Have You Lost Your Writing Mojo?

Posted on May 8, 2013 by tony

It’s been six months now since I lost my writing Mojo, and so far I haven’t had any luck in getting it back.

It’s not that I have any shortage of ideas on what to write about, but I do have only short time periods in the morning and lunchtime in which to write, plus a longer spell in the evening, and I know that if I don’t complete an article in one session, the impetus will disappear and it’s always a struggle to finish it.

I have lost count of the number of great articles that I have written in my head, and which I haven’t had time to write down, and so they have been consigned to the virtual scrapheap for eternity.

One big problem is that I need to earn more online, since my full time day job just provides for us to live, but not for us to be able to take a vacation, like seeing my daughters once a year (they live in Florida and we live in the UK). So it’s not enough to just spend time writing what comes into my head, I need to try and focus on writing about topics where I might be able to earn a few pennies, which makes it harder.

One place where I have written consistently for the last 5 years is Squidoo, and in 2012 my traffic and earnings there were growing nicely over previous years. However, changes at both Squidoo and on Google resulted in huge traffic drops in November, and since then it’s just been a downhill slide, with traffic stalling, sales and earnings declining, and no signs that anything is going to change at any time soon.

Once popular pages on Google still seem to be popular if I do a search, but the number of visitors has lowered, and there doesn’t seem to be a magic solution for trying to get that traffic back.

Squidoo have also been trying to combat those members who have been cheating to try and gain more than their rightful portion of the shared revenue, and while they have had some success here, they are relying on automated filters to check pages, rather than using the human eye, which can spot spam or plagiarised work easily, and as a result not only have many poor quality pages slipped through, many high quality ones have been flagged, and it’s often taken the creator hours of editing to try and find out what has tripped the filters and how to get a page to re-publish.

This has resulted in a lot of stress for those who write on Squidoo, and when you go to make a change to a page and don’t know whether you will be able to re-publish it or not, you lose a lot of the enthusiasm that comes with writing. We all know that stress is a killer, and right now the Squidoo stress has pretty much killed my writing mojo!.

So what do I do about it?

One solution is to do like a number of other lensmasters (authors on Squidoo) have done, and that is to stop writing on Squidoo, and to write elsewhere, maybe on their own sites where they have more control.

I did try this last week, writing 5 articles and trying to ve-vitalise my Blogger site, but this resulted in very little traffic, which is one reason I abandoned writing there in the first place.

Focusing on one site and trying to get visitors/subscribers is a good solution, and this is what I think I am going to try.

The problem is…

The problem is that when people started blogging they used to have a single blog where they would write about anything and everything. The current approach is to have multiple blogs instead, where each one has a set focus. Since my blogs are self hosted registered domains, and they already have many articles that are on a wide variety of topics, it’s not easy to change over without starting afresh, which I am rather reluctant to do.

Why is my traffic so low?

There are multiple reasons, such as writing on topics that are already well covered, so your content gets buried. Not using the right keywords or keyword density is another. Lack of promotion to social media sites can make a difference, as can over promotion (spamming). It’s also important to write regularly on a site, so that visitors/subscribers know to keep coming back to it.

I therefore made my decision to try and revitalise this site, which I originally created for Debbie and I to write on, however she lost her mojo ages ago, and now it’s just up to me to try and make a success of it. I think a new layout, and definitely new regular fresh content ought to count for something.

So wish me luck, and if you do like what you read here, please help by sharing posts, as this will help enormously in helping me to feel good about writing once more.

Dragonfly Moroccan Mint Green Tea Review

Posted on December 5, 2012 by tony

It’s really hard to find my favorite Moroccan Mint Green Tea in the UK, and so I thought I would try the Dragonfly brand of Moroccan Mint when I saw it in my local Sainsbury’s last week.

Dragonfly is a well respected brand of tea in the UK, also I am pleased to see now available in the USA through Amazon.com.

The first thing when reading a description of this tea is to not be put off by it, since the description says:

Dragonfly Moroccan Mint Green Tea is an organically grown, authentic and delicious blend of brisk Chinese Gunpowder tea and refreshing organic Moroccan spearmint. Gunpowder green tea is named after its appearance: the dark green tea leaves are rolled by hand into tiny pellets that resemble gunpowder.

It’s quite easy to get a mental picture of an old man sitting in a back room in Morocco, rolling up tea-leaves into pellets with his bare hands and dirty finger nails. I am sure this is not how it’s made – well at least I hope not! It certainly doesn’t taste like it, which is a good thing.

The first thing to note here is that the tea comes in a box of 20 sachets, each tea bag being individually wrapped to help lock in the flavor.

Just opening the sacket reveals a wonderfully refereshing waft of spearmint, so your senses already know that they are in for a treat.

I let my tea brew for 4-5 minutes to give it a fuller flavor. Unlike several brands of Moroccan Mint that I have tried, this does not cause it to have a bitter taste, which can spoil the flavor completely. The spearmint helps to enhance the flavor of the green tea, and the two together are a refreshing blend.

Personally I find this tea to be sweet enough, and don’t feel the need to add sugar to it.

I still prefer my original favorite, Stash Moroccan Mint Green Tea, but the Dragonfly brand comes a close second and is definitely a great tasting tea.

We Are Going To Florida Next Week

Posted on July 17, 2012 by tony

We are going to Florida next week to see my two daughters, which is the only chance I get to see them every year, and as usual I am beginning to panic slightly.

As well as wanting to make sure that everything goes perfectly, gone are the days when I used to travel regularly for work, knew exactly what I needed to take, what clothing to pack etc. The older I get, the more forgetful I get, the more aware I am of having A.D.D., and the more I fret about forgetting something important.

As well as the obvious items like passports, flight and car rental bookings etc, it’s things like the cameras and MP3 Player, making sure that these are charged, clothing, making sure I pack the right things.

Silly to fret about some of these things I know, but with money being tight I can’t afford to buy replacement items while we are away, and I can feel myself really finding it harder to remember things the last 3 or 4 years, which is worrying.

Even though our trip coincides with the Olympics in London, Delta for some reason are not flying direct between London and Miami for the summer, and so we have to change planes in Atlanta on the way out and Detroit on the way back. A change of flight time has already forced us to leave Miami two hours early on the way back, and now we will have 4 1/2 hours in Detroit, which we are not looking forward to, especially as it will be late evening.

My other worry is whether Debbie will get held up in Immigration. She is usually ok unless it’s Miami, where she always gets pulled over, even though she now has a 10 year visa in her passport. It’s a long story, but an interesting one that you can read about HERE if you have time.

But hopefully all will go well, and we are staying at the same condo in Hollywood Beach that we stayed at last summer. I know Hollywood pretty well, and we know the condo too, so that makes me more confident that it will be a good trip.

I am really looking forward to seeing my daughters, and will tell you all about it when we return mid August. If you want to see where we are staying and to read about last year’s holiday, it’s all HERE.

Father’s Day Weekend

Posted on June 18, 2012 by tony

We had a rather nice Father’s Day weekend, with Debbie’s Mum and Dad coming over to use for lunch on Sunday, and then her daughter and fiance turned up as well.

The roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, peas, carrots and Mediterranean vegetables went down really well, as did the apple pie and custard afterwards.

Saturday it was really windy, and in the morning I managed to take the compost bin apart and re-position it, as it was beginning to lean badly. Problem was that a lot of the content, especially the grass cuttings, had congealed into solid lumps, which were big and heavy to lift with a garden fork, and the ash from the incinerator that I had only emptied into the bin a couple of weeks ago decided to blow everywhere, which was a nuisance. But I succeeded in sitting it on a new base and re-filling it, another job out of the way.

Later we went out to B&Q to return some solar garden lights that weren’t working too well, and the replacement set seem to be ok at least, and also went to the supermarket for a quick top-up shop.

We did strike it lucky though on a visit to the local recycling centre, where as well as taking things to dump or to be recycled, they have items for sale that people no longer want. Managed to pick up a kitchen cart in nice condition for £5. It was rather wobbly, but only needed the fixings tightening up with an allen key, so Debbie was well pleased with that.

All in all not a bad weekend, with some sporadic sunshine and no torrential rain for a change.

I hope your weekend was equally as good.

The Man Upstairs Just Can’t Please The British

Posted on June 12, 2012 by tony

It Seems that The Man Upstairs Just Can’t Please The British these days, and as a result we are seeing some really odd weather patterns. One thing is certain, it’s not typical weather for June!

I suppose it all began back in March when the national news was reporting that much of the UK was suffering from a shortage of water, due to low rainfall for the previous two winters. Rivers and reservoirs were low and in some cases had practically dried up, and as well as issuing bans on hose-pipes in most of the south of England, the water authorities stressed the need to conserve water, to avoid the need to turn off the supplies and take emergency measures.

I remember one year back in the 1970′s when this happened, and the water was turned off to houses. People had to queue at standpipes in the street to get water, and these were only turned on several times a day. This meant using every container that you could to carry water back to the house, to limit flushing of toilets, and no baths or showers of course.

Things were looking rather dire, but I guess enough people offered up prayers to the man upstairs, and after a few weeks of glorious sunshine at the end of March, as Easter arrived the heavens opened, and the UK saw rain, plenty of it.

Not only did the drought situation end, but with it raining for practically a biblical 40 days and 40 nights in a row, the lakes, reservoirs and rivers filled up, in many cases to normal levels and above.

FInally, probably after lots of people complaining about all the rain, we had several weeks of nice weather, with lots of sunshine, and no rain, but then the ground dried up, making it hard to work in the garden, the grass grew tall making it an effort to cut, and I suspect that a lot of people were complaining about this, and finally the man upstairs had enough.

So when the Queen’s Jubilee weekend arrived, he had no doubt had enough of the complaining, and turned on the taps again, causing peoplewanting to go to the celebrations to get wet, and in some cases causing events to be cancelled.

The whining continued, and so in the past week we have seen almost continual rain, with the same forecast for the next seven days as well, and yesterday parts of the south of England saw a month’s rainfall in a matter of hours.

Is this just an unusual pattern of weather that we are experiencing, or is there really someone upstairs who has had enough of our complaining, and after thousands of years has come to the conclusion that mankind will never be happy and grateful, and it’s time to drown out yet another summer.

I know that over Easter we bought a lot of wood and built a deck in the back garden, and having completed it couldn’t even sit out there for the next month because of the rain. I am seriously thinking that we maybe ought to have thought about building an ark instead. It might be more practical in the long run.

Do you enjoy seeing the funny side of religion? If so you might find this collection of Religious Jokes amusing. I am sure that God (if he/she does exist) enjoys playing tricks on us mere mortals. What do you think?

It’s Written In The Stars – Life As We Know It Is Going To End

Posted on June 1, 2012 by tony

It’s official, written in the stars you might say. According to astronomers, life as we know it is going to end.

Sad and shocking news I know, and with 21 December 2012 just around the corner.

Using data from the Hubble Telescope, scientists have shown that things are going to change, with our closest neighbour the Andromeda Galaxy on it’s way to crash into our own Milky Way.

While they think that our Sun and Planets may be “relatively” unaffected, in other words they might not be blown to smithereens and vaporised, this great upheaval in the heavens is sure to create chaos, with the tectonic plates shifting, maybe great tidal waves and earthquakes and other natural disasters.

You can read more about this on this article from the BBC News.

The good news though is that this cataclysmic event is not due to happen for another 3.75 billion years, so we can all breath easily again and sleep comfortable in our beds tonight.

Is The Heyday Of The International Calling Card Over?

Posted on May 28, 2012 by tony

With both sales and traffic to my international calling card sites falling over the last year, I have been asking myself whether there has been a change in the way that people communicate when overseas, with the advent of smartphones that have built in WiFi and that allow internet connection without costing the user anything.

Traditionally making international calls was something that most people did only in emergencies, or ones a year at Christmas to say “Hello” to the family overseas for 5 minutes.

With the advent of the international calling card, people were no longer at the mercy of their phone companies, and could place calls by dialing a local number, entering a pin, and then dialling the overseas number, for a fraction of the cost that their phone company charged.

Some calling card companies included hidden fees, and tricked customers into thinking that they had a good deal, but this guide to the best international calling cards identifies several providers that are not only cheap and reliable, but who have no hidden costs either.

Indeed, for the last 3 years before I moved from the USA back to the UK, I did a lot of research to find the best calling card to suit my needs, and it’s amazing how varied the prices are, yet if you follow the recommendations in the guide, you can save a lot of money on calls.

Prior to moving to the UK I would be on the phone for several hours a day, and yet with the right calling card, I didn’t have to worry about the cost. It used to cost me less than $1 an hour to call the UK from anywhere in the USA, not exactly a vast sum!

But now the market is changing again, with many people owning smartphones that have built in WiFi which can connect to internat hotspots anywhere in the world. This allows virtually free emailing and with programs like Skype, audio and video calls to anyone with an internet connection for free.

So obviously if you travel overseas it pays to have a smartphone to help cut your calling costs, but where an internet connection is not available, especially a free one, or where your only option is to use a regular phone, purchasing an international calling card in advance is a wise decision.

Chicken And Chocolate – Not Always The Best Combination

Posted on May 21, 2012 by tony

I have eaten Mole Poblano before a few times and really enjoyed it. Pronounced “Moe-lay” not “Mole” like the animal, this is a Mexican dish with slices of meat covered with a thick dark sauce that is made of bitter chocolate and chili. If you weren’t told that there was chocolate in it, you probably wouldn’t even realise.

However, chicken and chocolate don’t always go together that well as you will find out…

Saturday was one of the first fine days in weeks, actually one of the first since Easter, following which parts of the UK have seen pretty much 40 days and 40 nights of rain. Indeed it was almost Biblical, but I digress…

Having spent some time working in the garden, then sitting out on our new deck for the first time since it was completed over Easter weekend, Debbie suggested that we order in an Indian take-away instead of cooking something for dinner.

She had seen a new Indian take-away restaurant open recently close to us, and had looked it up online, and found that you could place an order over the internet and they would deliver.

The take-away location belongs to an established restaurant in town, and their web site proclaims:

Winning the Mega Chef award has allowed us to built up a reputation for innovation, pushing the boundaries of Indian cuisine, initiating the revolution of ‘Fusion’ cooking. On our menu you will find dishes inspired by the food of Indian Mughals, as well as some rather unusual creations such as the Zyava, a spicy tamarind and our famous chocolate and chilli dish.

Well it sounded good, and there were a lot of choices on the menu, but no Chicken Dansak which is what I like to order most of the time.

So I chose instead one of their featured specials, the Chicken Zyava, mentioned above and which is described as follows:

Dark chocolate is given a twist of sharpness by tamarind, jazzed by fresh chilli and then soothed with a mellow creamy sauce

Well although I know chocolate is not a traditional Indian ingredient, having previously really enjoyed Mole Poblano, and with there not being anything else on the menu that caught my eye, I thought I would try it. I love chillis and tamarind too, so why not be daring.

Well the food arrived, early too, but disappointingly the appetisers were not very good, and lukewarm, and the Spicy Chips that we ordered turned out to be like McDonalds Fries coated in something like Cayenne Pepper and were cold and rubbery.

Then on to the main course, only to find that Debbie’s Chicken Biryani was very stodgy, and my Chicken Zyava, well I could tell as soon as I took the lid off the container that I was not going to enjoy this take-away meal.

Hot Chocolate! Everyone is familiar with Hot Chocolate right? Can you visualise a take-away container, filled with Hot Chocolate and with some cubes of spicy chicken in it?

The smell is what got me first – Hot Chocolate! It looked just like Hot Chocolate! Guess what – it tasted like Hot Chocolate!

Trust me when I say that a mug of Hot Chocolate goes down a treat on a cold day, but with spicy chicken… well quite honestly it made me feel queasy, especially trying to eat it with fluffy Pilau Rice too.

Debbie could tell you that I very rarely leave anything on my plate, but this was so awful that I couldn’t even eat half of it, I was beginning to gag.

It’s a real shame, because I like to try new dishes, and I have eaten some really exotic meals in my time, but Chicken and Chocolate – I think I will leave it to the Mexicans…

I Became A Grandad For The First Time Today

Posted on May 10, 2012 by tony

I became A Grandad for the first time today with the news that my son and his wife had a baby this morning, born almost 2 weeks early by c-section.

James Haydn Payne was born at 10:59am and weighs 10lbs 1oz.

That’s all I know so far, looking forward to more information and to seeing the new arrival.

Are We Seeing A New Wave Of Major Earthquake Activity?

Posted on April 17, 2012 by tony

Are we beginning a new wave of earthquake activity around the world I wonder?

There have been few major earthquakes hitting the news headlines in the last few months, after a rather worrying trend of activity in 2011, but in the last weeks a new succession of major tremors in some of the world’s hot spots has me wondering whether this is just a coincidence or whether this is part of a cataclysmic pattern that will steadily increase throughout 2012.

I’m not one to proclaim that the Mayan Apocalypse will happen at the end of this year, far from it in fact, but if you were to ask me whether I thought that the Maya (along with many other ancient civilizations) knew far more than we give them credit for, my answer would be a resounding YES.

But back to reality, and the recent succession of earthquakes, that hit the news on 12 April 2012 with the intense 8.6 earthquake in Indonesia that sparked fears of a huge tsunami, which fortunately never materialised.

The following day there were two powerful quakes off the coast of Mexico, and today Reuters reports that the Mexican government have raised the warning level for the Popocatepetl volcano that lies just 50 miles away from Mexico City and which has shown signs of increased activity over the last few months, and signs in the last few days that it is expanding.

Today there are also reports of a powerful 6.7 earthquake with numerous aftershocks in Valparaiso in Chile, and with other recent significant tremors around the Pacific rim, there may be cause for concern.

Not directly connected to earthquake activity of course is the recent series of intense tornados that have struck the USA, and with relatively low hurricane intensity for several years this could potentially be a bad one. Add to this the climatic concerns from around the world, severe flooding in some places, equally severe droughts in others (the UK included), and it’s easy to get yourself into a mindset where the end of the world as we know it could be just around the corner.

It’s not enough of course that the earth creates it’s own tremors. Fracking (causing rocks deep down to fracture) to try and locate new sources of natural gas is legal in the UK, and has been shown to be the cause of the Blackpool earthquake in June 2011. Fracking is becoming commonplace in the USA, and according to The Guardian:

“getting rid of the vast quantities of dirty water produced by fracking by squirting it underground is precisely the reason why magnitude three and greater earthquakes in the US have more than quadrupled since 2008″.

It’s all rather worrying in my opinion, the combined powers of Mother Nature together with man blindly interfering with the way that the earth works. We had better hope that this is just a few intensive earthquakes occurring in a short time period, rather than a trend.

What is your opinion. Are we worrying for nothing, or do you think there is cause for concern? Please feel free to leave a comment below and let our readers know what you think.

Recent Major Earthquakes
Earthquakes Volcanic Eruptions Hurricanes All Predicted to Get Worse
Should We Be Concerned About Increased Major Earthquakes Around the World
Earthquakes: How Much Do You Know About the Aftershocks in Christchurch?
Earthquakes In 2012

Off The Record

The Musings Of Debbe & Tony