Why Blog?

While having had experience on reading and commenting on many blogs, my past thoughts were that I would NEVER have an interest in having one of my own. The reasons were numerous:

1. I knew nothing about HTML and other technical aspects, thus I felt that I could never maintain one properly;

2. I wasn’t sure that I could ever find enough to say that would be interesting, even to my own family, let alone the public as a whole. And, that may yet be proven true;

3. That I wasn’t sure that I even had the time to keep up with yet another “iron in the fire”.

With the onset of the plans to sell our home, sell our other possessions, move into our Mobile Suites, and eventually travel full time, I had undertaken numerous additional projects. I began by purchasing software that would allow me to digitize some of my old vinyl LP collection and other software to digitize some of my old VHS tapes. While I ran into a snag (not yet resolved) with the VHS tape digitization, I am still digitizing the LP’s.

On top of that, I began a project that Jo had been encouraging me about for a long time. That project being the writing of a book. For a long time, that project languished because I had no idea as to what I wanted to write about. I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to write about religion, and writing about politics can lead to some very disgruntled relationships, so what was I to do. Then Jo suggested that I do something along the lines of a book of my photos with my own comments about the photos included within the book.

So, some time back, that project began. However, I found that it was something of a daunting task to look at a photo and be inspired enough to write about it. Likewise, it was difficult to consider thoughts to write about and then find a photo that would be related to those thoughts. So, even after a number of months, I only had something like 32 pages of photos and comments. Now, if anyone remembers having to sit around and watch “Uncle Whomever’s” slide shows, regardless of how boring they might have been, I wouldn’t want my book to suffer the same fate or cause the same boredom. Thus, I am very, very particular as to what photos would be included in the work.

An additional problem that I will have, once the book is near completion or is finished, is finding a publisher for it.  Having never written a book, I don’t have first-hand experience and only have the knowledge from one other person that I know that wrote a book.  But, because her book is an entirely different genre, her publisher doesn’t do photo books.  So, at some point, I’ll have yet another “iron in the fire” in trying to find a publisher.

In the initial thinking of starting “Ignoring The Barking Dogs”, I asked questions on the forums at RV Dreams of those that had blogs and participated with the forums. After being encouraged that it didn’t take an IT technical expert to maintain one, I then had another thought that eventually convinced me to start the project. That thought was that by making me write more often, it might be easier for me to complete the book. So, if nothing else, I would benefit by challenging myself. (I had developed into a rut where I no longer try to challenge myself in almost any endeavor.)

Now, the challenge is to write about topics that will challenge or interest readers. Who knows, perhaps something I write might even shake the beliefs of readers. Are you as readers prepared for a shake-up? Perhaps a comment should be made to tease you into remaining interested?

In the course of writing this, I can probably predict that you will be subjected to topics on religion, politics, personal beliefs, seemingly irrelevant discourses about those that have influenced me over the year, and of course, the happenings of what has led to the choosing to go full-time RV’ing and how we made our choices. Hopefully, along the way, I can help others with decisions in their own lives.

Now, for the teasing comment:  Can you see God in this image?  I’ll explain later.