It Feels Grand to Be Posting to Nick's Bytes Again

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. ~ Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

Having three years of blogging and over one thousand posts disappear in an instant was a real downer! It was so much of a downer that, as downers have a way of doing, I benefited from the experience.

Yeah, I meant to say that: I benefited from the experience. For example:

• When my anxiety and frustration got to the point that I was beginning to be consumed by thoughts of loss and feelings of powerlessness, I returned to the practice of mindfulness mediation to help me remain in the present moment. (I’ll write more about that in a future blog).

• I relearned the lesson that I do have a life beyond blogging; both Alex and I took pleasure in some fun that, when I was consumed with blogging. I would not have taken the time to enjoy.

• I enhanced Alex’s blog and, in the process (and in the personae of Alex), met some neat folks and a bunch of blogging kitty cats.

Of course there is also a bit of sadness from the situation:

• The reason my blog disappeared was some miswritten code in the program of that neat blog list widget that not only had links to great blogs but also to their RSS feeds. I had 162 blogs in that list, which took me quite a while to compile. Although Blogger did not tell me to do so, I deleted the list from Nick’s Bytes. I plan to reconstruct it another blog I’ll create especially for the blog roll.

• There are several world happenings that I would have addressed in blogs had Nick’s Bytes not disappeared. I can still do that, although the timing will be well off.

• There was no Wednesday Coffeehouse this week! Well, it will return next Wednesday!

• Moving toward Nick’s Bytes 100,000^th visitor, I was planning on developing another celebration for visitor number 100,000. That I can still do, but as you can see from the graphic below., the visitors rather dropped off over the past few days—rather like church attendance when I, as a pastor, would go on vacation.

The base line is, it feels grand to have Nick’s Bytes up again! And, to celebrate, I am ending this post with some very special LOL Cats that Alex has already shared on his blog: