Transmissions from the Northern Outpost

Tag: blogging

  • 3 Good Things Thursday: 17, 1, & 1

    Every Thursday, I share three good things from today, in the past week, and/or in the week or weeks to come, to focus on what is good. I encourage you to share in the comments your three good things too, if you want. I was introduced to thinking on three good things for the week by Deb Nance of the blog Readerbuzz who lists hers every Sunday on her blog.

    I won’t lie that sometimes it is hard to accentuate the positive when the state of the world is in such disarray. But I still think it’s important for me, and for you, to remember the good in our lives and those around us, maybe especially in light (or dark) of the state of the world. That said, today’s three good things for me are going to be brief:

    1. I celebrated 17 years of blogging on WordPress.com on Sunday and in October, I will be celebrating 20 years of blogging altogether.
    2. I have the day off today from work, during which  one of the couple things I had planned was a grocery pickup (already done). Also tonight my wife Kim is off work, starting tonight into tomorrow so we’ll be chilling, probably with some funny TV.
    3. I finally finished my first book of the year, The Other End of the Line, the 24th in the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri. I don’t think it was his best, but it was an okay book for my first book of the year. Now on to No. 2, which maybe I’ll finish by the end of April. I used to read anywhere from 40 to 80 books a year, but since 2020, I’ve had a difficult time focusing on reading. I can focus on TV (not news), movies, music, podcasts, and of course, my own belly navel, but that’s about it. Why? Sadly, see about state of the world above.

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  • Back to Inspector Montalbano

    As mentioned last week, I’ve given up on finishing Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor as my first book of the year. I also mentioned that I was going to test some poetry books for my first read but none of them stuck. Now I’m returning to a series I’ve been reading over the last couple of decades, the Inspector Montalbano series by Italian writer Andrea Camilleri. I’m up to No. 24: The Other End of the Line, which I plan on finishing today for my first book read in 2025, and I only have a few left until I’m finished with the series of 28 books.

    After this one are:

    • The Safety Net
    • The Sicilian Method
    • The Cook of the Halcyon
    • Riccardino

    The last one was published in 2020 after Camilleri’s death in 2019 at the age of 93. There are two other books of short stories with Montalbano that I also want to read, hopefully before the end of the year.

    Also this week

    I celebrated:

    So what are you reading, watching, listening, and/or doing this week?

    This is part of The Sunday Salon hosted by Deb Nance of the blog Readerbuzz.

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  • 17 Years of Blogging…

    …on WordPress.com and in October will be my 20th year of blogging, which I began on Blogger.

    October 2005

    I began my first blog, Just A (Running) Fool, to chronicle my journey to reach a marathon by the time I was 40. In September 2007, I finished the 25-mile Bald Eagle Mountain Megatransect, which, while short in distance of a marathon, was at least as exhausting physically, mentally and spiritually as a marathon, and, in essence, completed that goal.

    December 2007

    I began Journeying with the Saints to chronicle a journey through The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola that began in September 2007 and ended May 2008. There, I reflected on the Exercises first and then, after I was done with them, on other devotions with a special emphasis on the works of the saints – from Ignatius to St. John of the Cross and St. Benedict, to name a few – as well as sharing resources for devotions and the Exercises. Even though my wife and I are no longer Catholic, I still find Ignatius’ Examen a worthwhile exercise to reflect on the week or even the day.

    2008

    In early 2008, I began a blog to chronicle my reading on a blogging platform that eventually died. At the end of March that same year, I started an unfinished person (in an unfinished universe) with the idea of the blog serving as a portal to the other three blogs, connecting them all thematically: body, running; mind, reading; and soul, devotions. Then in April, I began a blog that didn’t fit into the body, mind, soul paradigm and was just for fun called Unfinished Ramblings, later Unfinished Rambler. Also that month, I began another reading blog, Just A (Reading) Fool, to chronicle my reading past, present and future.

    The 2010s & 2020s

    I went through several iterations of blogs with the words “unfinished” and “still unfinished” and even landed on WordPress.org for a while. Finally (?) I ended up here, as I say on my About page, to “send you transmissions (messages) from this unfinished person’s life, as I continue my journey to become less and less of ‘an unfinished person in this unfinished universe’ and a little more complete than when I started 55 years ago.” I also hope to help you become a more complete person on your journey too.

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  • Circling back to The Sunday Salon

    With this, the fifth post of my new blog, I am rejoining The Sunday Salon, a book blogging meme I’ve been in and out of over my 20 years of blogging.

    The Sunday Salon was set up in 2007 by Debra Hamel. It “began life as a means of giving myself and a few friends an excuse to read and blog every Sunday, ” she says, and then was opened up to the public, and how I became a member shortly after that. Eventually it grew so large that she had to limit its members and she moved it to Yahoo Pipes for a short time.

    In 2019, Hamel passed the baton to another Deb,  a book blogger and retired school librarian from Texas, Deb Nance. In 2020, during the pandemic, Nance began listing three good things daily, a practice that now has spilled over into her Sunday Salon post each weekend. And it also cascaded on to inspire me to start my own meme, 3 Good Things Thursday, on previous blog and now on this blog too. So now, full circle.

    In future Sunday Salon posts, I will write more on what I’ve read, what I’m reading, and what I plan to read. I might not always use a Sunday Salon button. I might only mention in a single line at the bottom of the post with a link to Deb’s blog. For today, I’ll just give a quick update on my planned first book of the year (for the second year in a row), Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. Not surprisingly, like me, still unfinished.

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