So I’ve changed the theme on my blog to a default theme, because I was growing to hate the new design I’d put up. Oh, not really hate it, but making a post was too much trouble, so I was disinclined to bother. It was going to pretty much require some kind of photo or graphic for each post, and seriously, that would never happen.

Also, I discovered the archives are really weighing me down, both technologically and mentally. They have to go. I really do want a fresh start. This weekend, I hope. No idea what theme I’ll be using, but I find I don’t care right now. I just want to get back to writing. Starting to miss it.

And this is officially the first post written entirely on my iPad. Yippee!

I’ve been sick. Just a cold, but it’s been a bad one. Yuck. While I have been sick, I have been working on my blog. Well, not this actual blog right here, but in my sandbox working on figuring everything out so it at least works and looks OK when I switch everything over. Today, I finished making a few graphics for it, and while I am not 100% thrilled with them and will no doubt be making better ones when, say, I am not sick, they will do for now. I want to get back to blogging, and I don’t want to do it until I have my fresh start and clean slate. The archives must go! The software must be updated! Just Orb must enter the 21st century!

Anyway, while a lot of the background work has been done, there’s still a ton of things I won’t be able to set up or test until I have it running live … so this is your only warning: sometime in the next 24 hours, my blog will become a war zone. Things will be broken, everything will look like hell, and there won’t be a damn thing to read or look at on it. I don’t expect this stage to last long (unless I run into some weird and serious problems, which I don’t expect), and I would like to get started on it right this minute but … as I said, I am sick, and quite frankly, I think I am out of energy for today. Or rather, I have just enough energy to bake cookies, and as we all know, cookies make everything better.

In an ideal world, I would bake the cookies, eat a few of them, gain superhuman strength of will, and quickly set up the new blog (while not encountering a single problem doing so), but we don’t live in an ideal world, do we? No, we live in a world where I am sick (and oh-so-tired), and I am far more likely to eat a cookie and have a nap. Also, it’s Friday, and there’s stuff on TV tonight I actually want to watch. I’m just saying, don’t get your expectations up that at any second, my blog will be bright, shiny^† and new and full of fun stuff to look at and read. It will happen sometime in the next 24 hours, but it might have to wait until I get some sleep. It took 15 years for this thing to get the way it is, and after such a long break (which was never supposed to be this long) and having much more to do away from my desk these days (art, art, and art – with some socializing thrown in), it may all be a little rough around the edges a while. I’m cool with that, and if you aren’t, well you can kiss my butt. LOL!

And now … I’m going to go back those cookies and see how the rest of my day decides to go. I hope I get a nice sugar rush and redo my web site yet before tonight’s TV programming comes on, because actually … I have THINGS I WANT TO SAY!

1. † Interestingly, I typed shiny as whiny. Heh. [↩]

Oh my poor, poor neglected blog. I’d say I’ve been meaning to post or that I’d planned to post something every day I haven’t, but I would be lying. Some would say that Twitter and Facebook have stolen me away from both my blog and Livejournal, and in some ways, they would be correct. I have neither the time nor the desire to sit at my computer for hours reading news and ranting about it, my life is pretty stable at the moment … so nothing much to whine about, and the various and sundry things I am currently involved in are all things I want to keep close to my chest for now. Sometimes it feels like I have simply run out of things to say. Interesting things, anyway.

I know that can’t possibly be true, so I think the real problems causing my lack of blog posting is that Twitter and Facebook require so little time to update, don’t require me to be at my computer, and are so very much easier to use than my poor, dear blog. These are problems that can be fixed though! I will be getting an iPad at some point in the very near future (and most likely a smart phone too), so being able to post longer things from places that are not my desk will soon be possible, and there isn’t anything at all keeping me from completely changing the way my blog looks and works. It’s been exactly the same for about 4 or so years now, and it’s dated and sad and not as functionally awesome as it could be … for either me or my readers. If I have any readers left, that is.

The days of seven or more posts a day will likely never return. I’m just too busy trying to become the fabulously rich and famous artist I know I am meant to be (read with a smidgen of sarcasm), and I’ve been enjoying being somewhat more involved with the real world than I used to be. I’ve changed so much since I started this thing in 1995. The last few years in particular I have sort of found my way and myself. That was the point of this blog in the first place really: somewhere I could work through the things rattling around in my head and causing me grief, without the bill from a therapist. I guess it succeeded! We should all be happy about that!

But I don’t want to let go of blogging, so what I need to do now is find a new direction for it … since whining, crying, bitching, and ranting aren’t things I spend a lot of time doing anymore. Nor do I want to spend a lot of time doing those things. I have finally achieved a positive outlook on life, and I’d like to not screw that up by focusing on the negative aspects of life on earth. I learned to make happy art after a decade of trying to get back to that, and now I want to learn to make happy blog posts … about my life and subjects that interest me now. Like I said, I’ve changed a lot since this whole thing started, and my blog just hasn’t been keeping up. Now it really feels like it’s holding me back.

Since I sort of feel like I have been reborn into the happy and positive person I was some many, many years ago, it makes sense to me that now my blog must also be reborn, if it and I are to continue having an ongoing relationship. There is no well thought out plan of action. I am still not someone who likes to do a lot of heavy planning before doing things (and I am finally OK with that part of myself – spontaneity is good), so I’m just going to, well, start making drastic changes around Just Orb. I’ll be starting with the foundation of the thing by wiping out what’s here and just starting fresh with a nice clean installation on the latest version of WordPress. Out with the old and in with the new!

Since the seasons are finally changing, the artwork is coming more slowly as it does when the light changes from glorious summer to dreary winter, and I’ve decided not to bother with a winter garden this year, very soon I’ll have more than enough time to spend fiddling with WordPress code and site designing and helping my blog find it’s new path. I can’t imagine too clearly what path that may be. Like I said, there is no plan of action (just an impulse to change it all and move forward somehow), but if I had to guess … more photos than words, more art than not, less news and politics, and more links to interesting things on the internet. Interesting and happy things! I want my blog to be fun. It stopped being fun for me earlier this year, and we’ve all seen the result: nothing but post after post of my Tweets. Boring! OK, maybe not totally boring, but not as much fun as actual blog posts, yes?

With all that said, I would suspect my blog’s current form to be disappearing in the very near future. Like maybe tomorrow. Possibly even tonight, depending on what’s on TV or Netflix. I do promise there will always be something here that will point you to ways you can contact me or keep up with what I am doing, and like I said, I don’t want the blog to be down for too long. I want to get it started on its new course ASAP! But before my blog and I can set off on our new adventure, there’s a whole bunch of tearing down and rebuilding to be done … and for the first time ever, I am neither stressed nor sad about that, which means it’s time for Just Orb to change as much as I have and reflect who I am today. I’m finally ready for that to happen. Yippee! I hope you’ll stick around to see what happens (or come back if you’ve wandered off). I think it’s going to be a fun ride, and as always, the tickets will be free.

And now I have to go finish the dishes and get some chili started!

Dear Readers,

I am so incredibly sorry about how difficult it is to navigate the archives on my blog. I didn’t know. No one complained. I thought the usability of my blog was within the range of easy-to-use, because it did meet that standard for my way of reading the Just Orb archives, which is not at all … ever. Personally, I abhor the idea of reading my blog’s archived posts, but according to the statistics, a large majority of you stop by about 4 times a month, and you read a whole whopping lot of the archived posts.

Tonight, I have had the opportunity to read my own archived posts, and they are impossible to navigate. OK, not impossible, but there aren’t a lot of options to find things one might want to read … especially if one doesn’t know exactly what they are seeking. I can’t even imagine how one might casually peruse the five years of babbling sitting on this server in any sort of fun or meaningful way. If I know what I want is in there somewhere, and I can’t find it ON MY OWN BLOG, there are definitely problems with how those posts are presented. To those of you who have been suffering with the archaic and mind-numbingly awful archival system at Just Orb, I sincerely apologize.

I swear, I didn’t know anyone read the archives.

I promise this will be rectified soon. Not SOON soon, seeing as I am insanely busy trying to pull art out of my head until at least next weekend, but … you know … soonish. It’s definitely been put somewhere near the top of the list of things I really need to do when I am not frantically losing my mind in the face of an impending deadline I am utterly unprepared to meet.

Once again, I offer my apologies for the shabby state of my blog’s archives and humbly beg your forgiveness and continued patience.

Also … thank you for reading the archives! I thought they were just sitting there useless taking up space!^†

Sincerely and Forever,
Just Orb

1. † Sort of like me at the moment, sitting here, taking up space and being useless. [↩]

I do not have time to explain right now, as I really, really need to leave the house to get some things done, but…

If you have recieved a spam email from me this morning, I want to apologize. It wasn’t me! I swear! I’m not shilling for spammers!

From what I can figure out, my Gmail account was accessed using Gmail Mobile from somewhere in France, and then sent spam to everyone in my contacts list. EVERYONE. Friends, family, business contacts. Oh … my … god. My face is red. Really, it is. I am totally mortified!

Also from what I can gather, this has been happening to a bunch of people for about a year (though sometimes it’s from Israel or China instead of France), and Google insists it isn’t a problem in their end. They say either people have insecure passwords or malware on their computers. Well … I have insane passwords, and I guarantee there’s no malware on my iMac. I have reported the issue to Google, and I am certain they will ignore it.

But do know, I am totally and completely horrified. Seriously … I’d like to crawl into a hole and die quietly as soon as possible. Even though I am certain this happened through no fault of my own, it’s very, VERY embarrassing. I am so, so, so sorry my gmail account sent everyone spam. Seriously, so sorry! :(

And now I really do need to get on with my work day. Ugh.

I keep trying to sit at the computer and blog. I do. I’m just having trouble getting back into it, I guess … and I’ve been getting out of the house more and enjoying reality away from my desk, which I think we can all agree is a good thing, right? And then, of course, it’s fall, and as anyone who has read my blog for more than a year will know, this constitutes the beginning of the season of holiday family drama. Negotiations (arguments) about Thanksgiving and Christmas planning are already well under way. This tends to consume some amount of daily time and a good amount of my energy and emotional reserves. I hate this season. Not fall, mind you. I love fall. I just can’t stand all the holiday and family drama that always arrives with the cooler temperatures.

Then when I do sit down to write a post, I just don’t feel like doing it. Sometimes what I say feels like it just doesn’t really need to be said (the political ranting). Sometimes it’s just that I have already talked about it and talked about it with my friends in person, and I guess I got it out of my system (or it’s boring to me to write it all down again after talking about it on the phone or when out with friends). It’s a little weird for me to not sit down and look at a blank text box and will it with a few thousand words. Writing as always come easy to me, when I have an idea I want to write about.

I always said I would never force myself to make posts to my blog, and in the past, I have never had to do so, but lately it feels like that’s the only way I’ll ever make a real post again. It’s not a good feeling, because I always said I wouldn’t ever stop blogging. I don’t intend to stop –I love sharing and communicating with everyone– but I have been doing this since 1995, and maybe that’s a really good run. Maybe this is what it feels like when a blog dies. I hope not.

Yesterday my friend Gen described what I have been feeling as being in limbo, and that seems like a pretty good way to describe it. I haven’t been doing any art or writing lately. Mostly, I’ve just been puttering though daily chores and activities and waiting … for the email on Friday to inform me about the end result of three-ish months of working on my art full-time. Will I get in the show or not? I’m finding myself pretty thoroughly consumed with the process of waiting for Friday’s email. I still don’t care too much what the outcome is, but I really just want it to be over with now so I can move on. I’m just feeling really stuck in the meantime. Probably silly to feel like that, but fighting it isn’t going to help. Friday will come soon enough! Maybe then things will finally get back to normal. Or maybe this is the new normal. I don’t know yet.

I just thought I should say something today^† and I thought the truth was in order. I’ve hit a rough patch in the blogging, and after so long doing it, I was about due one wasn’t I? If we all have a little patience, we’ll get through it. I can’t imagine I’ll go silent forever. I love to babble and rant too much! I just don’t love it right now. I’ve got other stuff on my mind.

So end result? I don’t intend to close up the blogging shop, but for now, Tweets may some days be the most you get from me. After that email arrives on Friday, we’ll see if things get back to normal around Just Orb. I suspect they will. I can’t possibly contain myself to 140 characters forever! Simply not possible! LOL!

And while I know everyone means well with the emails and other messages asking me to start posting a lot again, and I do appreciate that people miss my posts, it’d be nice if everyone stopped poking at me for a while. As you may have noticed, it doesn’t seem to be resulting in me posting any more often, and all it really does is make me feel bad about not posting. So … I get it! You all want your regular dose of Just Orb again (as do I, really), but we’re just going to have to hold hands and wait to see what happens next. Picking at the scab isn’t going to make it better.

1. † And I am still working on the vacation photos and have started writing about the wedding on Friday … these things are in draft mode and being worked on … oh so slowly though. [↩]