Lovely Things, the Little Things, and Instagram (Issue 37)
and more letter snippets, Bible notes into Word docs, and New Year's Reshares, Amazon Prime reading, and a Free New Years download
Train your brain on a new routine.
I sure did start out on Substack in an unintended element, surrounding you, the reader, with a direction a never intended to take. I never know where these writings will go when I start them. They seem to have a mind of their own. I do appreciate everyone who continues to show an interest in my sharing.
As we lead into the New Year and everyone is thinking on goals and what they want to achieve in 2024, I am thinking it is also a good time to train my brain on a new routine. Not only do I need to start being active again now that my foot is 75% better, I also need to consider how I will be spending my time in the new year.
Lovely Things, the Little Things, and Instagram
I have been thinking a lot lately about how I miss the old Instagram. I love seeing images that make me feel good. I love having a little bit of lovely in my life. I love seeing the little things that bring me joy and sharing it to encourage others to enjoy the little things. I love creating little things that bring me joy. I have been missing all of that in my life.
As you can see from my Instagram stream, I used to love sharing in this way. If you scroll far enough down, you can see I had many more likes (pushing 100 or so) per image. Now I get one or two likes. There is no reason to share if no one see it and no one finds joy in it, so I have nearly stopped sharing on Instagram. I am not letting go of it. I will post there occasionally.
I had to laugh at the round of posts on Substack with the theme of people quitting Instagram. If you read their posts carefully, they go on to talk about having a team post to their Instagram, so they are not really leaving it. Their team will continue to market. They are not really leaving Insta, but are using the headline as click bait. I do not have a team. I am me. Everything that is posted is posted by me.
Looking at my Instagram stream makes me feel happy. I used to look at the stream of images by the people I followed and feel happy too. Now all I see are videos. I have a few dancers I enjoy watching, but not every day. I have one who reads his own poetry which I enjoy. It is not the same though. As a visual person, I love images that make me happy, are lovely, and bring me joy. That is all but gone on Instagram. What used to be a social stream for images is no more so specialized.
I spent some time looking at the old hashtags I followed. If I search I can find that little bit of lovely on Instagram. It is still there, but I have to dig for it.
This got me thinking how I need a new routine in my sharing. I need to get back to giving to others what I enjoyed getting back in the day. I need to change the atmosphere of my Substack posts and maybe those who are like-minded with me will find me and I can follow them back.
OneNote to Word with my Bible Notes
I recently had a problem with OneNote not wanting to sync. I added all of my my Advent graphics to my Bible OneNote where they applied by Scripture. I think my OneNote became too large of a file size. I love OneNote, but I am growing weary of always fixing corrupted files and syncing problems. I moved all of Bible notes to Word documents and utilized the Navigation pane. I can still access the files on every computer and my phone. The Navigation pane also work on the phone app which is cool! The Navigation pane is easy to use as all you have to do is to highlight words and put header styles on the text. Then under the view tab, open the Navigation pane.
The only downfall is that it is now in six documents, so if I want to search for something, I have to open all six documents and search one by one. I suppose I do not search that often that this will be an inconvenience. I divided the documents up into six so that the size of each document were small enough not to become corrupt or troublesome.
This has me rethinking whether or not I want to keep writing my Sermon notes during the worship service. I scan them in and add them to my Bible notes which is what is making my files so large. I would rather type the notes, but the sound of the keyboard would certainly be distracting to others and embarrassing to me. I could retype my notes when I get home rather than scanning them in, but that seems so much work.
I actually and leaning towards not writing sermon notes in 2024. I do not have any from so many years prior. Do I really need them? Do I need to retrain my brain on a new route?
Document your Day
So here is a little bit of lovely from me!
I grabbed my camera after work ready on a Friday night to go into a three-day weekend, with the theme of finding a little bit of lovely in my head. I was sitting on my bed and there were my shoes I had just kicked off. How odd is it that I can find a little bit of happy in this scene. It brought me joy. Does it bring you joy? I encourage you to take a moment and look around for the little things that bring you joy.
And while I was sitting there looking for bits of joy, I looked down to this scene. My girlfriends bring me a lot of joy as they are so loyal. They are always near me. Why they have to always touch me with the butt and look away from me I do not know, except one time I searched the internet for a reason and read that it is because they trust me to put their back to me, but do not trust the unknown coming from out there. Yes, I do always sit “Indian style” every single day, even at my much older age, so it seems this photo tells its own story and I like that.
Mostly I was looking at my new socks. I have such small feet. See the size of my feet compared to my 8 1/2 pound Miss Tizzy’s dog feet. I thought it was a little bit of joy that our ‘feets’ were together. Kind of a little bit of adorable. I have such small feet that I have to buy my socks in the little girl’s section of the store! I actually bought myself some new socks for Christmas. I had about 4 pairs socks to my name, and two of them were backup as they were the same sock, but one was stretched out so they did not match in size. It’s not as if I needed socks. I was content with my 4 pairs. I do not where socks but on the weekend when we go places. In the summer I wear my amphibious sandals. So I bought 6 new pairs of socks and tossed 2, so now I have 8 pairs! What in the world am I going to do with 8 pairs of socks! Now it’s not like I cannot go out and buy myself new socks at any time, but somehow I felt guilty for buying myself something new for Christmas, even if it was only $7.99.
My little bit of happy behind a camera lens.
This is just a different angle of my foot to see if the framing looking better. This one is more natural, but I do not like it as much. Which do you like better? Natural or framed better?
I love my Miss Tizzy. She makes me happy.
This is what happens when Miss Tizzy turns to look at my camera lens and is too close. the nose is in focus and the rest is blurred and it makes me smile.
The Next Day
I created myself a little bit of lovely and put in in front of my peace plant. It is just water, cardamom, and mint and lemon thyme dried from our gardens. I think of my friend every time cardamom is mentioned!
I wanted it to be glass so I could see the pretty. At first I put the lid on slightly thinking it would help the temperature stay hotter so the water and aroma would spew into the room. That did not work. We added a second candle to make it even hotter and removed the lid and that worked.
It simmered all day and every once in a while we would stir it and savor the wafting aroma.
Old Letters
I found a little book of poems. I have no idea who gave it to me way back when, but it is wonderful to read and enjoy the old photos.
This letter made me laugh. My friend was feeling hurt because I was going to leave for college, so she decided to try to find someone to replace me. She says she learned that “only 10-15 people combined with equal you.” Then I laughed out loud when I got to the above part.
As we are scanning letters, we have exclaimed many times just how many people and how many letters I received. I received a letter almost every single day! I was going to college taking 18 hours (I think) which was the top load of classes allowed, working a part-time job, and attempting to date and carry on a social life with friends, and all these folks expected me to write back to every letter sent! On top of that, I was paying for college with my own funds and did not have money to buy that many stamps or make long distance phone calls. Regardless, this obituary from my friend really made me laugh.
I got a long typed letter from a Stephanie. I have no idea who Stephanie is, but apparently she gets that I am so busy to write letters.
Apparently I called her on lies in her letter to me and she admitted it. It is a very interesting letter from an unknown person. Her letter gets odder. I found two more letters and finally a name. She sure had a lot of problems, whether made up or not.
Here is from another letter from the same Stephanie. It seems from the letters she did not have a good lifestyle and I wonder if I continued the relationship if I could have made a difference. This is the letter that contains the lies.
If you were only reading these letters. So many make me laugh. I love laughing out loud. Who sends a Juicy Fruit wrapper with a letter and a note on the back? And who writes their phone number on the back side of an envelope! There were so many things written on the envelopes!
Reshares
Here’s a perfect Goals list for the New Year.
Amazon Prime Reading
I got an email from Amazon stating that Amazon Prime Video is going to begin running ads to keep prices down. That I did not like. I could pay $2.99 more a month if I want to keep it add free. To attempt to make me happy with keeping the service, they listed all the other things included with my Amazon Prime, much of which I do not use.
I have no idea how long this has been out, but I was confused to see two options. I was familiar with Kindle Unlimited, which is something I have to pay extra for if I want it, and have chosen not to pay for it. Right next to it is now Prime Reading. These are books and magazines that I can read free with Prime.
I was excited to see magazines included. Most are older issues, but still it could be worthwhile to check out. It worked great on my phone! However, I learned that it does not work on my Kindle desktop! That really stinks! They market it that they can be read anywhere, but that is not true. It seems only the phone apps or kindle apps have the capabilities to read the magazine formats.
The magazines are kind of cool. You can switch between reading view by double clicking and then toggling the icon in the upper right corner. This view is a full page view. When you swipe you go from each page to the next and can use your fingers to zoom in on parts of the article.
This view is by image or by article view, so it zooms in on each section of the page and you can swipe from each part of the page to the next.
Free Download
It has been a while since I have shared links to my website where there are hundreds of free downloads of creations I made in the past. If you know where to look, you can find them. Here’s a New Year’s digital scrapbooking kit. If you are new to me, you might enjoy using it. People who have been around since 2013 have seen it many times. Sorry!
Thanks all for reading and I’ll see you around next time.
If you could lot into Substack and click like or comment, I sure would appreciate it to know you are enjoying the content. I am trying to post on Notes on Substack. I still kind of like the place and wish you were here. However, reading the emails and replying by email is okay too! I’ll chat with you however you like to chat.
Cheryl
Happy New Year! Hope to see you on Instagram again.
- I miss old Instagram too
- love the in focus nose of the pupper
- love love you have an aroma touched with cardamom in your house