Give Me Your Blog Post Ideas!

There almost wasn't a blog today. I'd forgotten about it and hadn't written anything up.

Sometimes I have a bunch of ideas percolating in my mind, other times I have very few. But I think I worked through all the blog suggestions I got last time, so just in case I run into another situation where suddenly I don't have any idea what to write about... Let me open up for blog post suggestions again!

You can comment here, or on the blog Facebook page, or message me on social media, or check out this anonymous suggestion box link.

http://freesuggestionbox.com/pub/fyaulvt

Need some ideas for giving me ideas? Well, blog labels I have used often include "arthritis," "books," "cast albums," "Christianity," "church," "depression," "Disney," "education," "Flickchart," "games," "introverts," "movies," "musicals," "nanowrimo," "podcasts," "Sims," "theater," "writing," and, of course, the ever-popular "The Quest for Forgiveness" and "The Quest for Skye." If any of those sound like something you want to hear more about, go for it.

I swear one of these days I'll be able to sit down and make myself write about The Quest for Freedom.

Or maybe I'll skip it and head straight for The Quest of the Sultana, which might be less pro-war than I worry The Quest for Freedom will be.

Turns Out I Am Not Good At Daily Blogging

As I write this, my first "daily blog" is set to come out tomorrow, and I have written a grand total of seven blog posts (eight counting this) in a month. I mean, granted, that's more than I'd written in a month for ages, but it's not what I was hoping for.

However, if I can write seven blog posts a month, that's actually decently sustainable. That's blogging twice a week, which keeps my blog active. I just need to schedule them out ahead out of time so I can have time to have writer's block and then suddenly write a bunch at once.

So you will probably not see a blog from me tomorrow... But hopefully sometime next week you'll see another one.

This is not an exciting blog. Um... have a YouTube video!

Some Blog Business... Because My Life Just Got Way More Exciting

For anyone who didn't see this on my personal Facebook yesterday, I was offered a job this week. I'll be working with a Bay Area-based theater company that sends teachers out to local schools for classes, workshops, extracurricular drama programs, and more.

The whole process went extremely quickly. I sent an email about the job two weeks ago, got an interview two days later, was offered the job last Tuesday, officially accepted on Wednesday, and now have to pull all my stuff together to move out there by this time next week. Jacob will be joining me once I find an apartment for us -- in the meantime, I'll be living in summer staff housing as I direct a youth production for the group's summer camp.

This whirlwind of action has brought with it a huge variety of emotions. I'm relieved that I'm finally connected to a job in my field. Focused on getting everything taken care of this week that I need to. Worry that I won't be able to find housing within our budget (though the woman I've been speaking with about the job is optimistic and has offered to help me out with apartment-hunting). Sad about having to live away from Jacob for a month or two. Anxious that I won't get my health care sorted out in time and that I'll end up with some arthritic thanks to a medication gap.

But with all this, mostly I am excited. I'll be living in a new state and finally escaping the Midwest, I'll be working with a wide variety of kids and doing some really fulfilling work that I think will suit me even more than a traditional high school teaching job, I'll be starting new adventures and making a new path for my life. And there's no doubt that the sped-up schedule of this whole process has given me a shot of adrenaline!

When I interviewed for the position, I spent the six days or so before I heard back praying and asking God to guide me one way or the other if I was offered the job. I was vacillating wildly between exhilaration at the prospect of a new adventure and terror at the thought of venturing so far away with so little time to think about it. The more I prayed, though, the wilder emotions began to settle down into more of a quiet peace, and when I was offered the job, the woman I spoke with spent a lot of time explaining some of the challenges I'd face and some tips on our (fairly major) relocation... and I just felt that, yes, this made sense. This makes sense for me. So of course I'm going to say yes.

I also could not be more grateful for the encouragement and support of my awesome husband. He's lived his whole life in various locations within a few hours of each other along the Indiana/Ohio border, and here I am saying, "Hey, can we move to California next month?" But he is as excited about this as I am, and I cannot think of anyone I'd rather see the redwoods with, go to the San Francisco Zoo with, or try In-N-Out burgers with for the first time. (All things we've added to our "WHEE WE'RE MOVING TO SAN FRANCISCO" bucket list.)

Anyway, this all means that my blog is getting pushed to the back burner for, well, at least the next week. I'm rushing around trying to do everything this week, and I don't know what to expect in terms of workload for my job yet. I'll be working with camp this summer and I start working with schools in the fall, but no sense yet of how much time I'll actually have. My goal is to update the blog at least once a week because writing is good for me, but it may just be a "when I can" situation for a little while.

So that's where my life is: busy and crazy and exciting. Here's to heading off into the unknown and doing new and awesome and scary things!

No Quest for Forgiveness Today, But Here Is Some Music!

No QfF today, gang, sorry -- I forgot about it until the last minute and now I am swamped with this rock documentary I'm captioning. I do not anticipate finishing that until RIGHT before its 7 a.m. deadline, at which point I will immediately fall asleep and not wake up until long past when this is due.

So in the meantime, here, this is a song I love a lot and cannot get enough of these days, as performed by the amazing Andrew Rannells:



I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine
That's the pain that cuts a straight line down through the heart
We call it love
We wrapped our arms around each other
Trying to pull ourselves back together
We were making love, making love

What Should I Blog About? You Tell Me!

Last night one of my friends discovered ask.fm, and I thought, "Oh, yeah, I remember that site. I kind of want to use that in my blog tomorrow."

So here's the plan.

I've been having trouble figuring out what I want to blog about these days, so I figured I'd open it up to my readers and get some suggestions. You can ask anonymously at this link, and when I'm stuck for a blog idea I'll look through that and pull out one to write. (And then I'll post the link to the completed blog as the answer to the question.)

You can suggest absolutely anything -- silly or serious or big vague topics or really specific ones or questions you have or poll topics for me to expound on or just random things you've wondered what I've thought about. You can also suggest as many as you want -- the more I have, the more things I have to draw from. The goal is to get around to all of them eventually (at least the ones that I can conceivably write about).

I've also set up a link to this on my blog itself, up at the top where it says "Other Places You Can Reach Me." That way, any time you think, "Hannah should write something about this!" you can head on over here and submit an idea.

My blogs are figured out until next Wednesday, but who knows, maybe I'll pick one of yours to tackle then!

Blog Business: Vacatioooon!

So I'm off on a road trip around the northeastern U.S. with my sisters over the next two weeks. I'm going to poke around and see if I have any fun random things I can schedule to be posted during that time so you guys don't have to go entirely without a blog, but if I don't find anything, I'll be back... well, probably Wednesday, June 4th. I'll be back home by the 1st, but I don't know that I'll have written anything by that Monday.

When I come back I suspect I'll be doing some picture blogs of the trip. I'm excited -- we get to visit some family and some old friends, I get to knock off the last two contiguous U.S. states I haven't visited, and we get to see Norm Lewis in Phantom of the Opera in NYC, so that's pretty much completely awesome.

I shall close out this meta blog with a video of Norm Lewis so you can all be as excited about me seeing him on stage as I am.

No Skye Today

Sorry, gang, arthritis got in the way this week and I never did get to write up Skye. But I went to the doctor today and got some more meds that'll hopefully get me back to feeling awesome soon. So we'll return next week!

In the meantime, have some silly videos to brighten your Friday:

Not Quite Back to Normal Yet

I'd hoped to have a blog written for today, but I wasn't able to get around to it. Wednesday I'm planning a brief review of each of the four shows Jacob and I saw in New York City (WHOO) and Friday we'll get back to my serialized snarking of J. L. Rothdiener's The Quest For Skye, but today you'll just have to make do with some silly song videos.







Have a good Monday!

I Am Not the Awesome Blogger I Hoped to Be

I was going to be so cool, guys.

I was going to write all these awesome blogs to be posted automatically over the next week, while I was off in Indiana visiting Jacob.

But then I didn't. For various reasons - it's been a tough week both physically and emotionally, and I just couldn't ever find it in me to write like five blogs at a time.

I do have some stuff for you, though, though I didn't write it fresh for you guys. :-)

What I have done is found old, pre-Blogspot blogs and I will be reposting those for you throughout the next week, through Monday the 27th. (I'll be back by then, but I'll have JUST gotten back, and, no, I won't be ready to write anything.) And then, since it'll have been three weeks since you got a Top 100 Showtunes post, and since we only have two left, my goal is to finish off the series on Wednesday the 29th and Friday the 31st.

Anyway. I hope you enjoy reading Posts From the Past this next week. I enjoyed finding them. I'll be back with a real blog in a couple weeks.

(Blog Business About Today's Post)

My regular top 100 showtunes post is being postponed (haha, get it? POSTponed? I am hilarious) until tomorrow. This has been a particularly stressful week and I haven't had the concentration or the time to get it written. Hopefully we'll be back in business tomorrow.

Back in a Week!

No blogs over the next week, as I am off to Indiana to visit Jacob. I'll return Monday, April 8th. I said I'd return on the 1st, but THAT IS A LIE.

In the meantime, here's a silly 5-second video.


Have a good week, guys.

Annnnnnd Back Again!

Well, hi again, everybody!

So it's been about a month and a half since I last blogged. There have been three main factors contributing to that.

1) NaNoWriMo happened. Every November I participate and try to write a 50,000 word novel. Even though I didn't make it this year (my first failure since 2007, when I was traveling with the New Life Drama Company and had no access to a computer), I spent a large portion of the free time I had writing for that, not the blog.

2) My computer broke. Or, more specifically, the fan broke. It made a horrible grinding sound whenever I turned it on and if I insisted on using it, it would overheat and shut off after about 25 minutes. My computer time became rather a precious commodity, and blogging didn't quite make the priority list.

3) November was quite the busy month for me personally. The second half of the month involved a visit to my boyfriend up in Indiana, then bringing him back home to South Carolina for Thanksgiving with me and my household... and then during our week in South Carolina, he proposed to me.

(To answer the obligatory questions for any who have not yet heard: he proposed to me a day earlier than he meant to. Heh. Wednesday afternoon, we were going to go into town together and have some just-us alone time, and he was going to propose then. But Tuesday night, we were out in my car talking and he just decided he couldn't wait any longer and proposed right away. After I said yes, he said, "Well... I don't have a ring. This wasn't supposed to happen tonight. This was supposed to happen tomorrow." The ring he'd ordered arrived in the mail the next day, and he did the whole down-on-one-knee thing for that. We're planning a July wedding. There... I think that answers most things we got asked.)

All that to say, it's been a pretty busy month. However, two of those three things are done now - NaNoWriMo is over and my computer is fixed, and although I am still engaged, the fiance is back up in Indiana finishing school, and so he's not around as much to steal me away from my blogging. So I shall return. W00t!

Some Blog Business

So, confession: I haven't actually written a blog entry in something like 2 1/2 weeks. The last two weeks' worth of blogs were all written in early August and post-dated. I tend to write when I have ideas or inspiration and then post-date so that if I have a quiet Wednesday and don't feel like writing a blog post RIGHT THIS SECOND even though I'm supposed to, I haven't abandoned my audience.

However, it's been a quiet couple of weeks.

There are a few reasons for this.

1) I started a job, worked there for 3 weeks, and then got a better one which I began on Monday, so my schedule's been a bit wonky and I've been losing track of blogging responsibilities. Also, the person whose phone I use to connect to the Internet has changed work schedules and started going to school full time, so I get Internet connectivity less.

2) I've had a bit of writers' block. Nothing's really coming to mind that I want to write about. (If any of you have ideas of things you want to see me talk about or respond to, feel free to throw them out there. I would totally do readers' choice blogs.)

3) I may be going through a bit of depression. I've never been clinically diagnosed and I've never been suicidal, so I'm sometimes hesitant to use the word "depression" - I don't want to be one of those people who just assumes that because they feel a little sad, they must be depressed - but every now and then I hit a patch of inconsolable sadness, anxiety and fear/resentment of the world around me. Sometimes it lasts a couple weeks, which would put me near the end of it now. Sometimes it lasts months. I haven't had a major attack in a couple of years, so I don't know how this one is going to hit me. One of the results, though, is that I frequently lose focus and energy for non-essential activities. Writing is usually at the top of the list. I blog and write and journal less when I'm depressed. (It can be cathartic, so I sometimes try to push myself to write *more*, but that's not always successful.)

So, all that to say... If my blog's a little sporadic for a while, it could be one of those reasons. I will do my best to get back on track and have *something* up for you most schedule days (routines are good! Schedules are good!) but if I don't, it's probably related to one of those three reasons.

To close out this rather boring entry, here's a silly video!

Blog Break! Maybe!

I'm writing this on Tuesday night (and posting it on Friday through the magic of the Internet... ooooh). On Wednesday I'm heading off to spend two weeks with my boyfriend in Ohio. I was so convinced I was going to be awesomely productive and have all my blog entries for those two weeks written ahead of time and just have them post on my regular days, but motivation has not been my friend since I thought of this two days ago. I may have time and opportunity to blog a bit next week, but I may not. It'll all depend. But I figured I should at least be courteous enough to let any faithful blog readers know that if I don't write again until I return on the 17th (and since I only post M-W-F, you wouldn't get a blog until the 18th anyway), nobody should panic.


All right. Well, I should finish packing now. Hopefully I'll be done by the time you read this. If not, I'll either be in South Carolina still packing (and therefore have missed my flight by two days) or I'll be in Ohio without anything, and while I support the idea of traveling light and that is very light, I'm pretty sure Jacob and his family would appreciate me changing my clothes at some point during the two weeks I'm there.

Blogging Schedule! (I Can Do This!)

So I am going to attempt a semi-regular blogging schedule. It's never a bad thing to try to organize your life a little, right? So I am going to plan to write something, anything, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

(By the way, this totally counts as my Monday post.)

The goal is to write a bunch over the weekends, since the mood rarely really strikes me during the week, and then post-date them so they'll show up on the given days. This also helps since I get so absent-minded - now I can write them whenever and they'll post on the right day, even if I forget until Thursday that yesterday was Wednesday.

(I was about to say, "Oh, hey, yesterday was Wednesday," but then realized that I'm writing this on Thursday but not posting it until Monday, so I would just sound completely insane.)

So there's that info there. I can do it! I can do it!