at work that left me short on free time— and drained of energy. Writing then about my backlog helped spur me on to reduce that backlog, so I finished the month strong with enough blogs to bring me back up to the 2/day average.

What's in store for May? I've got nothing planned, travel-wise, until our trip to Italy at the end of the month. That'll make for a deep well of stories to share. Half of that writing's likely to slip into June, though, given the reality of backlogging on big trips.

It's been a busy week at work. Well, it was a busy 4 days at work this week. Monday through Wednesday I was slammed, my calendar packed solid with meeting. By Wednesday I was feeling frazzled and let my boss know I needed his help lightening things up. By Thursday 3pm I decided, "That's enough for now" and started slacking... which I did through much of today, Friday. That's why I say it was a busy four days this week. It would've been all 5 if I'd let it.

One place my busyness is reflected is in my slow blogging pace. The past several days I've posted only once a day. Even just maintaining my minimal, one-a-day pace required carving out time. And look what I haven't gotten to in that time: my hiking trip at Pinnacles National Park last weekend. I just haven't had the energy to finish up the photos and videos I'd like to share from it.

Oh, and Pinnacles isn't even the only enjoyable experience I haven't had the time or energy to write about. I've still got a few blogs in my backlog from our Georgia trip earlier this month. I don't even remember what else is in the backlog— most of it's a mental to-do list— except one thing I do remember is New Zealand. Yes, I still have at least a few blogs in my backlog from our trip to New Zealand... which is now 12½ months ago! 😳😖😓

I'm pretty tired today after an amazing trip to Pinnacles National Park yesterday. The hike was about 4.5 miles with 1300' of elevation gain. I've done the hike many times before but I'm out of shape right now so it's hitting me harder than usual.

Writing about this hike is going to have to go on my backlog, as today (Monday) it's back to work, and I have over 200 pics and video clips to sort through from the hike. For now here's one quick photo:

Looking up at the High Peaks in Pinnacles National Park (Apr 2025)

Looking up at the High Peaks in Pinnacles National Park (Apr 2025)

Basically we hiked from the bottom here, Juniper Canyon, to the top and around the High Peaks Loop, then back down.

Up at the top we saw a lot of California Condors. That was amazing because the huge birds were nearly extinct not too many years ago. Like, down to the last few left on earth. Yesterday we saw several on wing in the sky. And no, it wasn't just one bird several times. At one point we saw 5 simultaneously. At the end of the day we saw what might have been ten simultaneously... but it was hard to tell if they were all condors or if some more common birds, Turkey Vultures, were mixed in to the circling formation.

Well, as this trip now goes into my blog backlog, it's a good thing I cleared our Georgia trip from my backlog. In fact I posted my last backlogged blog about Georgia yesterday morning just before leaving for the Pinnacles! ...Though it's not really the "last" because I do still have a few more things I'd like to write about that trip, including a retrospective. Well, I can see how I'll be busy with blogs for the next week... until whatever adventure I go on next weekend!

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canyonwalker

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Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Entries tagged with blogging

Home from Ohio

Easy Evening, Easy Morning. Blog Backlog.

Blog Backlog; Change of Tempo

February Blogging: Coming Alive Again, or a Swan Song?

30 Days in a Row. Just Do It.

Blogging in Fits and Starts

5 Years on Dreamwidth. What I've Written About.

Slowest Month for Blogging in Years. The DFC Problem.

Signs of Life This Weekend

An Injury Grounds Both of Us

5 Days of Catchup: Pants, Birds, Etc.

August Blogging: 70 Posts

A Travel-Packed August Ahead

Lost Tempo in July

Too Tired for Blogging, Too Tired for Everything 😵

Back Home 1,762 Miles Later

May and June Blogging. What's Still in the Backlog.

On to Cagliari! With a Backlog for Later.

March and April Blogging: Two a Day!

Busy, Busy. Blog Backlog.

Tired from the Pinnacles. Hundreds of Pictures to Sort.