3/30/11
I suppose I should be flogged for leaving this blog so under nourished all this time. One thing’s for sure, I am still all about the magic of music. It’s been a very difficult road for me over the last ten years. The last six years have truly been one very horrific nightmare following another. Eventually, I settled in the 15th layer of hell and can only now just start realizing that I peaked there. Slowly, I’ve moved on up to about maybe the 9th layer of hell. Check me out making progress on some levels.
Yup, I would never want to back-slide past the 9th level. Once you’ve peaked that the 15th level of hell, the 9th level seems almost somewhat pleasant from time to time. All the efforts to claw my way back-up the levels to, what I hope will at least hit ground level some day, have caused me enough issues to disturb the entire “way of me”. I can guess that’s confusing, so I will try to explain further.
First, I’ll mention that most current information about me is located at singingfromthecrease.wordpress.com and checking out the “Get to Know Mia” page may help a bit. Second, it’s been more challenging than it may be worth the have two separate blogs and keep them both populated with relevent goodies on an even keel. The first few “incarnations” of my blogs were titled things like “Music-Head Central” and “All About Music”. That was all fine and dandy, until it started appearing that my other love, ice hockey, wasn’t fitting into the mix very well on those earlier blogs.
Don’t get me wrong here, I have always included my thoughts, opinions and expressed my great love of the sport, especially the NHL, goalies and the Washington Capitals in the blogs. It wasn’t that I personally couldn’t put regular, everyday happenings, musical passions and NHL in single blog. It was the interesting nature of those who were reading the blogs that eventually gave me clear indications about what many will take the time to read and what many won’t even bother with no matter the content, subject of a post , tags, or how well-formulated some of my thoughts were presented.
For the musical, creative sorts, there wasn’t much issue. The traffic that one of my earlier blogs got was an absolute astonishment to me every single time I checked the stats. As a matter of fact, this blog, with no recent updates or posts still gets regular visits daily. The problem became combining my TWO LOVES – MUSIC AND HOCKEY on the same blog without sacrificing. Those who love music, self-expression, random musings and other free-spirited internet reading, but who are NOT fans of the NHL will accept mentions and some thoughts about ice hockey as a part of my musical musings. Those who are interested in the NHL, but who also really appreciate or even love music, do not typically accept any random musings, musical thoughts, and ideas interjected stemming from my life and personal experiences as an appropriate internet reading option of any value relating to NHL related topics.
Hence, at some point in 2005, regular readers of “Musical Laughter” (or maybe it was still “All About Music” at that point), began to provide me feedback indicating my posts had too much ice hockey content. The more I put thoughts about ice hockey in the posts, no matter how much music, personal and creative content was also included, the more readers I lost. On the other hand, there were far fewer NHL blogs, specifically Washington Capitals blogs and even fewer goalie-centric ice hockey blogs in 2005, so I was gaining traffic due to the NHL related content.
As more and more NHL blogs appeared, fewer people felt that visiting a blog with creative, personal content titled as a “Music” blog was an actual “NHL” blog and I lost many regular readers. I also wasn’t getting “stumble” traffic. For a while, I was perfectly okay with the process I had worked within for many years. I wasn’t ever really doing any of it for stats of any kind. I didn’t even know until a year after I started web journaling (prior to bloggers and blog sites) on a website I created and owned for a creative project known as “Open the Box”, that it was rather simple to check site statistics.
Eventually, as categories, the internet, search engines, tags, meta-details and free blogger engines sprung-up like gang-busters and became more and more accessible and known to the world, my little blog became nothing but me generating thoughts typed for my own reading pleasure sometime in the future. Still, I was perfectly good with that notion and there were, and as all-out amazing at it may seem, still are a very small group of people who have followed my blog incarnations from the very beginning. I’m not entirely sure if those loyal readers have been chained to desks and forced to click on my blog posts as some sort of diabolic psychological experiment involving illegal chemical testing of some sort for the last, about 12 years. I may just be ribbing those folks in a silly manner right now, but just in case the former scenario is the case – PLEASE KEEP UP HOPE THAT ONE DAY YOU WILL BE FREE!! GO TO YOUR HAPPY PLACE!! THERE IS NO DESK OR BLOG-TORTURE AND YOU ARE NOT UNWILLING TESTS SUBJECTS!! THERE IS ONLY THE MAGICAL WORLD OF SARLACAN WHERE YOU ARE THE WISE ELDERS WHO HOLD THE HIGHEST HONORS BY READING FROM THE PROFETIC ELECTRONIC SCROLLS FOUND ATTACHED THE GOLDEN, JEWEL ENCRUSTED DESKS LEFT BEHIND FOR YOUR PEOPLE BY THE GODS OF KNOWLEDGE!!!
I should hope those rare few individuals who have managed to stick with all my 12 years of several blog incarnations, random musings on all topics, mostly focusing on the awesomeness of music and all that is the NHL, have not done so under duress. I mean, I’m not sure I could handle the guilt ya know? (please be sure to understand I am a bit of a goof-ball with a healthy dose of dry and sarcasm in the mix as well)
I am now a two-blog kinda gal, however, the two-blog system is not a good solution for me as a blogger. Enough time, experience and practice in the “two-blog” approach for me to be sure I prefer a single blog containing the entire musical, goalie-centric, NHL-loving, odd, goof-ball, serious, creative, analytical, empirical, science-is-cool, humorous, ball of spirited me. To that end, I have been working on the other, mostly NHL, goal keeper and Washington Capitals centered blog, Singing from the Crease, and not updating this blog for the last year. While doing so, I have been plotting my devious merge of the two-headed blog monster into one fire-breathing, mega-blog that has all that I share, but in more categorical fashion for those who don’t like to mix your peanut butter with your chocolate. To me, music and the National Hockey League are as yummy and delicious as the brilliantly conceived Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup.
In time, this blog and Singing from the Crease will become one. I will keep the blog under the name “Singing from the Crease” and am 1000% sure that no further incarnation will be necessary in terms of title. Never again will those few who have followed along since “Daily Ruminations”, through to “Almost Daily Ruminations” and then who bravely proceeded further to “Music-Head Central” and up to now have to endure the bumpy, blog reinvention ride. I promise to “Sing from the Crease” for the rest of my days just for you, ya freaks! Maybe I’d feel better if you are actually chained to desks being force-fed my inner-mianess and all of its galaxial trips through life. Thinking you’ve been on board on your own accord may indicate a severe psychological trauma has damaged your reasoning and critical thinking skills. 😉 But I sincerely thank you and your brain damage for your never waivering, continued support. I am in some debt to those of you few who refused to let me go any great length of time without making some attempt at posting something, anything, on any of my blogs. YOU ROCK – BUT YOU’RE A BIT LOONY!!
Before I close, I will state right out that at no time will you be given a hard deadline regarding posts, features, the date of the final merge or anything in definitive terms relating to either of the blogs. Over the last five years, the Universe has put forth an enormous effort to reinforce the notion that I simply can’t deliver on the deadlines I place on the labors of love that are Mia’s Musical Musings (a.k.a. – Triple MMM) and/or Singing from the Crease (SFTC) regarding posts, updates, archives, features, etc. The Universe has taken its mission very seriously and has done a fantastic job of beating the living snot out of me in every possible manner available to it in order to inform me through conditioning the hard way that something will always happen to prohibit me from making any and all deadlines I set for my blogs. I must have a solid rock head, so receiving a massive, relentless beatings by the Universe using weapons it probably had to find in some remote storage location, long forgotten about, out of pure necessity to finally reach the part of my brain that believes in deadlines like they are an absolute like blinking one’s eyes, in order to remove the inevitable stresses that accompany deadlines. Okay, so the Universe has spoken and I’m tired of watching the poor Universe look in frustration for weapons it doesn’t even user-manuals for while it struggles to teach me a lesson and loses energy as the time has marched on. How much more fight and beatings could the Universe have left at this point? I chose to take pity on the Universe before it reaches a total flame-out this time. NO DEADLINES FOR BLOGS!! 10-4.
Of course, the Universe keeps energy stores strictly for use in its side business called “Humorous Irony.” Technically, I think it knew I’d relent with the pity “lesson learned” with regard to the “no deadlines for blogs” thing and had employees of “Humorous Irony” ready in wait for the signal to leap into action on its main project a.k.a. “All non-Mia related deadlines shall be met. ” If anything needs to be done on any sort of deadline, or anyone needs a goal met in a given timeframe, I have been trained by the Universe’s most capable henchmen to hit that mark no matter what size, variety, type or amount of the obstacle or challenge threatening the deadline. The Universe instilled a drive in me that is as precise, high performing and able to function at extreme high speeds as an elite European sports car when it comes to deadlines set for the benefit of others. Yup, the short of it is this: Deadlines for things related to me are silly according to the Universe, but deadlines relating to all else shall be met – end of story.
Hey thanks for thinking of me Universe. I’m as reliable as reliable can be to everyone but me. Nice work Universe.
I will be working on for a while on getting as many of the scattered archives from every single incarnation of all the various blogs up and in one place for a while. Check Singing from the Crease for the bulk of those archives and keep checking back. A few years (2002-2005) of archives were saved on an external hard drive. That drive was recently rediscovered, but is slightly damaged. Many of the archives have been corrupted, but are not beyond saving with some work. I am doing that work. I have revived a few posts from the 2005 so far. In time, all the saveable posts will be archived at Singing from the Crease.
Stay tuned for more of this saga to unfold. For now, I feel terrible that I did not mention until now that I saw Steven Page (formerly of the Barenaked Ladies) at the 9:30 Club several months ago in support of his album “Page One”. Everything you need to know about his work and about the man, the singer, the Page can be found here at his website. I think he has a sharp-wit and a fantastic singing voice. I am very happy with “Page One”.
I realize I saw him at the 9:30 Club in DC one night away from his “lyric blunder” at a Washington Capitals vs. New York Rangers game when singing the American National Anthem, but I never got around to voicing my thoughts that the “blunder” wasn’t as bad as some had made it out to be, he still sounded great and he DID A SUPERB JOB WITH THE CANADIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM IN FRONT OF ALL THOSE MASSES GATHERED ON HEINZ FIELD ON NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2011 TO WATCH THE CAPTIALS BEAT THE PENGUINS IN PITTSBURGH FOR THE WINTER CLASSIC OUTDOOR GAME!!
Support Steven Page and enjoy his fine singing voice. Keep your MUSE as close as you need. Your MUSE will never leave you as long as you still believe. I think guitarists should have their guitars painted with the images of NHL goalies. Mind your nets and make your music – peace – mia – singingfromthecrease@gmail.com and twitter @creasesinger
Mia's Musical Musings 