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Tommie Lyn dips her pinky toe in the water of blogdom. Is it safe to come out again? Unsure of herself, she tentatively gathers what courage she still possesses and takes a baby step into the blog light. And isn’t immediately struck down. Yes! She will try blogging again.
I haven’t written a blog post in quite a while now. Life has a way of directing you down paths you never expected to walk, away from what you had planned to do. But after a while, the dust settles and you can make choices again. And today, I’m choosing to post to my poor, neglected blog.
What’s prompting this choice? you may wonder. I’ll tell you. A writerly friend of mine has been pushing and prodding, cajoling and encouraging me to get back to writing. You see, after I published my last book, On the Red Clay Hills, an overwhelming reluctance to write settled over me… “Not gonna write anymore. That’s it. The last thing I’ll ever write.” But my friend wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. So, in deference to her, I decided to start off small. After all, an innocuous blog post…what could that hurt, right?
And on top of that, my friend recently got a fitness watch that has a sedentary alarm on it. The alarm goes off, she gets up from the computer, walks a little, maybe does a little household chore, then comes back and continues what she’s doing on the computer.
Say what?
I was impressed. I was jealous. I wanted one of those watches.
But exhaustive searches on Amazon didn’t turn up one I could use, because they all require syncing to a smart phone, and I don’t have a smart phone. I did have a smart phone for a while. Hated it. Got rid of it and got a phone I like. NOT gonna get another smart phone. Not even if it enables me to use a fitness watch.
But.
Where there’s a will, there usually is a way. (Remind me to tell you later what setlace means.)
Turns out, there are timers you can download to your computer. FREE timers (which was a plus, because the fitness watches ain’t free, not by a long shot). I downloaded one, set it up to sound the alarm after 30 minutes of inactivity (I chose a doorbell for the alarm sound because it was loud enough for someone like me who has a hearing loss), and I was in business.
It may not be as fancy as wearing a fitness watch, but, honey, it works! It has me jumping up (well, maybe not jumping up–after all, I’m an old lady–but at least getting out of my chair) and doing some walking-through-the-house and some chore-getting-done-activities.
I’m impressed!
And it even spurred me to write this blog post.
tommielyn.wordpress.com 
Whoohoo! I am glad to see you writing again! 🙂 And I have a timer on my computer, but haven’t set it for anything than timing me on the stair stepper. It has a sweet little chime. I might try setting it for 30 minutes and see if I get to sit that long…. 😉 Thanks for the tips, Tommie! (and the post!)
Cool! This past year has made a chair potato (is there such a thing?) out of me. Tendinitis in one foot, frozen shoulder, numerous bouts with upper respiratory infections and other problems, and this person who used to walk 3 to 5 miles every day with her hubby had the wind taken out of her sails. Now that I’m somewhat better, I’m hoping that upping my activity level will help me get back to “norman.” 🙂
All of that would take the wind out my sails too! I have not written as much as I wanted with the few interruptions I had, never mind dealing with everything you have. Here’s praying for “norman”, even if it’s a new “norman”, for both of us!
Thanks!