Doing the annual inquisition AAAgain?

As the year draws to a close, most people are concentrating on holiday preparations, but for me it’s also included my end of year series of “Ask Arthur” blog posts. It’s something I’ve done since 2012, but over the years the number of questions have declined, so much so that I seriously considered not doing it anymore. Still, this annual series been around awhile, and I generally don’t like just abandoning something like this without saying something first—maybe I just did? We'll see.

“Traditional” blogs like this one have steadily declined in readership over the years, the rise of subscription-based platforms like Substack or Patreon notwithstanding. Actually, maybe the rise of paid options helped the decloine of free generalist blogs? Maybe paying for something brings connections that free options don’t. To me, offering something for a fee implies I’m an expert on something, or can plausibly present myself as one, when I’m not even an expert on being myself. Besides, charging a fee carries possible tax burdens in two countries, so it could well end up costing me money (that’s also true for podcasts, YouTube videos, etc).

As I said last year, “I’m sure that there will come a time when there won’t be any questions,” and I added, “I’m quite relaxed about whether I get any questions or not. Everything changes, and nothing lasts forever, after all.” All of which is still true.

To ask a question , simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question. Whatever method you choose, you can tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, however, please keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog, and anyone can read what you wrote. If you want to avoid being public in any way, the best solution is to email me.

Finally, as always, I have an obligation as the gracious thief blogger that I am, to note that this idea is stolen from inspired by Roger Green’s “Ask Roger Anything” (“ARA”) posts. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of thievery flattery.

So, over to you: Ask your question whatever way works best for you, and I’ll do my best to answer. And if you don’t want to ask anything, don't worry: We’re still good.

All posts in this series will be tagged “AAA-25”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

What do you want to know? (December 2012)
Ask Arthur (July 2013)
Ask Arthur – Again (December 2013)
Ask Arthur Again, again (December 2014)
Ask Arthur yet again (July 2015)
It’s that time again (December 2015)
It’s ‘Ask Arthur’ time again (December 2016)
Let the 2017 asking begin (November 2017)
Let the 2018 asking begin (November 2018)
There was no “Ask Arthur” series in 2019.
Sure, why not ask again? (December 2020)
Yes, ask again (November 2021)
AAA 2022: A decade-long inquisition (November 2022)
Let the annual inquisition begin (November 2023)
Let the annual inquisition begin for 2024 (November 2024)

Summer is here—finally

Today, Summer officially began here today. The graphic up top is what I shared on my personal Facebook on this date in 2021, and I used it again today. I’d forgotten about the goofy avatar cartoon thingees Facebook used to offer, but the fact I’d forgotten means I clearly haven’t missed them.

But I have missed summer, my favourite season.

The long range forecast for this summer is one of wet and humid weather for the top of New Zealand, and the southern parts may be hotter. I’m particularly glad that the ducted air conditioning is installed.

As it happens, it’s already been hot in parts of New Zealand (including at my house). November produced some record breaking temperatures. In fact, Auckland had the hottest day in November ever recorded. That’s not a good sign.

December is also the last month of the year, of course. Maybe that doesn’t really matter, since the way we measure time—months and years—are kind of arbitrary, but it’s seen as the end of the year by most of us on this planet, and, for me, that means starting to plan for next year, and that first means seeing what this year was like—basically, “not all that great”.

As I’ve made clear, part of how I judge my year is this blog, mainly because I’ve been doing it longer than pretty much anything else—and that includes longer than any paid job I ever had. So, at the moment, 2025 may turn out to be my least productive full year. November was tied for first with October for the most posts in the month, but I’d expected it to be my most-productive month. It wasn’t to be.

This reality is why I’m pessimistic about how (relatively) unproductive this year may end up being. However, the word may is doing a lot of work there, because I have a lot to finish up this month. For example, I have several projects still underway that will wrap up this month, and I know I’ll be documenting them all. I also have series of posts this month, and some leftover posts that I haven’t gotten around to, but still want to do. So, there’s a potential that my pessimism may be unjustified. Or, I may be correct.

In any case, summer is hear, and my whole house is now comfortable. That alone may change everything.

A new month with old (and new) things

October means the middle of Spring, and that means it’s time to plan for summer. New Zealanders love living outside, even if it’s just in their own yards—maybe even especially then. That’s true for me, too, but I’ve never really been able to do that at this house. October is where that begins to change.

The Waikato Home & Garden Show is on this week (Thursday through Sunday), and I bought my ticket online last night, so I’m ready to go. I didn’t go last year because at that point I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with/about my house, and so, I didn’t see any point in going. This year it’s completely different.

The point of the show is to see all sorts of new and/or interesting products and services for the home and garden—which is kind of obvious, yes, but it’s a very general category that includes stuff for the house (like renovations, garden sheds, patio covers, landscaping products, ventilation systems, even spa pools and swimming pools), stuff to eat and drink (food ingredients, spices, gin, delivered meal kits, craft beer, various kitchen gadgets), and, well, other stuff, like miracle gadgets, vacuums, etc.

I’ve always thought shows like that are really interesting, and over the years I’ve gone to various versions both in Auckland with Nigel, and now here in Hamilton. In every case, I’ve kept my eyes open for products or services that would be useful for various projects, and this year is no different—in fact, I’m going back to my mission during my early years in this house: I’m looking for providers of stuff I want for the house.

First and foremost, I’m interested primarily in two things: Patio covers/roofs and whole-house ducted air conditioning. Companies that do those things will be at the show, and they often offer “show specials”, a price discount or some sort of perk, for people who attend the show. There may be providers of batteries for solar power systems, but I kind of doubt it, and it may not matter because I’m wavering on whether that’s a good idea or not (once I decide, I’ll definitely talk about whatever I decide and why).

There also may be decorating ideas/products/services that could be useful to me inside the house, which would be nice. There will definitely be other things I’ll think are interesting, too, but whether I buy anything or not—who knows?

There’s one last bit of business left from last month: September is now my new Number One, “most-blogged” month of 2025 (by one post…). Because this is now into the weeds of statistics and data, I realised that if I achieved 183 posts this year, it would amount to one post every other day, on average. While that’s still not as good in previous years, it’d be better than both 2024 and 2022, but, is it even possible? If I did an average of only one post per day for the rest of the year, it would amount to 173—better than 2022, but fewer than 2024. Good, bad, or indifferent? I don’t know. Still, if I managed to add just four more posts over those three months, the total would beat 2024, too, which is something—ignoring every other year since 2018, of course.

So, here we are: Nearing the midpoint of Spring, and I’m on the verge of launching into my various projects for my house. This year, for the first time, I think I may actually be ready for summer when it arrives, and that’s something I’m very happy about. And, for the record, wherever my blogging output lands will be fine with me.

The AmeriNZ Blog is 19

Another day, another anniversary: Today, the AmeriNZ Blog is now 19. I published my first post, ”I live in a land downunder. No, the other one…” September 13, 2006. It’s obvious that this blog isn’t even close to what it was before everything changed in 2019 (and we won’t mention my podcast…). I have no idea whether things with this blog will ever return to what they were, though over the past six years I’ve frequently thought about formally quitting blogging, but never very seriously.

What has been on my mind the most over the past 18 month or so is trying to find a way forward in a life that makes absolutely no sense to me. This has been at the same time I’ve been trying to figure out what it will mean to become elderly by myself (assuming I have the good fortune to become elderly, of course). I’ve taken various steps that I think make sense for me (like walking every day), but, so far, I haven’t been as attentive to the rest of my current life, and that absolutely includes this blog (and my podcast…).

The recent events in the USA gave me a realisation—well, several, actually. First—and this isn’t new to me or anyone else—social media is arguably among the very the worst inventions humans have ever created. It seems that most—maybe all?—of the people in Western countries who commit political violence have become radicalised online, often, though not exclusively, through social media. My new thought was that maybe it’s not just the plethora of things people can engage with, but also the rapidity of much of that engagement, and this brings me back to this blog.

First and second generation blogs like this one are kind of quaint and old-fashioned. There have been attempts to commoditise blogs though various services, with varying results, but maybe—maybe—part of the solution to the harm wrought by social media is to slow things down a bit, and these “old fashioned” blogs give anyone the opportunity to create content that others can consume at their leisure. By extension, this same thing could also apply to audio-only podcasts, because they, too, are a bit more relaxed than video podcasts.

Or, maybe that wouldn’t help at all, and the old-fashioned content created by dinosaurs like me are destined to remain quaint and barely relevant. And, maybe society will continue to be dragged down by social media. Obviously, I have no way of knowing what will happen, but for the first time in a long time, I do feel like there’s a point to the creating content as I’ve been doing for the past 19 years. This is a thought process that’s still evolving, and, since I am a blogger, I’ll probably talk about it here on this blog.

This blog has always been about whatever catches my attention at any given point, but for the past six years that’s mostly been about me and reimagining my life. Of course. That isn’t as limited as it may sound, and actually has had all sorts of different things to talk about—when I get around to it.

What all this means is that the main issue still holding me back in pretty much everything, including blogging (and podcasting…) is a lack of determined commitment to getting around to talking about things I want to talk about. And yet, this blog is still here, and so am I. There are places to go, things to say and do—even after 19 years.

As I’ve said many times before, I began this blog in the first place because Nigel talked me into it—and then he encouraged me to podcast, too. And that’s the other big reason I continue: It’s among the very last things I did when Nigel was alive that I’m still doing, and the fact he encouraged me to do it is probably the rest of the reason I’m still doing this. I’ve often quoted the last line in my very first blog post because it continues to ring:

“So pour yourself a cuppa, relax, and let’s see where this leads.”

As I said last year, “I couldn’t have put that better myself—oh yeah, I did put it that way. And the sentiment is still every bit as valid.”

Previous posts on my blogoversaries:

Anniversay Time (2007)
Blogoversary 2 (2008)
Anniversaries Three and Fourteen (2009)
Fourth blogoversary (2010)
Fifth blogoversary (2011)
Sixth blogoversary (2012)
Seventh Blogoversary (2013)
Ten years of the AmeriNZ Blog (2016)
The AmeriNZ Blog is eleven (2017)
The AmeriNZ Blog is twelve (2018)
The AmeriNZ Blog is thirteen (2019)
The AmeriNZ Blog is fourteen (2020)
The AmeriNZ Blog is fifteen (2021)
The AmeriNZ Blog is sixteen (2022)
Anniversaries 17 and 28 (2023)
The AmeriNZ Blog is 18 (2024)

Another month and beginning

So, it’s a new month, huh? It is, and it’s a good opportunity to reset. In fact, that’s somthing I’ve always done, but I haven’t really talked about it. Until now.

A lot of people look at New Year’s Day as a time to reset, but the focus on one day means that if goals aren’t met or plans don’t happen it’s easy to give up or forget about whatever changes we wanted to make. I’ve talked about how I looked at New Year as a good opportunity for a reset, and I’ve also talked about how I looked at my birthday as another opportunity—sort of my personal New Year. However, there’s far more to it: I’ve always looked at the first of every month as another chance for a reset.

This requires some more explanation: I see New Year (or my birthday…) as a chance for an annual reset, a chance to set goals and make plans for the year. The reset on the first of every other month is actually a chance to refine rather than starting again. On the first of the month, I look at my annual goals/plans and adjust as needed to better accomplish what I want to do—or not. I’m not (obviously?) obsessed with progressing every goal or achieving every plan; I just want to keep moving forward, as I perceive that.

This brings me to this First of May 2025: What’s the reset here? Well, everything, to be honest. Or, nothing. It’s complicated.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been looking at my drafts folder and also things I posted to my personal Facebook that I never shared here. Next, I also looked at my list of blog topics for the year. Together, these provide a whole bunch of things to talk about, some of which I already have scheduled, or else things I want to talk about, including something from last year. On top of that is completely new stuff that I’d like to talk about here, or things I know will probably come up (like New Zealand’s local government elections later this year).

The thing is, while the first of the month gives me an opportunity to reset and start again, there are no guarantees any of the things I mentioned will actually get published, except for most of the posts I’ve got on my 2025 schedule—probably, because none of those posts are actually written yet.

Even so, a new month means new opportunities, both to do new things and to do old things better. I have no idea how this story will turn out, of course, but worst case scenario, June 1 is yet another opportunity. Onward!

Podcasting for 18 years

Eighteen years ago today, I posted the first episode of my AmeriNZ Podcast. Today, as is usually the case, Facebook served up a “Memory”, and one of them was a post for my 15th podcast anniversary in 2022, something that I turned into a blog post. Everything from that post is still true. However, what I haven’t made clear enough, I think, is how much Nigel was my muse—and so much more.

Nigel first encouraged me to start a blog in 2004 or 2005 (I finally did in 2006), and then he encouraged me to start a podcast (they were audio-only at the time). He then bought me all kinds of equipment—an XLR microphone, mixer, studio headphones, and gave me very useful feedback after I was on Paul Armstrong’s “ArcherRadio” podcast for the first time a couple days after I posted my first episode.

A little while later, Nigel and I were shopping for audio mixers for him (he tried several…), he got a microphone, headphones, and monitor speakers. At the time, he was interested in recording and mixing music, but the only song he actually seriously worked on was a vocal by our niece.

That, then, led to two different Internet radio shows, the first alternating with Daniel Brewer, and the second was on his own Internet radio channel. Our friend Brian (who I originally met through podcasting) also had a show on Nigel’s station. I still have recordings of some of our shows on Nigel’s channel.

Things changed, Nigel’s job got busier, we shifted to South Auckland—then it all ended when he did.

I’ve struggled with podcasting and blogging ever since, and it’s pretty common for me to think about formally quitting both. Even so, I persist for some reason—mainly because whatever appealed to me about them at the beginning is still there, though more low key than it was.

I have no idea whether I’ll attempt to continue either, let alone both, or if they might evolve. But I know for sure that Nigel would still be encouraging me to do what feels right to me, and probably quietly proud that I’m still doing what he encouraged me to do so long ago, however imperfectly I’m currently doing it.

In keeping with my tradition, I’ll post a new episode this evening my time [the episode is now uploaded].

A deliberate absence

I haven’t been blogging much so far this year—I know that will come as a huge surprise. There are many reasons for that, but this has been a mostly intended time away. This post is about why that’s been the case.

The story begins, really, last year. I said that was a challenging year for me, and it definitely was, for all the reasons I blogged about. However, there was also the death of a friend I never talked about here, for a lot of reasons, but partly because my friend’s death happened shortly before what would have been Nigel’s 60th birthday, and about a month before the fifth anniversary of his death. I was already dealing with a lot.

At the same time, I was dreading the outcome of the US election because I had a feeling it would be a disaster. Then, like so many people, I was profoundly—and badly—affected when the USA’s election disaster actually happened. All that year, I felt like I was watching the land of my birth committing slow-motion suicide, even as I fervently hoped voters would come to their fucking senses. I managed to hold back my dread of the disaster as well as I could, but that denial couldn’t last forever.

All of that was followed by this year starting out badly with technological problems I wrote about on January 2. That, combined with the USA’s upcoming coronation of the convicted felon, should’ve warned me that this year could be bad, too, but there was more.

Late last year, certainly by Christmas, I was aware that my sister-in-law, Carolyn, was beginning what would be her final battle, leading ultimately to her death. At first, just as with the US elections, I tried to ignore what I I knew was going to happen, but reality again conquered my attempt at optimism.

I didn’t talk about the US elections in part because I couldn’t pretend that my fears were unjustified. However, it wasn’t my place to talk about my sister-in-law’s health battle while she was still waging it, and then I didn’t post anything about her death until after her immediate family did. After that, it was normal blogging issues: I wanted to include a photo of her with my post, and didn’t find the one I used until late Saturday when I was looking through my photos.

What all of these stories have in common is that I found them personally challenging for a lot of reasons. The tech problems were challenging mostly because they’re still not actually solved, just a little bit better. The disaster caused by the US election results is ongoing, and getting worse, of course, and I’m still working my way through all that. The death of my friend was hard, but it also happened at time when I just didn’t have the emotional space to talk about it. That, and especially the death of my sister-in-law, were also difficult for me because they brought up the trauma of Nigel’s death and my emotions around that. I tried as best as I could to keep everything in perspective, to compartmentalise when necessary, and I often succeeded. Still, it was nevertheless six months of waves of emotion washing over me.

All that said, it was absolutely NOT unrelentingly bad: I had fun during those six months, even if sometimes it was despite everything, and I achieved some things that made me feel happy, accomplished, proud, etc. It was, in other words, a period of time with good as well as bad—pretty much like every other time in one’s life.

Nevertheless, for a lot of that time I simply didn’t have the mental or physical energy to blog or podcast, nor the ability to say why that was. Because of all that turmoil, I missed out on blogging about things that I very much wanted to talk about, completely non-political things, of course, things that were personally important to me (like anniversaries). I may talk about most of those things in one one post (kind of like my old “Internet wading” posts). I also have other topics leftover from last year that I still want to talk about, including some that have reached their own first anniversary in the past couple months (whether I mentioned them at the time last year or not). On top of that are some very good things I’ve been up to starting back in December, and that topic, too, deserves my full attention.

The thing is, though, that because I don’t know when things will get better, I also don’t know when I may have a shot at being even slightly more productive—in everything/anything, actually. I guess we’ll find out together.

It was definitely a year

I think I’ve made clear that 2024 was not my favourite year. I’ve also been clear that the year absolutely wasn’t all bad—far from it, in fact. It’s just that for a lot of reasons, and no reason, 2024 and I just didn’t quite get along.

As always, I think that my blogging productivity—the number of posts I publish in a particular month—is a pretty good quick indicator of how I was doing that month. It’s certainly not a perfect measure, since there’s no quick way to differentiate between positive and negative tones/topics, for example, but the fact remains that if I had an unproductive month, there are probably reasons for that.

When the year began, I was full of optimism, not the least because 2023 had been my best blogging year since Nigel died—not as good as the days of old, but much better than any year after 2019. And then as 2024 went on it very nearly became my worst-ever full year of blogging—though I couldn’t have known that at the start of the year.

January, in fact, had a lot going for it. That was when I went on a trip to Fiji with family, and that trip included my 65th birthday. January 2024 was, in fact, was my most productive January since back in 2019 when I turned 60.

Things began slowing down in February, and despite many good things happening that month, when I went to check on the house on Auckland’s North Shore that Nigel and I lived in for a decade, up until February 2017 when we shited and the house became a rental, I found the trip unexpectedly challenging. Even so, I was still expressing optimism that month.

March was a bit worse, followed by a much better April—and then the wheels fell off and my productivity resumed falling. August had what would’ve been Nigel’s 60th birthday, and the following month had the fifth anniversary of his death—five years to the very day.

If the emotional, or perhaps existential, drag on me in 2024 was just about the significant anniversaries or emotional events during the year, then things should’ve improved after September. But, obviously, that didn’t happen. And yet, even some of what felt like my most difficult months, I nevertheless wrote blog posts that were positive, talking about things that interested me or that even made me happy.

Then the disastrous US elections in November definitely brought me down before humble December came charging onto the scene, saving the day. On Boxing Day, the post I published that day helped my blog pass the annual total for 2022, my worst-ever full year of blogging, and this month became my second best December since Nigel died, barely beaten by December 2020’s 35 posts. In fact, my two most productive months for the full year of 2020 though 2024 were December 2020 in first place, and this month, December 2024, in second place. An added bonus: The order I mentioned in that Boxing Day post arrived today, adding a nice pretty bow onto the final busy blogging day of a year that at its start looked so promising.

The larger lessons from all this is that my blog really is a reflection of me: When I’m not doing well, neither is this blog, and when I am, it does well, too. Underneath all that is an entirely different but equally important fact: This blog is a record of my life for more than 18 years. This blog has chronicled things I’ve done, wanted to do, or thought about doing, along with things that interested me, amused me, or even made me angry. I’ve talked about family, including my furbabies, and I’ve talked in detail about navigating through the loss of my entire family apart from Leo and me. So if it seems I place too much importance on my blogging productivity over a year, this is why: This blog is me—well, the parts I’m willing to talk about, anyway.

Someday I’ll be gone, as will we all, but there’s a good chance that long after I’m dead this blog will still be out in the ether—a fact which almost makes me want to delete it right now! Seriously, though, this year has taught me that this blog, with its nearly two decades of content, can be a great tool for me to understand myself. I think that’s a pretty great thing for a hobby to be able to do.

I can’t make any predictions about what will happen in 2025, and I don’t want to make the mistake of being as totally wrong as I was at the very start of this year. Instead, I’d rather just see what happens. To me, that's part of the excitement of every new year, anyway.

So, Happy New Year! I sincerely hope that 2025 is the best year yet for the entire world—and especially my little corner of it.

Ask Arthur 2024, Part 4: Miscellaneous and me

It’s absolutely no surprise that several of the questions in this year’s “Ask Arthur” series have dealt with serious, even dark, topics. So, I decided to end the series with lighter topics, because I can. On New Year’s Eve I just don’t feel like dwelling on the dark stuff.

Today’s questions are all from Roger Green. First up:

What TV services do you currently have (streaming, network)? How many are free?

New Zealand has two main broadcast companies. First, and largest overall, is New Zealand government-owned Television New Zealand (TVNZ). It has three broadcast channels: TV1, TV2, and Duke. They also have a streaming service, TVNZ+, that I’ll talk more about soon.

The other main broadcaster is Warner Bros. Discovery New Zealand (WBD), the local operation of the global US corporation. They have TV3, HGTV, Bravo, Eden, and Rush.

All broadcast television is done through a service called Freeview, a digital free-to-air broadcast service. There are two versions; One uses satellite, which transmits standard definition programming using the same satellite as pay-TV operator Sky Television. The other version—the one I use—is HD over UHF.

There’s already talk about shutting off the ground-based transmitters in the 2030s, but this wouldn’t necessarily change anything but the delivery: Satellite transmission could remain, and there could be a version streaming over the Internet. In fact, the rapid growth of streaming services is precisely why the industry is in discussions to shut down the ground-based transmitters.

And that brings me to streaming services.

I use TVNZ+ a lot. It began as a way for me to watch TVNZ broadcasts that I’d missed, and since then my use has expanded to include TV series like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, for example (NZ doesn’t have Paramount+, though Australia apparently does). They also have a good collection of TV series that haven’t been shown in New Zealand, movies, and all sorts of other programming. TVNZ+ is a free ad-supported service, with one minute ad breaks at the start and then roughly every half hour afterward.

Similarly, WBD has a free streaming service called ThreeNOW that includes much of the programming from the company’s broadcast channels, and, I presume other programming not broadcast. I don’t actually know what’s on it because I never use the service, though it’s not because of what’s on it or not on it, it’s just that I find that the amount of programming I could watch on all the various services greatly exceeds my time (and patience) to watch it.

I have one streaming service I pay for—Disney+—though I don’t watch that anywhere near as much as a I should (since I pay for it)—and I probably would if the amount of programming I might watch didn’t greatly exceed my time (and patience) to watch it (a recurring theme).

I used to subscribe to UK streaming service History Hit, a documentary channel, but I changed credit cards and couldn’t figure out how to update my details, which was probably just as well: At the time I engaged in austerity measures and started cancelling all “unnecessary” subscriptions. Still, if I wasn’t overwhelmed with options of things to watch, maybe I’d have kept it?

Having said all that, the streaming service I watch more than any other—by far—is YouTube, and I have the free version and all its many (many) ads. I’ve thought about paying so I don’t have to watch all the bloody ads, but so far I’m not willing to add any paid services, particularly when I feel I’m overwhelmed by all the options of things to watch (I said it was a recurring theme…). At any rate, what I like about YouTube is that the videos are usually short—a half hour or less (in my case, usually much less), and that suits my way-too-short attention span nicely.

Next up, Roger also asked:

Do you think doing quizzes would increase the output of your blog? Also are we going to get more podcasts in 2025 from Arthur? Will we hear 2political next year?

Well, yes, actually. In fact, a month os so ago I started putting aside quiz-like memes and meme-like Facebook posts from friends that I thought I’d alter and answer here, mainly as a springboard for further discussion. They might suit a weekend best, and since I like word play like alliteration, I’m thinking I may call them, I don’t know, something like “Saturday Stealing”. Dunno.

There will definitely be more AmeriNZ podcasts in 2025, maybe even on a regular schedule again. Because it’s always been about whatever’s on my mind when I sit down to record, it’s not something I can easily plan ahead. Maybe that’s part of why I still do it. Still, I never stop tinkering with it, so there will probably be some of that, too.

As for 2Political, Jason and I talked vaguely about resurrecting it, though not in any kid of depth or detail. The website is gone because I allowed is end when the contract ran out. It had somehow become borked (possibly from a hack or maybe the unintended consequence of a plugin update—I have no idea what happened. Whatever it was that went wrong, even I couldn’t access the site any more, and by then we hadn’t posted anything for a couple years, anyway, so it was best to let it go. However, I still own the domain so if we choose to revive it, it’s just be a case of setting up a new home for it.

I also haven’t (definitely) ruled my reviving my forgotten child, my YouTube Channel, so there may be something about that in the new year, too. Or not. Part of the reason so much is in a fluid state is that I’m unsure about my AmeriNZ branding. I’ve spend more than two decades building it (which is a strong argument for keeping it), but after the US elections, I began to seriously question whether I wanted to create a different brand, one perhaps more appropriate for my current stage of life and the many changed realities that involves. We’ll see.

Speaking of blogging, Roger asked:

Are are you going to pose any questions to Roger when he does his Ask Roger Anything in December? (You can think about your question now; you don't even have to wait until then to offer it.)

Yes. In fact, I already did, though I was a bit late to the party because it’s such a busy time of the year (that’s the particular truth I decided to cling to).

I was amused by Roger saying on that post, “Running a daily blog involves talking to oneself, so having you talk to him is much more enjoyable and far less schizophrenic.” The humour for me wasn’t because of the necessary pondering whether writing about oneself in the third person might be an indication of schizophrenia, but, rather, because what he said is so very true. Although, it’s not like Arthur would know, of course, because he hasn’t run a daily blog in several years.

Thanks to Roger for today’s questions—and thanks to him and Sherry for all the questions in this year’s series. Thanks, too, to everyone who’s read even part of this year’s series. I hope 2025 creates plenty of opportunities for everything good—including new questions at the end of the year.

Thanks again!

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-24”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously in the 2024 series:

”Let the annual inquisition begin for 2024” – The first post in this year’s series.
”Ask Arthur 2024, Part 1: Pardon?4”
”Ask Arthur 2024, Part 2: An Orange hue”
”Ask Arthur 2024, Part 3: Racism and change”

Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 21: The final notes

If I’d thoroughly thought through this series, I’d have planned it better. I don’t merely mean that I could’ve written all the posts in advance, but rarely did, I also could’ve planned its end better. If I’d thought about it, I would’ve made this past Sunday’s Part 20 the final in this series, rather than choosing the following Tuesday (for a “Weekend” Diversion post…). And yet, here we are.

The weekend-on-Tuesday thing aside, the real issue is that my original vague idea turned out to be unworkable, and that would’ve been obvious if I’d written posts in advance. I’d originally intended to list the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1984 without ever realising that listing 100 songs is, well, a bit much—especially when I had so many blogging loose ends I wanted to tie up before midnight.

My original idea was to include the entire list, with links to my posts for the  songs that were Number One, and then—well, it turns out I never thought past that point. So, instead I suggest following the link and looking at the list yourself. The links to all my posts on Number One songs of 1984 are at the bottom of this post, and the Wikipedia article has links to the songs that weren’t Number One. That’s the thing that I thought was interesting, and why I was originally going to talk about it: There are songs that did well enough to end up on the Year-End Hot 100 even though they never reached Number One during the year. Obviously, this happens all the time.

So, instead of what I’d “planned” to do with this post, I thought I’d talk about the series overall, and what’s coming in the 1985 series next year. Blogger’s prerogative or something.

What I enjoy about these series is revisiting songs that were a part of a very important time in my life—the early to mid-1980s. However, it’s also true that any given year can also be an important time in our lives too, so I suppose we have our own “Hot 100” chart of our months and years. In any case, revisiting those songs means revisiting memories, and that’s both interesting and fun for me. It’s possible others may think so, too—or not—but I wouldn’t do the series if I didn’t enjoy doing it. Besides, it gives me something to talk about other than mowing my lawns and not clearing/organising my house or garage.

In 1985, twenty-seven songs hit Number One, though one of those was also the last Number One of 1984, and I already talked about that in Part 19—one less post to write! Still, 26 posts is a lot to research and write, but the multi-week runs of some songs will give me a chance to write in advance (and no, I’m not secretly laughing at myself…).

What all of this teaches me is that, first, planning is good, and second, actually thinking before planning is even better. For example, the final Number One of 1985 reached the position on the penultimate Sunday of the year, and that, like this year, leaves the final Sunday open for me to add something else, like a final post in the series. I didn’t realise that until today.

Next year’s series, then, ought to be better planned than this year’s was, which has got to be a good thing, I think. And the fact that I didn’t truly think about this post until today? It’s not all bad. This post gave me the chance to use three different “ough” words in a row in my opening sentence. I got something new from this post after all.

The first post in next year’s 1985 series will be on February 2, 2025.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1984” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 1 – January 21, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 2 – February 4, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 3 – February 25, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 4 – March 31, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 5 – April 21, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 6 – May 12, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 7 – May 26, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 8 – June 9, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 9 – June 23, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 10 – July 7, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 11 – August 11, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 12 – September 1, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 13 – September 22, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 14 – September 29, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 15 – October 13, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 16 – November 3, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 17 – November 17, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 18 – December 8, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 19 – December 22, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 20: Seasonal songs – December 29, 2024

Boxing Day done right

Today is Boxing Day, so naturally my first thought this morning was that I needed to hurry and jump in the car and get in the miles-long queue of hundreds of cars waiting to get into The Base to shop the sales! Or, rather, that’s what I might say if I actually ever did that, and if I didn’t know that the Boxing Day sales are also available online.

As far as I can remember, I only did the crowded Boxing Day sales twice in my 29 years in New Zealand, and both were with Nigel because I certainly wouldn’t drive in that madness (I wrote about one of the two way back in 2009). These days, I’d just drive my computer if I want to shop the sales, especially if it’s something the shop might run out of, or else I might wait a couple days to avoid the madness (I’ve done both of those many times).

As it happens, I ended up shopping online today.

I wanted to buy some new blue jeans because the two pairs I have are starting to wear out on the top of my right knee—apparently I rest my left ankle there often enough to cause wear. Or, it could be the jeans aren’t made as well as they used to be because they lasted about three and a half years before wear was a problem. I always use old jeans as work clothes (like for mowing the lawn, painting, etc), so nothing goes to landfill until it’s utterly beyond use (even then I sometimes cut them up for rags first). Waste not, want not!

I also ordered a few things to replace other things that are broken or wearing out. All of those replacements have been deferred for quite awhile, making the Boxing Day Sale the perfect time to get them—and I didn’t have to brave the insanity at the mall to do it. And, of course, nothing will go to complete waste: All the stuff I’m replacing will either be donated, repurposed, or recycled.

The rest of the day was very quiet, which was nice after a busy couple days. I contemplated having a nap, but changed my mind.

There’s one more thing about Boxing Day this year, and it's sort of a Christmas Miracle: With this post, I’ve officially published more blog posts than I did in 2022, and that means that 2024 is no longer my worst-ever year for blogging productivity. I wasn’t at all certain that would be the case. So, yay for Boxing Day, I guess.

Preparing for the new blogging year

Maybe it’s a good sign, but I’ve already started planning and preparing for next year's blogging, something that begins less than a month from now. That planning process meant taking a look back, too, of course. None of this is even remotely new—one way or another it’s something I do every year. And yet, the fact I’m doing it after a difficult year gives me hope for the year to come.

One of the easiest ways to see that this has been a difficult year for me is to look at how much I produced for this blog and my podcast, and that can be summed up by the simple phrase, “very little”. November ended up in a three-way tie for my least productive months of 2024, but unlike the other two, I at least know what was behind the lack of output in November: The disastrous US election. I just didn’t feel like doing anything even remotely creative for at least the first two weeks after the disaster, and for the past week or so I’ve been busy in an entirely ordinary way.

My posts right before and after the US elections were both in my Weekend Diversion: 1984 series, but I wrote both of them right before they were published—I didn’t write them in advance, and, in fact, I think only one or two in the entire series were. It would be another week and a half before I’d post again, and that was the call for questions in this year’s Ask Arthur series, also written right before publication—around a week later than I wanted to publish it.

My last two posts in November were also delayed, though only by days. In fact, the only reason they got published at all was that I wanted to make sure that November wasn’t the least-productive month of the year. Motivation is motivation, I suppose.

So now it’s December and, including this post, so far I’ve managed an average of one post per day! That amuses me because when I thought about the rest of this year, I realised that I only needed 22 posts over 31 days to ensure that 2024 isn’t my worst-ever year for blogging. I know only too well how what in the past I would have always seen as an achievable target is now something that can easily evaporate. So… who knows?

Here’s what I do know: The Weekend Diversion: 1984 series has two more posts, so that takes the total needed down to 20. I’ve already published the first of three other posts I’d planned for this month, and if I publish the other two of the three, that leaves 17 posts needed. This year’s “Ask Arthur” series will take up some of those (I don’t know how many yet), and there are a whole bunch of unfinished posts I’ve been wanting to do this year, so I think I’m (possibly unrealistically) optimistic that over the next 29 days I can achieve that remaining goal of 17 posts I hadn’t specifically planned for.

All of which leads to an inevitable question: Why do I care at all? I’ve certainly asked myself that question a lot this year, especially when there were so often many days between posts. The first reason is that overall, I still enjoy it, despite everything, and because it’s my only writing outlet, something that matters to me (and I’ve noticed I’ve become a bit rusty due to lack of practice).

There’s another reason it matters to me, though, one that, once again, relates to the US election disaster. One of the main features of that disaster was how shockingly awful the legacy news media was in covering the campaign. That’s a big topic in itself, obviously, but I think it’s important that people who can should call out the inevitable bad and anti-democracy behaviour of the incoming regime. There was a time when my posts on politics were by far my most-read, and while I’m absolutely not suggesting I’m some sort of sage or oracle—or even any good at discussing politics—I nevertheless have a platform of sorts, and maybe it’s time for me to use it again to speak my truth. That may not be useful to anyone, anywhere, but if it helps even one person feel for one moment that they’re not alone in being alarmed by the incoming regime, then that’s enough.

There’s quite a lot I still want to talk about, and that’s the biggest reason of all that I care about my productivity (and, of course, pretty much all of this is also relevant to my audio podcast, too, something that’s been neglected even more than this blog). What all of this really means is that in 2025 this blog will probably be more like it used to be: Still about lots of things, but also different from what it has been in that I’ll again talk about political topics, too.

Much as I do try to think about what a reader might get out of my small efforts here, the fact is that it's what I think about this blog that matters the most. I think that if I keep that in mind, it’ll be a good place to begin building a new version of what I once loved so much about this whole project. Like I said at the end of my first-ever blog post: “So pour yourself a cuppa, relax, and let’s see where this leads.” Yeah, that—once again.

Simpler blogging times

A dozen years ago, I was pleased to see that this blog reached 150,000 page views, roughly six years into its existence. This was kind of a big deal to me at the time (the graphic up top is my Facebook post from that time), even though I knew it was a pretty meaningless number. “Engagement” is a more important statistic (or “metric” in the jargon) because it includes more than just the folks (or bots and web crawlers) that happen to briefly visit a web page. Still, I did like “big numbers”.

Google explains a “pageview” and how it compares to a “unique pageview” this way:

A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a user clicks reload after reaching the page, this is counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview is recorded as well.

A unique pageview… aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.

The huh?! factor in such descriptions is largely why I eventually stopped paying any attention to the “metrics” for any of my sites. I never fully understood what they were talking about, but, more importantly, I realised it had no relationship to what I was doing: The whole point of my blog was to write about whatever I wanted to, not what the “metrics” suggested would bring eyes to the page. All of which is also probably why this blog only ever achieved a relatively small audience.

Nowadays, old-timey blogs like mine are relics. There are many successful descendants on places like Substack, often available only by paid subscription. I won’t be doing a subscription thing like that because it would require way too much of a commitment that I’m clearly not up to at the moment—that and subscription fees are potentially taxable in two countries, so what’s the point? Actually, all of that’s arguably true for my audio-only podcast, too, except that paid subscriptions for them aren’t as common as it is for the descendants of blogs like mine.

Everything’s changed since then (including my commitment to blogging), but at this point in November 2012, achieveing 150,000 pageviews was still a big deal. Twelve years later, my old-timey blog’s current total page views (also since 2006) is 3,439,541 (at the time I wrote this). I may not care about such “metrics” like I did a dozen years ago, but I still like big numbers—especially when they become bigger numbers. That much is still the same.

Let the annual inquisition begin for 2024

Another year is drawing to a close, so that must means it’s time for another go at my end of year series of “Ask Arthur” blog posts. The series has been about giving readers the chance to ask questions about—well pretty much anything, apparently. As I put it in the 2022 series’s introduction post:

The “Ask Arthur” series of posts is a chance for people to ask me nearly anything, and I try to answer whatever I’m asked. I’ve never had a question about a topic that was “off limits”, however, I’ve always said that if I couldn’t answer a question for any reason, I’d say so. It turned out that I've never had a question that I wouldn’t answer. It also turned out that I haven’t yet met a topic I don’t have an opinion on. Who’d have guessed that?

Last year I answered my own question: “Yes, who could or would have guessed that there doesn’t seem to be any topic on which I don’t have an opinion?” In fairness, having opinions is pretty much a top requirement for any blogger, otherwise there wouldn’t be much point. Still, it seems to help if I mention the kinds of things people typically ask me. In past years, I’ve been sent questions about me, my personal history, about life in New Zealand (mine or in general), or perhaps more specifically about being an expat. Questions about my opinion on topics or events in the news, including politics, have also featured in the past. The possibilities really do seem to be endless.

Still, I’m sure that there will come a time when there won’t be any questions. Written blogs aren’t anywhere near as popular as they were in the early years of my own blogging, and my commitment to the work has wavered (and, yes, I’m good at stating the bloody obvious). What this really means is that I’m quite relaxed about whether I get any questions or not. Everything changes, and nothing lasts forever, after all,

However, there may well be questions this year. To ask one, simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, however, please keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog, and anyone can read what you wrote. If you want to avoid being public, the best solution is to email me, or you can also send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.

Finally, being the gracious thief blogger that I am, I always note that this idea is stolen from inspired by Roger Green’s “Ask Roger Anything” (“ARA”) posts. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of thievery flattery.

So, over to you: Ask your question whatever way works best for you, and I’ll do my best to answer. And if you don’t want to ask anything, don't worry: We’re still good.

All posts in this series will be tagged “AAA-25”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

What do you want to know? (December 2012)
Ask Arthur (July 2013)
Ask Arthur – Again (December 2013)
Ask Arthur Again, again (December 2014)
Ask Arthur yet again (July 2015)
It’s that time again (December 2015)
It’s ‘Ask Arthur’ time again (December 2016)
Let the 2017 asking begin (November 2017)
Let the 2018 asking begin (November 2018)
There was no “Ask Arthur” series in 2019.
Sure, why not ask again? (December 2020)
Yes, ask again (November 2021)
AAA 2022: A decade-long inquisition (November 2022)
Let the annual inquisition begin (November 2023)

Another new month will bring, um…

It’s now October! This year has been flying past, although lots of people feel that the passage of time seems to speed up as we get older. In any event, each new month brings a perfect time to reassess, redirect, recommit—in short, every month we get the chance to change course.

Another paragraph goes here.

It’s been difficult for me to commit to this blog this year—obviously. The had been a challenging year, which I’ve talked about several times now. I’ve also recently made a change in the way I’m doing things that I have yet to talk about, but it will shape the course of this month and many more to come.

In the meantime, though, now that we’ve entered the last calendar quarter of 2024, this is a particularly good point to look at my blogging (lack of) progress this year. The numbers of posts tell the story, however, as of October 1, the total number of posts rose to 124, which is three more than in my very first blogging year (2006)—except that I only blogged for the last three and half months of that year. Nevertheless, it counts! 2024 is not my worst-ever blogging year!

I thought that this year’s number of posts by month (visible along the right side of this blog) was interesting. The rankings to October 1 are: 1= January and April (23 each), 3. February (16), 4. March (14), 5. September (13), 6. May (12), 7. June (9), 8= July and August (7 each).

Because I’m me, I worked it out, and with 92 days left in this year (October 1 though December 31), I’d have to produce an average of 2.62 posts per day to hit my old goal of an average of one post per day over the year. That’s unlikely, to put it mildly. Even reaching my 2019 total of 263 posts would require an average of 1.51 posts per day. 2019 was, of course, the year that changed everything about my life, and nothing has been the same since, and for that reason in particular breaking that total is my dream goal for this year. However, my realistic stretch goal for 2024 is 238 or more, which would beat my 2021 total of 237, and it would also require an average of 1.2 posts per day for the rest of the year. I think that’s achievable. At the very least, I want more than 205 posts (my 2020 total).

Obviously, I’ve never given up hope that one day I might return to achieving one post per day over the year, and while that’s not going to happen this year, I should at least do better than several other of my “worst ever” years. This matters to me, first, because I’m highly competitive with myself, but also because so much has seemed so beyond my control this year that I want to work on regaining control of some of the things I seemed to have lost in 2019, and blogging is, theoretically, one of the of the things I can regain control over.

Blogging is not the only thing I want to regain control of. There’s my podcast, too—and I know for sure that’s about to return. This month marks 8 years since I last made and posted a YouTube video, something I never intended to stop doing, but, as with everything else, changes in my life got in the way. Someday I’d like to bring that back, too.

Having said all that, and having talked about my ambitious goals I’ve set, I’m also okay with the very real possibility that I won’t meet any of my goals. After all, this is the third day of this new month, and I’ve already missed two days of blogging. The past five years have taught me to be relaxed about where my blogging totals end up, precisely because I’ve always missed days. Besides, learning to let go of goals is just as important as having some in teh first place.

Still, even I’m curious to see what happens—or doesn’t. Of course.

The AmeriNZ Blog is eighteen

The AmeriNZ Blog is now 18! Eighteen years ago today, I published my first post, ”I live in a land downunder. No, the other one…”. 18, huh? That means it’s old enough to vote (if only…) and old enough to buy alcohol in New Zealand—if it was a human, obviously. I began my AmeriNZ Podcast six months later, and technically I’m still doing both. The only one of my endeavours I’m not currently making any content for is my YouTube Channel—two out of three ain’t bad, right?

Yesterday was the 29th anniversary of when I arrived in New Zealand as a tourist, which was also when Nigel and I met in person for the first time. As I often say, those two anniversaries are the high points in what’s otherwise a terrible month for me (it’s not for nothing that my theme song for this month is Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends”).

This year has been a huge struggle for me in a lot of ways, and producing blog posts—and especially podcast episodes—has been difficult and even sometimes impossible for me to do. While I have a sense my challenges may be easing, and so, it’s likely to become easier for me to produce content for both, I’m not quite there yet. So today’s anniversary is a bit more mixed than normal, and less of an antidote to The Horrible Anniversary a week from today.

This is a marathon, I keep reminding myself, and not a sprint, but knowing and understanding that doesn’t ease my feelings of—what, exactly? Disappointment, I guess, frustration, certainly, and maybe even a bit of sadness. But I can’t change anything in the past—there are no redos. Instead, I’d like to just get back to some sort or normality as I define that, something I definitely think is possible.

All that aside, I’m still really thankful that Nigel talked me into starting this blog. More often than not, it’s been a great creative outlet for me, and it’s definitely been extremely useful for helping me remember things I’d forgotten, like some of the smaller events in my life over the past 18 years. There are still so many stories to tell, so many places to go, so much to find out. I think now, more than ever, the final line of my very first blog post rings true again:

“So pour yourself a cuppa, relax, and let’s see where this leads.”

I couldn’t have put that better myself—oh yeah, I did put it that way. And the sentiment is still every bit as valid.

Previous posts on my blogoversaries:

Anniversay Time (2007)
Blogoversary 2 (2008)
Anniversaries Three and Fourteen (2009)
Fourth blogoversary (2010)
Fifth blogoversary (2011)
Sixth blogoversary (2012)
Seventh Blogoversary (2013)
Ten years of the AmeriNZ Blog (2016)
The AmeriNZ Blog is eleven (2017)
The AmeriNZ Blog is twelve (2018)
The AmeriNZ Blog is thirteen (2019)
The AmeriNZ Blog is fourteen (2020)
The AmeriNZ Blog is fifteen (2021)
The AmeriNZ Blog is sixteen (2022)
Anniversaries 17 and 28 (2023)

When words fail

Words have been part of my life, one way or another, for as long as I can remember. From a very early age, I understood the power of words arranged in the just the right order, and especially when they’re delivered at just the right time, however that may be measured. So, when words abandon me, it’s a particularly difficult thing.

When I was somewhere around seven, give or take, I found an antique manual typewriter in the attic of our house. It had belonged to my parents, though I have no idea where it came from. Nevertheless, I carefully typed out what I labelled “Schenck News”, with some small “news stories”, including an “interview” with my dad which reported that he liked his job. It even had a “comic”, the humour of which was based on an answer to a question that was random letters/characters that I typed. I don’t know, but I doubt I thought that was actually funny even back then.

Whatever that was way back then, I’m fairly certain that it was my first attempt at creating something that I specifically intended for others to read. I did that several times during my childhood and adolescence, and the pace only picked up over the decades after that, and this blog has been part of that for nearly 18 years.

In recent years—say eight, give or take—I’ve had periods in which I didn’t produce much of anything, for one reason or another. That’s become much worse since Nigel died, mostly because of the realities that followed. In the past couple of years in particular, something new emerged: In my head, I heard only silence.

Actually, that’s not entirely true: There have been times when posts popped into my head nearly fully formed, though often at night when I was in bed and trying to fall asleep. Many other times, there was simply silence, and no amount of willing things to be different could make the words arrange themselves on the page.

Any recent casual reader of this blog would see that my last post of June and first post of July were both in the ”Weekend Diversion: 1984 series, and it would be logical to assume that those were pre-written and their publication pre-scheduled, since I talked about doing exactly that back in March. However, both were written shortly before I published them, and, in fact, only two of the 10 posts in the series so far were pre-scheduled.

This is a specific example of how things are for me at the moment: I knew those posts were coming up (it’s a set schedule, after all), I knew the subject of each post, and probably exactly what I thought about it. I could easily have pre-written all the posts in the series—but I didn’t.

I’ve been trying to figure out why this happening, and why it’s been far more intense than it ever has been before. I don’t have one single answer, and that’s part of what has made all of this so challenging—and frightening.

I know part of it is that this is a very difficult year for me, what with its overload of challenging times: My 65th birthday, what would’ve been Nigel’s 60th birthday, and the fifth anniversary of his death. All three of those events are how the fuck can that be true?!” moments for me. My age, that Nigel didn’t make it past 55, that he’ll have been gone five years—all of that means I’m in an existential nowhere land, carrying a rich and beautiful past, but also nothing but doubt, uncertainty, and fear about the future. Even so, much of that has been the case ever since Nigel died, so what’s different now?

I think part of it was that I launched into what turned into a major a project I’ve yet to talk about here or on Facebook, for various reasons and no particular reason. I began with the best of intentions, and then derailed myself—and my emotional well-being—several times along the way. Worse, the project isn’t even finished yet, though there are extenuating circumstances for that.

So, when I take the existential angst I live with like background radiation, add in the specific emotional demands of three important anniversaries, and then put all that under the immense weight and pressure of an absolutely huge and very physically demanding project, I know it was inevitable that something had to give. As bleak as I know that sounds, it’s actually not: Instead, it’s actually a light, and a bit of hope: This means that the current dark times will pass, and not as long from now as I am from where this particular challenge started. The massive project will end, and then I’ll get through each of the two remaining challenging dates this year, just as I got through the first one.

What I can’t know for certain is that the end of my current dark times will mean the silence should end, too, and the words will return. I hope so. Still, I’ve also learned that, if necessary, I can learn to live without arranging words in the just the right order, and delivering them at just the right time.

Footnote:

When I was thinking about this post in recent weeks, my mind once again seized on pop music, in this case, the 1982 song ”Words” by French musician F.R. David (video below). I’d never heard of the song when lived in the USA, and when I heard it on the radio here in New Zealand, I thought it was performed by a woman. Clearly I didn’t listen very carefully then—or ever, to be honest. Still, it was the lyric, “Words don't come easy to me” that kept playing in my head as I planned this post, and it’s definitely not the first time that my life and pop music had interwined. It’s not surprising I didn’t know the song in the USA: It only hit Number 62 on the Billboard “Hot 100”, but it did hit Number 7 in New Zealand, which is probably why I eventually heard it on NZ pop radio. Veritas in musica/ and all that.

The ordinariness isn’t ordinary, but it is

The path of our life can take any number of routes, and for some people there may be a lot of twists and turns along the way. I’m certainly in that category, and my own labyrinthine journey is something I’ve detailed in posts here on this blog, and sometimes on social media, too. Through that journey, I’ve come to realise that given half a change, ordinariness will try to reassert itself in a life that has been made, for a time, at least, anything but ordinary.

When someone extremely important to us, our person, dies, nothing is the same afterward, nor can it be. How much and how quickly ordinariness returns will depend entirely on who we’ve lost, and what changes that brings to our lives. However, I now think that even when things seem the most dire and even hopeless, ordinariness is nearby waiting to take the stage again. That’s certainly something I’ve recently noticed in my own life.

Yesterday, I published a post, “It’s not merely a tree” in which I looked at several events that happened over the years on April 20, as served up to me as Facebook “Memories”. What got my attention was the coincidental use of photos of a tree almost exactly one year apart, and how the photos were both about ordinary, everyday life. Obviously, so very much has changed over the years, and I noted that in the post, too.

I realised that most of my blog posts nowadays have little to do with my grief journey itself, though the reality of it is sometimes integral to the subject I’m writing about, even though it’s seldom the main focus. I think two recent things that are examples of that.

The first of those is the brunch I made for myself this morning (photo up top): It’s “Toasty eggs”, as Nigel called it, with a side of baked beans straight from the tin, just like he used to have. I talked about them in October last year, and the overall subject was about, as I said at the time, “that food can spark strong memories, and even emotions,” and I shared three examples of that.

The second example is from this past week, a post called “Ironed-clad”, which was about me ironing my shirts—the history of how I got there, why I do it, and how I do it. Nigel was part of that story, but ironing was the actual subject.

What both of those have in common—as do many of my posts about my ordinary life—is an acknowledgement of what connection, if any, Nigel has to the story, but in every case the real story is about the topic as part of my ordinary life. The connection to Nigel is about the context and my history with the topic, but not about the void he’s left in my life, nor about how I’ve been working to reconstruct my life and create some sort of new life I never contemplated, let alone planned for. In short, my focus now is on where I’m at, not where I was or what I’ve lost, even though those are fundamental to who, where, and what I am and am becoming.

None of this is meant to suggest in any way whatsoever that my grief journey is “over”, because that doesn’t happen—we grow with our grief, not away from it. Instead, I simply feel that reached a point where my life with Nigel has become my bedrock, the immutable foundation on which I’m building my new life and new self. It is a part of me, and of my new ordinary, but it’s no longer the centre of everything.

Which brings me back to how I now see the extent to which I seem to be talking about ordinary things in my life, because that also means that I notice ordinary things absolutely anywhere now, and many of them have little or nothing to do with the part of my life that was lost. I don’t know that I’ll ever stop commonly referring back to Nigel when talking about my ordinary life, especially when talking about how I got to where I am, but I suspect that day could come.

Right now, though, I’m mostly just fascinated by the way my focus and attention seems to be on the ordinariness of my life, even though how I got to this point isn’t ordinary, though the fact of being a widower certainly is. Life is a strange journey, and despite what some people seem to think, there are no road maps. But this blog, and what I’ve shared on social media, has helped me find my way, and that’s a very good thing—and, for me, entirely ordinary.

The screenshot of the alert on my Apple Watch about closing the Exercise ring is unusual: Lately I've been closing the Exercise ring (the green one) more often than not, and that never used to happen so often not even when Nigel was alive. For the record, I did close the ring (along with the other two) yesterday. Maybe this, too, is part of my new ordinary?

It’s not merely a tree

Facebook “Memories” are a useful way for me to find out what I was posting on the platform on one date. Sometimes one or more are really interesting, most often they’re not, but either way, they’re presented to me without me having to do anything. I’ve found that very useful for this blog because they often inspire new blog posts. Today is the first time it reminded me too late—except, maybe it wasn’t.

Thanks to a FB “Memory” today (up top), I found our that a year ago today—April 20, 2023—I posted a photo of the same tree I shared a photo of yesterday, and from pretty much the same angle. I didn’t remember that I did that, which means I don’t have a photographic memory (you’re welcome). I also didn’t remember that I posted a blog post a year ago today, too, a post that included the two photos in the “Memory”. Obviously there’s no particular reason I should or would remember a blog post from a year ago, and even though I knew that the tree had “been in many of my photos over the past 4+ years”, I didn’t see a need to look through 4+ years of blog posts to look for them.

This could’ve been a story about a FB “Memory” letting me discover that I shared very similar photos of the same tree one year and one day apart, and if that was all there was to it, I may have shared the discovery on my personal Facebook—and, in fact, I did, adding “I see that last year the tree had also lost leaves mostly from the same side as this year, though fewer of them. Guess the prevailing winds might come from that side.” All of of which is at least a little bit interesting, but I doubt I’d ever have blogged about it, too—until I scrolled through the rest of today’s “Memories”.

It turns out, this day has been a significant day for me over the years (some of the other “Memories” are at the bottom of this post).

Seven years ago today, we’d been living in South Auckland for only a couple months, and I shared one of those answer-some-question memes (not one that identity thieves supposedly use), and I said that my favourite place to be was with Nigel.

Six years ago today, Nigel and I were still in Clarks Beach, and I’d just had my annual flu jab. I said that “My arm is kinda itchy and bumpy where I got my flu jab. That’s why I don’t like jabs. Not dying from preventable disease is why I love jabs.” That’s still true, of course, and why I’m in the process of getting my latest jabs between now and June.

Four years ago today, the government announced that the first Covid lockdown was ending a week later by moving down an Alert Level to Level 3, the first of those. I’m pretty sure it was stricter than later versions of Level 3, which is why I called it “Lockdown Lite”. Level 3 eventually got the nickname “Lockdown with takeaways”.

But four years ago today I was living alone in Hamilton, though still with all three dogs, with whom I’d shared that first Covid lockdown that would downgrade a few days later. Nigel and our cat were missing.

A year ago today, it was just me and Leo, and my attention was captured by a tree—a tree!—and not any infectious diseases or preventive measures related to them, and not even by my changed life. Yesterday, it was that tree again, and a focus entirely on my current ordinary life.

I realised that today’s Facebook “Memories” gave me pretty much the clearest look at the arc of my life I’ve ever seen in those daily memories, and that was mainly because of the tree photo: I might not have noticed my story’s arc otherwise. I think that the arc of our life stories is always visible if we look, and looking can tell us a lot about our path and how we got where we are in our current lives.

Everything in life is connected—our lives, our life stories, and how they connect to others and their stories. All we have to do is be willing to SEE when we look. Apparently, even a tree can help with that.

It’s the connections, then, the fact that Facebook so clearly showed me the path of change my life took over the past seven years. So much has changed over that time, and so much will change in the future, too, and documenting all of that is actually the whole point of having a personal blog.

So, the coincidence of posts about a tree ended up in a blog post after all. That and a lot more.

Autumn adventures

Autumn is definitely here, and I’ve been watching its progress on a tree on my street, a tree that’s been in many of my photos over the past 4+ years (including above). I noticed today that most of the leaves it's dropped have come from one side, and that was after some windy days lately. Unfortunately, this tree is also about as close to “pretty autumn colours” that we get in this part of the country, which is probably because we don’t get any frosts until winter, and even then they’re mild. Even so, there’ll still be plenty of leaves to grind up when I mow the lawns next week.

That wasn’t the only nice thing in my day: Today I met up for lunch with my mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, and my cousin-in-law. It’s always nice to have a catch up, especially when the meal is nice. After I dropped of my M-I-L at her place, I stopped at Animates to pick up flea/worm stuff for Leo, and I decided I may as well get him some more food because he’ll need more in the next month or so, and it’d save me a trip at that time.

I was trying to decide which size bag to get, because it IS expensive (it ain’t called “super-premium for nothing), and I suddenly remembered something: Leo will be seven at his next birthday (in around six weeks), and that’s the age I’m to start transitioning him to “senior” dog food—already!

So, I decided to buy a small bag of his current “adult” food, and that size will make it easier for me to manage the transition to his new food when the time comes in a couple months. Time is going so fast nowadays!

And, yes, today I wore one of my nicer shirts that I’d ironed in the past week or two (IYKYK). And for the photo above, I first shared the photo to my Instagram, and then I made a lengthy comment when Insta shared the photo to my personal Facebook; the comment described my actual day.

This post, then, is a mishmash of both of those, all squished together and spread neatly on the pan—I mean, page: Today was also a 4-year cooking anniversary—a meal I haven’t made again since. That was in a FB “Memory” this morning, and it kinda, coulda been its own blog post—I did briefly consider that. So this post, then is actually a tale of three tales. Unlike last time, none of them caused confusion, which is probably why I had to try harder to do so in this post.

Anyway, what’s the point of blogging if I don’t have a bit of fun with it now and then? Especially because good moods for me aren't necessarily all that common these days. I'm just glad that I had a nice lunch and visit with family, then I had a revelation about Leo, took a photo of one of my nearby trees, and did it all while wearing a recently ironed one of my nicer shirts. Winning!