The return of Simple Moodlings

I am not a techie in any sense of the word. That I keep these moodlings at all is a tribute to the fact that it's really not that hard to set up a blog. It's maintenance that seems to be the real trick.

So when a few readers told me that my moodlings had disappeared from their inboxes, I was flummoxed (anyone can subscribe to receive Simple Moodlings via email on the side bar on the right side of the homepage). Prior to that, I had received notice that the Blogger interface was being updated in July (which meant a lot of relearning on my part about how to write and configure a blog post) but I wasn't sure why email subscribers were affected. And when I sat down to try to figure it out, no adjustments I could make seemed to fix the problem, and Blogger didn't respond to my queries.

So apparently the last email moodling to reach my readers was on June 14th. And after several frustrating sessions of trying to find a fix, I decided to give up until after garden season. Which means that if you are a subscriber, Simple Moodlings hasn't appeared in your inbox all summer and fall, until now.

At last, harvest is in and we've had our first snow. So this morning I sat down, determined to figure out how to fix my first world problem with this blog. And after all sorts of searching, fiddling, and checking out the advice of different online experts, the problem turned out to be simple: ?max-results=3 and a missing feedburner url (how did it go missing? I'll never know.) Those things probably don't sound like anything important, but I guess they're essential for email subscribers.

I'm quite pleased with myself for figuring it out, though I'm still not sure everything is going to work. So if you have been a faithful reader in the past, if you could be so kind as to drop me a quick note to let me know you received Simple Moodlings via email, I'd appreciate it. Even just an email with YES in the subject line would be helpful. I can be reached at mjbpkrus @gmail.com. And if you want to check out the last 4 months of moodlings, just click here and scroll down.

If you didn't miss Simple Moodlings in your inbox and want to unsubscribe, you'll find a link for that at the bottom of your email, I hope!

With the change in the weather, I'm looking forward to indulging in a bit of creativity with this little love letter to the world. But for now, I think I'll go deal with some zucchinis!

Simple Moodlings the easy way

A friend recently asked for the name of my blog because she couldn't remember how to find it. I guess if I wanted this blog to go viral (I don't), its title would probably prevent that even if the content didn't. I'll admit that its name is a strange combo of words that doesn't come easily to mind, simply because moodling isn't a word that very many people have ever heard. It was coined by Brenda Ueland, a writer who lived to the age of 93 and who inspired many people to write (or to follow other artistic dreams), me included.

For Ms. Ueland, moodling was "long, inefficent, happy idling, dawdling and puttering." I've come to see moodling as an amalgam of the word doodling, which I often do with pen and paper when my mind is otherwise occupied, and musing, which seems to occur naturally as I walk the dog or work in the garden. For me, moodling is usually done in silence so that my mind is in free range mode with few distractions.

The things that find their way into these moodlings usually come from that kind of space to ponder this beautiful world we've been given and how we need to treat it with the utmost care, to consider the many good people who share this planet with us, and to reflect on happenings that beg to be shared with family, friends and folks I might not know -- just to make them smile or to perhaps see things in a slightly different way.

But finding Simple Moodlings can be challenging if you can't remember the title. My mother-in-law figured out how to use the bookmark feature on her computer. She was my most faithful reader for a long time -- bookmarking worked well for her because she took the time look at her bookmarks on a regular basis. But for people who can't be bothered to check in regularly and who still use email, perhaps the easiest way to get moodlings is by signing up on the top right hand column where it says, "Get Moodlings via email" -- just plug in your email address and a window will pop up asking you to "prove you're not a robot" by typing a given letter or number combo into a box, and voila! Next time you check your email, you'll receive a verification message asking you to click a link in order to receive Simple Moodlings emails every time something is posted. You can always unsubscribe at any time.

Getting moodlings by email isn't quite the full experience -- because readers don't see the blog's design (which I switch up fairly frequently just for the fun of it) and because sometimes a post gets sent out prematurely (before I've fixed all its bugs or thought things through completely). Email moodlings often have awkward wordings, messed up formatting and outright errors that eventually get corrected on the blog itself. But pobody's nerfect, least of all me.

There are lots of better things to do than read blogs online, but if you enjoy these moodlings, I'm happy to share this email trick, and if you aren't interested, I wish you many happy moodlings of your own!