Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Cockles and a Tizzy









Oh, dear -- that title sounds almost obscene, huh? Not what I meant at all.

The tizzy came first: For days on end, I was struggling heroically with 27 Things #8 through #12, getting more and more frustrated. Some things worked okay, and I could actually see the point of them. For instance, I got the RSS feed thing down pat and set up my Blogroll using Bloglines easily enough. That could be useful. Ditto for Rollyo, my search engine of search engines. But shouldn't I be able to stick them on my blog, or put a button or link to them at least? Couldn't figure out how. At one point, I was given a bit of HTML for that purpose, but where does IT go?! Moving on, I played with some image generators and got frustrated because the photos I wanted to use were all too large. How to make them smaller?! I was pulling my hair out. Even started a blog entry (saved as draft) with the title "Kill.Me.Now." Quite a tizzy...
But then something happened at work yesterday that warmed the cockles of my heart. A Spanish-speaking couple came in with their baby and a daughter about 5 years old. For more than an hour, they sat at a low table in the kids' section, close to the Circ Desk. The dad patiently listened to the little girl read, occasionally correcting her in broken English. Both parents were beaming with pride. The girl was beaming, too, with confidence and pleasure at having her dad's undivided attention, no doubt. That little snapshot was a joy to watch. Our branch is in one of the highest crime/lowest income areas of the city, but there are lots of good folks here.
So, with a little perspective and a few deep breaths, my tizzy melted away. After all, I'm learning some things about Web 2.0. Others may take awhile. And to tell the truth, as I explore the 27 Things, I am coming across some options that don't hold much appeal anyhow. Do I really want to be able to paste a photo of my head onto a photo of some other body? Nope. And then there's Library Thing. Using it, I could catalog my entire collection of books! But here's the thing: even though I have been a voracious reader since age five or so, I am not and never have been a collector of books. I don't need to own them, thanks to the existence of PUBLIC LIBRARIES! True, there are bookcases filled with books in every nook and cranny of our house. But they aren't necessarily books I care about. They just found their way to our house somehow over the years and I've been too lazy to get rid of them. Someday, I'll set them free (uncataloged).
So, the lesson for today is Balance. Perspective. Calm. Ommmm....
(Do I get extra credit? I should get extra credit.)

4 comments:

  1. Hey there! When you are writing a blog post, if you click on the button that looks like an anchor, you will be able to create links in your blog posts to go to other pages (like your Rollyo search, for example).

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  2. Thanks -- all help is appreciated!But is it possible to have one's blogroll or Rollyo listings appear on the right in the same column with "followers" etc.? Seems like I've seen that on other blogs.

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  3. I love your writing. I felt like I was sitting there listening to you tell a story. Beautiful. I just signed up so have a long way to go. Miss you, Barb

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  4. Hey, thanks Barb! We miss you too. What's your blog called?

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