TiVo Trouble

You know how much I love my TiVo. Well, tonight it refuses to change my cable box channel, so instead of taping "How I Met Your Mother" I got an episode of "Spongebob Squarepants." Ugh! I spent a long time trying to fix it but I finally gave up and sent out my ezine, Giggles & Grins. I wish I had time to do that every day like I used to, but lately I don't even have time to sleep. I had to choose between keeping in touch with all of the people I enjoy on the Giggles and actually writing a book. I have always wanted to be a writer, so you can see my dilemma.

On one hand, the Giggles (and to an even great extent, this Blog) gave me a forum and a training ground so that I could learn to express myself in a cohesive, semi-entertaining fashion. On the other hand, this is a book, the epitome of my writerly ambitions. No one is ever going to remember Becky, the writer of the Giggles. But, if I can get a few books published, I stand a chance of being remembered after I'm gone. Since I have no kids, other than Harley and company, the only legacy I can leave in this world is the written word (or lots of words, I don't think anyone would remember me if I wrote just one word).

I guess I'm a little vain, but I hate the idea of being gone and not being missed. I would be thrilled if I were remembered for being a wonderful human being and a great humanitarian, but that's not happening so I'd settle for someone saying, "Oh, Becky Shiles, I read her books. They were great! How come she hasn't written anything lately? Oh, she's dead? Bummer." Wouldn't it be nice to know you could make someone's day just a little sadder just because you were dead?

Giggles

For the last few years... well, more than a few, actually... I have been producing a sometimes daily ezine that I call Giggles & Grins. In fact, I have been doing this for so long that I can't be sure how long it has been, more than 9 years, I think. When I started, I had five jokes, a fun fact, a bit of trivia, a quote and some links. Somewhere along the way I started adding a little note about my day, and that soon became my favorite part. I know that most of the comments I received from my readers were about those notes. There were many times that the Giggles kept me sane, or at least not as insane as I could have been. When I lived alone and had serious depression issues, knowing that there were people out there, listening, meant everything to me. Ironically, the healthier and happier I have gotten, the less time and energy I have had to spare for the Giggles. For the last couple of years the frequency has dropped from almost daily to almost weekly, then almost monthly and now it's almost yearly.

I could blame this all on the writing, and that would be partially true. The amount of typing involved in writing 1500 to 3000 words a day, not to mention programming 8 hours a day at work, is extremely tough on my joints, back and butt. In November I spent most days with my wrists wrapped with ace bandages and Ben Gay. I can't do that and still type up all of the jokes and trivia for the Giggles. It takes about an hour a day just to type all of that in, and that doesn't include the personal notes.

The other factor, of course, is that I am just getting more and more lazy in my old age and I spend entirely too much time with TiVo and Harley and not enough time working on my other projects.

Tonight I sent a message to the Giggles folks and informed them that I have to put the Giggles on the shelf, for now. I can't say I am ready to say goodbye forever, but I know my limitations and I have definitely reached them. When the book is done, if that ever happens, I will reassess and see what I can manage. Maybe enough of my favorite readers will come to prefer this blog and I can stop typing jokes and just concentrate on writing. Or not. I know one thing, I am not very good at prediction, so I'll just wait and see how it goes.

I redesigned the look of my blog tonight, but I am ashamed to admit that I don't understand all of the CSS. That's not a good thing to have to admit when you're a web developer, but CSS and I only have a nodding acquaintance, and this is a little different from the kind of thing I normally do. I'll figure it out eventually, or my buddy, Chris, will. He's cool like that. In the meantime, I think it looks pretty good.