Blogging the Bloggy Woggy

Blogging the Bloggy Woggy is the history of how the woggies became my two bloggies in a single poddy but not a potty. Goodness, I’ve gotten my Dr. Seuss and Clockwork Orange stuff all mixed up. It’s the story, actually, of how my first two websites, both blogs, came into existence and what I first wrote upon them. They were Blogger blogs, and they were kinda like my babies. But not quite…they felt like brand new babies I was so proud of mixed up with feeling strangely similar to those personal items one might shyly hide in an old steamer trunk in the attic. Items, I said items in the attic, not babies, now. Cultivate and Harvest right At the Brink I was. So let’s open the old, leather-strapped trunk before our digital freedom is taken away.

November 2006…my mother had just died while I was caught in a terrible storm with branches crashing down around my cabin and the power went out. My father had passed two years earlier on the First of December. Both perished from cancer, and they were wrenching and disorienting experiences. So I groaned when Robert Masters, our Canadian teacher and trainer, announced part of our homework required for us to graduate from his practicum was to create a blog and write about those experiences.

“Oh no,” I said out loud as I contemplated yet another technical whamdoodle-diddle mickle-jiggle I now had to figure out. Can’t we just share our tales of woe and enlightenment with each other via an old-fashioned email listserve? Years later, however, I love to blog. OK. I have a lot to say. I channel the chaos of the Cosmos and can’t stop. Much of it feels as if mysterious Dark Matter Dark Energy stuff is flowing through my body-mind-spirit with spooky action from a distance at.

So Blogger was what we used. Blogger was easy. I liked it. No flashbang java-gava wavy-gravy kinda whizzy bangolino stuff. No Unixy Basic Visual Basic plus html xml el stuffo. We wrote, wrote like hell we did, but we didn’t market. Although Blogger blogs were public and available for anyone to see, we didn’t try to market them or hook up with other blogs or RSSify anything. I kept it kinda private, held close to my busted-up duct taped heart, and wrote as I was keeping a private journal while pretending the whole world was seeing it. Ouch. Better than hearing us scream and sob on those padded floor mats.

Which was perfect. For the course I was in was none other than Dr. Robert Augustus Masters’ Psycho-Spiritual Counseling Practicum. It was an experiential one-year intensive up in White Rock/Surry. They’re twin towns over the border in British Columbia and involved frequent drives up from where I lived in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Masters’ program was deep, profound, and as transformative as it was healing. It wasn’t academic, although it embraced transpersonal and integral approaches to psychology and psychotherapy. It was better than academic in many ways for it felt we turned our nightmares inside out in the glare of sunshine.

I came out certified, desired to blend it in with massage therapy and bodywork, but within a year of graduating Washington State passed a new law requiring a Master’s degree. Sounded good, yes, making sure counselors and therapists were better qualified to serve the general public, but the backstory was most people in the field saw it for what it was – a power grab by the education mills and the state working in concert to generate large sums of revenue, i.e. money.

As the new requirements were controversial and corrupt, many practitioners challenged them. The education-industrial-state complex won hands down. Many of us said to hell with it and left the field as it was just two expensive to go back to school for a two-year graduate level degree.

My first blog was Cultivate and Harvest. Inspired by my memories of growing up on a farm where enormous resources were devoted to the natural rhythms of farming with the seasons, my blog began as a medium for me to process my father and mother’s deaths. I began to explore death again and experience life anew. While more of a prose writer, both fiction and nonfiction, and never much of a poet, I began to craft poems, too. To express the rough folk songs of my genes, not Shakespearified and Miltonic memes structured via perfectly poodled themes.

As Cultivate and Harvest began to morph beyond death and dying it became sprinkled with random autobiographical stories from across my life. I began to include recent events as well as stories told about long-dead family members and friends because for all I knew I was the last one left who remembered enough to retell those fading stories. A few photos were sprinkled in mixed among a few more poems. Increased experimentation with writing for professional and personal growth, training, and development allowed for more stretching and snapping of my mental rubber bands. Spirituality and mystery illuminated a few more posts.

I viewed my Blogger blog as more of an archive than anything else. I didn’t really push it out or market it beyond my Practicum or a few friends. I didn’t even turn my family on to it as I reckoned who would want to read of gruesome deaths and strange but true tales of ghosts and UFOs then associate with me? My family back East loved me dearly and called me their “black sheep” at the same time. I certainly wasn’t any lamb.

Two years later to the month, in November 2008 I began a new Blogger blog. My second one was devoted to a distinctly different set of topics. Called At the Brink with William Dudley Bass, I fancied myself an analyst of sorts and addressed current affairs including politics, economics, history, military, religions, and culture. I viewed where they all intersected and rippled out to affect other areas of life in unexpected or unrecognized ways.

My perspective was somewhat unique as it was at once global, or more accurately, planetary, as well as local and regional. I was a man of one human species sharing one planet called Earth with a moon named Luna and both orbiting around a star called Sol. And I felt into the throb and pulse of crazy life from such globalist and sometimes nonlinear yet always interconnected perspectives.

Similar to my first blog, my second one was more of a practice blog for such affairs. I didn’t push my blog out much, although sometimes I announced on Facebook I had posted a new article. My nonfiction essays were long and meaty, and I felt I could harvest shorter pieces from them for magazine articles and short blogs for on-line news sites. But I didn’t market much, however. Didn’t know how, was too busy, too scared, too ignorant, too distracted by too many shiny objects including babies.

At the Brink with William Dudley Bass became an archive repository. I loved and wanted the “At the Brink” part but felt self-conscious about putting my full name at the end. There were already a number of At the Brink website names with a dozen other people, and as an author I used my full name. I like the polysyllable roll of “William Dudley Bass.” So after trying out different versions I kept the title the way it was.

Over time, however, I began to see I either needed to consolidate all my blogs into one master hub, or branch out even more with a half-dozen more distinct blogs. Blogger was cool, but I wanted to do things to do more including sell stuff and change things around. And market! So inspired by fellow entrepreneurs in Seattle’s Biznik community for entrepreneurs I began to build a WorldPress.org website & craft a new blog.

Biznik’s Bob Dunn was instrumental in helping get started on WordPress. He’s sharp as a whip and funny to boot, a big advocate for social media networking while reminding me in a good way of a passionate goofball comedian and vegetarian pizza maker turned website wizard and WordPress sorcerer. He even laughed when I lugged my big ol’ iMac in to class one day.

Deborah Drake, however, facilitated a circle of writers within Biznik called Tuesdays with Deborah. She was a fierce advocate for us to blog and blog anyway no matter what. I was inspired to write and write like a fiend. In some ways I found a mentor of sorts, an editor I was looking for, and help with marketing. As I’ve worked in sales before and performed well, I consider myself good with sales. But I didn’t get marketing. What Deborah helped me to do was to set all that aside as she saw I got marketing better than I thought I did. My issue was taking time to sit down and learn how to work the WP technology.

Times change. I cultivate and harvest. There’s still a lot of farmer in me after all these years in the city, yep, lots of country boy. I’m a college-educated redneck, just a progressive, forward thinking one.

And I keep going back to the Brink. When I’m on edge I know I’m on purpose, as in living my Deep Life Purpose.

Still moving, although I’ve learned to stop, stand or sit, and be in and with silence before morphing into physical movement.

What follows are copies of such digital artifacts from the past:

The welcoming introduction and “about” header on my first website/blog:

CULTIVATE AND HARVEST

WELCOME TO MY PERSONAL BLOG. IT ORIGINATED AS A HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT WHEN I WAS IN DR. ROBERT AUGUSTUS MASTERS’ PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL COUNSELING PRACTICUM IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. I CHOSE TO WRITE ABOUT THE DEATHS OF MY PARENTS. SINCE THEN MY BLOG HAS EVOLVED INTO AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SORTS, SPRINKLED WITH VARIOUS STORIES, POEMS, AND PICTURES. WARNING: THIS BLOG ADDRESSES MANY DIFFERENT ISSUES OF LIFE AND DEATH INCLUDING SEXUALITY AND THUS SOME ESSAYS ARE NOT APPROPRIATE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN.

Monday 06 November 2006 – @ 9:29 PM.

What follows is my first blog post:

William at Cannon Beach, Oregon. Summer 2003. Photo by Jill Labberton.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

William at Cannon Beach, Oregon. Summer of 2003.

 

POSTED BY WILLIAM DUDLEY BASS AT 10:22 PM ON MONDAY 06 NOVEMBER 2006.

 

Cultivate and Harvest

We can open our hearts and our minds and move beyond hatred, revenge, and intolerance. Let us cultivate the practice of inner peace if we are to create world peace. War and violence begins and ends inside each one of us first. If you want to bring forth love into the world love yourself, too. Let us celebrate our interdependence as well as our autonomy. Let us acknowledge our individual sovereignty as we come together into a global cooperative. For those of us Cultural Creatives who have so diligently cultivated our gifts these past few years, it is time to step forward and harvest our gifts. Your gifts. And share the harvest. Together. Thank you.

Labels: An Introduction to A New Beginning

POSTED BY WILLIAM DUDLEY BASS AT 9:29 PM MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 26, 2006.

Copyright © 2006, 2012 by William Dudley Bass.

 What follows is the welcoming introduction and “about” header on my second website/blog, At the Brink:

At the Brink with William Dudley Bass

WORLD NEWS AND ANALYSIS WITH COMMENTARY AND FORECASTS: A synthesis of current affairs with integration and analysis of political, social, military, environmental, and economic events. Historical patterns are studied and blended with future trends. Multiple perspectives are merged toward a singularity of view. Sources are acknowledged. Opinions voiced and stands taken right or wrong. Agendas are advocated for from personal experience, education, and service. Contact: williamdbass@comcast.net.

SUNDAY 02 NOVEMBER  2008 – @ 11:40 PM.

Copyright © 2008, 2012 by William Dudley Bass.

More information from my “About me” in those days:

What I do: Author, Editor & Analyst

Where I live: Seattle, Cascadia/Washington, United States

More about me: I’m an award-winning author who grew up among the woods and fields of rural Virginia. Cascadia’s home now, and here I love to write. I love it even better when I’m published and make a difference in the lives of others.

Things I enjoy: Global, national, and regional Current Events & Future Trends: History, Politics, Economics, Military, Culture, Religions, & the relationships between them. Outdoor Adventure: alpine mountaineering, whitewater kayaking, hiking & camping, cycling, travel. Reading, writing, & analysis. Personal growth, training & development. International finances & financial freedom. War & Battles. Myth & Mysticism & the dance between spirituality and secular humanism, scientific atheism, and the shout of the soul. Play. Education. Longevity. Physical fitness & robust health. Sex: spirituality & techniques, energetic & experiential, connection to All. Community. Relationships!

Movies I dig: Yeah, I frakkin’ love movies, all kinds of movies.

Favorite Tunes: Blues, jazz, rock, Celtic, bluegrass, folk, African, hot sweaty dancin’ music and wild ass poetry slams…

Books I love: I read William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury in 5th Grade. Its rich dialogue and stream of consciousness with vivid emotional and ethical intensity had a profound impact on me and in me. I knew for sure I was a writer, too. Now I enjoy current events and analysis of politics, economics, war, history, & culture. Especially poems by Hafiz & Rumi.

I’ve been challenged to pose in a shadow yoga woda inside an ancient pagoda, so what do I become: Standing warrior watching listening still heart open feeling everything touching the void between the spaces feet rock solid upon Earth spinning in Space.

Cool.
Copyright © 2006, 2008, 2012 by William Dudley Bass.
Aye, life goes on for the living while the dead may watch all around us in time out of time beyond the veils of what we know by measure. One then two my bloggy woggies a la poddy ventured over the mountains and across the sea to the cyberrealms of the free.

 

William Dudley Bass
28 December 28, 2011
Seattle, Washington

Copyright © 2003, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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