Wednesday, May 16, 2012

What to do...what to do...

The thing is that when I do something cutesy with my header picture for the Friday Shootout, I then have to come back and replace it with my regular header picture early the next week.  Not that I really have to do that.   Nobody complains if I don't.

It's just a habit, a ritual -- change the header picture, change it back -- creative people, like everyone else, slip into comfortable habits.  Was Hemingway was a better writer before he began trying to write like Hemingway?

But don't knock the importance of effective habits.  They are a critical aspect of survival and evolution: "Let's try the valley again.  The woolly mammoths usually show up there around this time of year and we won't starve."

On the other hand, breaking habits is the other aspect of evolution: "I don't care what you say! I think it is getting colder every year, the glaciers are coming, and I've decided to take my tribe across the land bridge to Alaska, turn right and head for Florida."

Except that I'd get lost in digressions and my tribe would never make it past Sarah Palin's house and by the time I got to Florida the Ice Age would have ended and Global Warming would have started and...

Where was I?   Oh yes, changing my header back.

To change my header, I go to the design template.  Sometimes I get stuck there, wondering if I should do something to my favicon, attribute, or navbar, whatever they are.  Or browse around to see if I should add another gadget.  What an enticing word, "gadget."   I always feel that I don't have enough gadgets in my life. 

And I see other bloggers whose blogs regularly change and grow and bloom and become dynamic...

And I think about changing my header picture.  But I'm fearful of losing my identity.  

Then again, creativity always bergins to atrophy when it starts trying to immitate itself.  "Come on Willie!  Not another love sonnet.  Why don't you try limericks for a change?

There once twas a writer of plays
who tried to count all of the ways
that he loved his dear lass
but instead -- and alas
compared her with more summer days.

Where was I?  Oh yes, dressed in a woolly mammoth toga, trying to understand blogspot templates at a rest stop in Ohio on my way to Florida, lusting after Sarah Palin who was angry at me for putting a 'Re-elect Obama' bumper sticker on the door to her cave, and rewriting Shakespeare.

Thankfully, I have now wasted enough time writing this stream of consciousness stew and don't have time to change my template anyhow.  At least not today.


12 comments:

  1. Hmmm... I don't mind people changing the look and feel (or even name) of their blog every now and then, but when it happens too often, so that it is hard to recognize the original blog, I don't like it much, I'm afraid. It makes me lose sight of the reason for originally following that particular blog.

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    1. Having just read the other comments on here, maybe I should specify that when I am talking about changing the look and feel of a blog, I don't mean your weekly modifying of the header picture; that is one feature of your blog a lot of people like (myself included), and it is part of what makes your blog YOUR blog.

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  2. I prefer simple layouts myself. A clean-looking layout is much more likely to attract my attention than the ones so cluttered with ads and gadgets that one hardly knows where to look for the actual posts. Some people make a thing of changing their header often, others never do. I think what matters more is finding a personal style. I enjoy looking for your weekly "minor" changes to your regular header picture, I suspect other followers do the same!

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  3. I do change my header photo about every 10-20 months as I get bored with it. But I also find it annoying when others change theirs because it take me a while to remember who they actually are!!

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  4. I do enjoy seeing a new header picture on your blog every Friday. I am amazed at the creativity that you put into every single time it changes. It's funny that this is what your blog post is about today, becuase before I even started reading your post, your header was my main focus of thought. (I am possess psychic abilitiy now and then) :)

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  5. interesting that most the comments above are about the stucture of change - and how it effects them visually. Not once have I wondered where I was because a blog header is different. I took all this in as about what effects us creatively. I could keep my header the same for quite a while and never have it effect whether I am creative or no.... my best thoughts, changes or glimpses of thoughts come from change in my place. It is The air, the sun, temperature, a smell; the atmosphere that triggers a new interest in what is around me. an impression that is different than an impression I had yesterday triggers an urge to write or to take a photo - I guess this is one reason I love to travel and why when I am traveling I may end up with 5 entries in a week instead of just the Friday Shoot out. I enjoyed your moment of thought.

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  6. I like your analogies. Same time, same Wooly Mammoth place. Quite funny. Hey--haven't seen you on my blog lately. Miss your clever verbage!

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  7. First time reading, much appreciate it

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